ABSTRACT
That the"cold counsel" of women is a proverb in Old Norse and a commonplace in Old Norse studies, is a parallel function of two different sets of cultural circumstances, both of which bear examining both at a theoretical and at a very specific textual level. It is easy to find contestatory evidence within the corpus of indigenous Old Norse literature, but the wicked women of this literary tradition stay with us perhaps for the same reasons that Dante's Francesca is a more compelling figure than his Pia. The gender-inflected reading preference of scholars, which is not innocent of the ideologies of our own time and of our construct of the Middle Ages, has made a cliché of the manipulative Norse megera who achieves her"cold" ends through her hapless male relatives. For the counsels of women to he"cold," they must he inimical to a masculine hegemonic discourse or male social system of values: they must promote discord where the masculine paradigm would seek accord, if not friendship (as we see in Njáls saga and Laxdœla saga); or, paradoxically, they must promote sophistication and self-indulgence where the masculine paradigm would inculcate strength, toughness, and self-testing (as we see in some skald-sagas).
