Audun and the polar bear : : luck, law, and largesse in a medieval tale of risky business / / by William I. Miller.

• Superior document: Medieval law and its practice, v. 1
• TeilnehmendeR: Miller, William Ian, 1946-
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Medieval law and its practice ; v. 1.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (167 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Audun’s Story is the tale of an Icelandic farmhand who buys a polar bear in Greenland for no other reason than to give it to the Danish king, half a world away. It can justly be listed among the finest pieces of short fiction in world literature. Terse in the best saga style, it spins a story of complex competitive social action, revealing the cool wit and finely-calibrated reticence of its three main characters: Audun, Harald Hardradi, and King Svein. The tale should have much to engage legal and cultural historians, anthropologists, economists, philosophers, and students of literature. The story’s treatment of gift-exchange is worthy of the fine anthropological and historical writing on gift-exchange; its treatment of face-to-face interaction a match for Erving Goffman.

Table of Contents

Some technical matters : dates, origin, versions -- The story of Audun from the Westfjords (Audun's story) -- The commitment to plausibility -- Helping Thorir and buying the bear -- Dealing with King Harald -- Giving the bear to Svein : the interests in the bear -- Saying no to kings -- Eggs in one basket and market value -- Rome : self-impoverishment and self-confidence -- Repaying the bear -- Back to Harald : the yielding of accounts -- Audun's luck -- Richness and risk -- -- Motives -- Gaming the system : gift-ref -- Regiving and reclaiming gifts -- Relevant law -- Serious scarcity, self-interest and Audun's mother -- In the gift vs. in on the gift -- Gifts upward : repaying by receiving and funny money -- The obligation to accept -- Giving up and down hierarchies : of god(s), beggars, and equals -- Nadad and Abihu : sacrifice, caprice, and binding god and kings -- Funny money that is not so funny -- Of free and closing gifts -- Coda : the whiteness of the bear.