Queen Geirþruðr

There is, in fact, a chivalric saga, that rather closely follows pregnancy and childbirth: the Bærings saga fagra. The evil Heinrekr kills Geirþruðr's husband and wants to force her into marriage. As you may have guessed, she refuses, using the excuse that she is with child. Heinrekr reluctantly agrees to postpone the wedding until she has given birth and on the night after Bæring is born, she escapes with her newborn baby on a boat. Chased by Heinrekr's followers, saving the infant from a hungry eagle... The beginning of the saga is somewhat confusing because her escape is described in Geirþruðr's meeting with the English king who grants her asylum. Nevertheless, the daring escape is depicted as a truly heroic deed in its own. The narrator as well as the Englishmen seem to hold Geirþruðr in high esteem for accomplishing this after the ordeal of giving birth.

So far so good. But. Here comes the but. The Bærings saga fagra, though being a chivalric saga (probably a translated chivalric saga where the original is now lost) stands close to the border with the (translated) sagas of saints – or rather the legendary literature in general. For my purposes here, there is no point trying to determine how closely the Old Norse translation followed the German(?) original text. Suffice to say that if we read the saga closely enough, there is a lot suggesting the handsome Bæring leads an exemplary life of a saint (with the exception of the happy-end when he marries his beloved and becomes a Roman emperor). And the life of his mother is told with a similar focus on martyrdom.

I don't have the time now to translate the key chapters of the story here but the truth is that suffering in this saga is mostly motivated by being steadfast in the eyes of the God (in Bæring's case) or – for Geirþruðr, by loyalty to her murdered husband and to their child. In the narrative, she valiantly “fights” to protect her family by fleeing and suffering on the run – and then remains in background until the time her son punishes her husband's murder. A rather conventional role to play, still...

What makes her stand out from other women in Old Norse chivalric sagas – translated or original Icelandic ones – is the focus on her state of health after having given birth. Not many sagas would even consider this to be noteworthy, whereas here, it is used as a tool to build suspense. The translator could have simply omitted this but he had not. Or the dozens of copyists who wrote the saga again and again. Even then the story more or less remains the same.

The narrator even goes so far as to add into her monologue a story on how the poor hungry newborn had to drink on his own because she could hardly find the strength to breastfeed. At least that is what I could read in between the lines. Compared to Tristram's mother, there is more said on maternity and childbirth in Geirþruðr's story. But as I have already said, that is not due to the courtly cultural shift (allegedly in women's favour) but it has more to do with the way Christian saints suffer.