Title
Death ere the Afternoon: Jómsvíkinga saga and a Scene in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls
Document Type
Essay
Annotation
Although there is no evidence that Hemingway ever read an Icelandic saga, North finds a thematic resonance in the scene in For Whom the Bell Tolls in which Pilar recounts her husband Pablo's violent assault on Franco's civil guard. He traces this "model of manly indifference to death" to a contemporary retelling of a Viking tale, Eric Linklater's The Men of Ness, a text Hemingway owned and likely read before composing his novel of the Spanish Civil War.
Published in
The Vikings Reimagined: Reception, Recovery, Engagement
Date
2020
Pages
145-161
COinS
Citation
North, Richard. "Death ere the Afternoon: Jómsvíkinga saga and a Scene in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls." In The Vikings Reimagined: Reception, Recovery, Engagement, edited by Tom Birkett and Roderick Dale, 145-61. Boston, MA: De Gruyter Medieval Institute Publications Western Michigan University, 2020.