Audun and the Polar Bear: Luck, Law, and Largesse in a Medieval Tale of Risky Business

By William Ian Miller

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9004271937
• ISBN13: 9789004271937
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Brill
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 9.3"