Tonight, another tale from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. This one is called The Tale of Sarcastic Halli. It’s a little longer than the last one’s I’ve read and offers several points of interest, though there are a few problems as well.

Halli is an Icelandic poet who has a string of adventures in Norway and elsewhere during the time of King Harald Hardrada. His adventures tend to involve rather coarse jokes and tricks.

Halli first meets Harald while sailing up the Trondheimsfjord. With amazing impudence – especially considering King Harald’s well-known temper – he takes an insult from him (an insult, by the way, which was particularly offensive to Norsemen), and turns it back on the king. Harald is apparently in a good mood, because when he returns to the town he accepts Halli into his household. He seems to keep Halli around as a kind of a jester (along with a dwarf about whom I’d never read before), permitting him quite a lot of leeway. He even lets him get away with an ambivalent insult to his wife (Thora, Erling Skjalgsson’s granddaughter), using the opportunity to score off her himself.

Some of the references to Halli’s poems are hard to understand. At one point, in the court of King Harold Godwinsson of England (who would later defeat Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge), he gets away with a reward for a poem which he privately admits is just a load of rubbish. Apparently we’re meant to understand that the English were so unsophisticated about skaldic poetry that you could unload anything on them at a profit.

Two of the stories prominently feature what we like to call the “f-word.” No doubt this is faithful to the text – however, such earthy subject matter harmonizes rather poorly with the sometimes stilted quality of the literalist translation.

Still, this was an intriguing tale, showcasing the famously ruthless Harald Hardrada in a surprisingly genial light.