Tag Archives: The Complete Sagas of Icelanders

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘The Tale of Thorleif, the Earl’s Poet.’

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Jarl Haakon, headed back to Norway from Denmark, jettisons a load of Christian priests who were forced on him. Illustration by Christian Krogh from Heimskringla.

Tonight, another report on one of the skalds’ sagas (technically a tale) from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. “The Tale of Thorleif, the Earl’s Poet” is interesting primarily, I think, because of the picture it provides of its writers and editors. It’s taken from the 14th Century saga collection known as the Flatey Book (of which I’ve written here before). The tale may incorporate genuine old legendary material, but it’s been thoroughly massaged to conform to medieval Christian thinking.

The tale begins with a synopsis, in which the writer makes it extremely clear that (trigger warning!), although this story includes elements of heathen beliefs, magic, and cursing, the ultimate moral is going to be a good one – avoid that stuff or it’ll come back to bite you.

Our hero is Thorleif Asgeirsson, the son of a well-to-do Icelander, who shows early aptitude for poetry. After some preliminary adventures, he gets outlawed (learning magic while a fugitive) and manages to sail for Norway in a merchant ship his father buys for him and stocks with trading goods.

Thorleif arrives in Norway, where he meets the current ruler, Jarl Haakon (whom you may recall from The Year of the Warrior and Death’s Doors), at the wharf. Haakon offers to buy his cargo, but Thorleif prefers to offer his goods on the open market. His blunt refusal offends Haakon, who takes revenge by having his men burn Thorleif’s ship and steal all his goods. Thorleif then flees to King Svein Forkbeard in Denmark, and begins planning his magical revenge, which he achieves finally. However, the ultimate repercussions will bring disaster back on him.

The tale contains snippets of skaldic poetry, which probably indicates some basis in true events. However, the story as we have it is pretty fantastic. It contains, for instance, the old fairy tale motif of someone concealing a bag under his shirt (camouflaged by a false beard in this case), down which he shovels large quantities of food, amazing the spectators with his appetite. This motif is often capped in the fairy tales by the cutting open of the bag, mimicking disembowelment, allowing the hero to fake his own death – but nothing like that happens here.

Another point of interest is a mention of Thorgerd Altar-Bride (Holgabrud), who is identified as Jarl Haakon’s personal patron goddess. I’ve read of Thorgerd (who may be Freya under a different name) elsewhere, but I think this was the first time I’ve come across her in an actual saga story (Snorri never mentions her in Heimskringla). If this were the only source of information about her, I’d wonder if she wasn’t just an authorial invention – but I think she’s mentioned in at least one other place in Flatey Book. Just another indication of how much knowledge has been lost about Viking religion.

Final verdict: “The Tale of Thorleif, the Earl’s Poet” is not a well-told story. And it’s not very plausible as a historical source either. But it does offer some points for the curious to ponder.

Fiction, Non-fiction, Reviews

Skald’s tales: ‘Stuf’s Tale’ and ‘Thorarin Short-Cloak’

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Coin of Harald Hardrada. Public domain.

I guess the vital question today is, “Do I think about the Roman Empire every day?” It’s the new “Am I a real man?”

I’ve pondered this topic. I think it all depends on what you mean by “thinking about.” I think about Western Civilization quite a lot – especially how it’s declining. That inevitably brings thoughts of Rome now and then.

But if it means, “Do I sit and ponder the glories (or failures) of the Roman Empire every day?”, no, I don’t think I do.

Being me, of course, I do think quite a lot about King Canute’s Dano-English empire, especially these days.

Which brings us to The Complete Sagas of the Icelanders, through which I am working my way at no particular speed.

I have two stories to report on tonight: “Stuf’s Tale,” and “The Tale of Thorarin Short-Cloak.”

These are short tales, and not very complex. Both involve Icelandic skalds in encounters with the redoubtable King Harald Hardrada. I can only conclude from them that Harald had a soft spot for skalds (he wasn’t a bad skald himself) and put up with a lot of guff from them he would have killed ordinary guys for.

Stuf was unusual in that he was blind, but apparently he had an adventurous spirit, and he voyaged to Norway to collect an inheritance. There, we are told, he got lodgings with a Norwegian farmer. One day the farmer spies some richly dressed men riding toward the farm, and he’s surprised to learn that King Harald has decided to spend the night with him. He warns the king (no doubt with considerable trepidation) that he’s not prepared for the kind of hospitality a king expects. Harald tells him never mind, it’s just a passing visit on other business.

While Harald is waiting for supper in the house, he asks Stuf his name, and they get into a discussion about names which leads to Stuf more or less insulting the king – though only by implication. Oddly, Harald enjoys this exchange and asks him to sit up with him. Stuf then entertains him by reciting a surprising number of poems he’s memorized. He persuades the king to give him a sealed letter to help him in his inheritance case. Later on, he’s able to become a member of Harald’s household and he writes him a formal poem.

The Tale of Thorarin Short-Cloak is, like the cloak, very short. King Harald and his men are sitting outside the church, waiting for evensong, having prepared themselves for worship by getting drunk in a tavern. Harald composes a mocking short poem about the short cloak Thorarin, an innocent bystander, is wearing, and Thorarin comes right back with a poem about how he’d happily accept a longer one as a gift from the king. Harald tells him to see him the next morning.

When Thorarin arrives at the hall, there’s a man waiting for him outside with a horn of ale. He tells Thorarin that before he gets any further, the king wants him to write a satirical poem about some guy named Hakon Suet-hood (otherwise unknown to historians, I believe). Thorarin composes the poem, but when he recites it for Harald, Harald says he never asked for any such thing. The aforementioned Hakon, apparently a good sport, welcomes Thorarin into his company. He asks Thorarin, as his penance, to compose another satire about a man named Arni. This Arni, unlike Hakon, takes offense and tries to kill Thorarin, but Hakon protects him. Finally, Thorarin gets the opportunity to recite his own formal poem for Harald, who gives him money and tells him to come back and see him when he returns from Rome (where he’s headed on a pilgrimage).

Like the last skald’s tales I described, Stuf’s and Thorarin’s aren’t much in terms of plot or excitement. They’re celebrity encounter anecdotes, and (in my view) their very artlessness argues for some basis in real events. Stuf has particular bragging rights in having insulted the most feared monarch in Europe and getting away with it – plus he got the king’s autograph.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Tale of Sarcastic Halli’

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Stained glass image of Harald Hardrada in Kirkwall Cathedral, the Shetland Islands. Credit: Colin Smith.

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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Tale of Mani the Poet,’ and ‘The Tale of Ottar the Black’

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My friends Einar and Tore-Ravn with the statue of King Magnus Erlingsson in Etne, Norway.

Tonight, a couple more tales of skalds (poets) from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, through which I’m working my way at my own stately pace.

The first is The Tale of Mani the Poet, frankly one of the least impressive stories I’ve run across here. The best argument for its historical authenticity is its sheer banality.

The story isn’t even told in sequence. First we hear how Mani the Poet composed a poem for King Magnus V (also known as Magnus Erlingsson, 1156-1184, son of a different Erling from the one in my novels. I visited his birthplace in Etne, Norway last summer. Photo above) while their ship was becalmed in a harbor awaiting a favorable wind, and was rewarded with a shirt.

Then we learn how Mani first met the king. He showed up at the Swedish border, returning from a trip to Rome. His head was shaved (I assume he was a pilgrim), he was thin, and he was near naked. But he knew how to act in front of a king, and better yet, he knew how to compose poems. Then we’re told about a couple poems Mani composed for Magnus. We’re also told the king’s nickname for him. It’s a play on words in Old Norse that doesn’t really translate well.

After that comes The Tale of Ottar the Black. This one is more interesting — especially for the best kind of people, those who read my novels. Ottar the Black was a poet in the court of King (Saint) Olav Haraldsson. He composed a poem in praise of Olaf’s wife Astrid (whom you may recall from King of Rogaland), a boneheaded move which had to offend Olav. So he was thrown into a dungeon, awaiting judgment and execution. Then Sighvat the Poet (whom you may also remember from my novels) shows up to give him advice, resulting not only in his life being saved, but in his being rewarded. The story provides an interesting, rare insight into Olav’s domestic life.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Einar Skulason’s Tale’

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Sigurd the Crusader in procession through Constantinople.

It’s been a while since I reviewed one of the sagas from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. I’ve come near the end of Volume I, where we find a collection of short stories about Icelandic skalds (poets). Just a couple pages long each. These stories aren’t complex – they’re more in the character of celebrity anecdotes. The old poets, home on their farms after years of adventurous living, tell stories to their grandchildren – “I met this or that king, and this is what he was like.”

Tonight’s story is Einar Skulason’s Tale. Einar was a skald in the court of the kings Sigurd the Crusader (1089-1130) and his brother Eystein (circa 1088-1123). These two brothers ruled jointly under the old Norse laws of succession, and did it without going to war with each other – which later kings generally failed to do. Sigurd is best remembered for going on a crusade, the first European monarch to do so. The saga accounts of their reigns offer fascinating personality contrasts.

Those personalities are apparent in this series of three anecdotes. First of all, Einar (who seems to be renowned for quick composition) shows up late for dinner with King Eystein, and is required to compose a poem before the king has finished draining his goblet of wine. He succeeds (the poem is preserved here) and Eystein is pleased. The end. It’s a good-natured story.

The next two stories involve King Sigurd, a rather different character. In the first, King Sigurd catches a thief who happens to be a companion of Einar’s, and tells him the man will be beaten until Einar completes a new poem. Einar finishes in time to stop the strokes at five. Again, the poem is included in the text.

The final story is a little more complicated, and Einar gets a bit of his own back. Sigurd orders him to compose a poem before a departing ship has passed a certain holm, and Einar demands a reward if he succeeds, which he does. And yes, the poem is here as evidence.

I was reminded, as I read, of a couple friends I have in my Viking reenactment group. They like to tell stories of meeting celebrities. One managed to spend time with celebrities at Høstfest in Minot (something that doesn’t happen much anymore, security being tighter). He’s met Victor Borge, the Mandrell Sisters, and Willie Nelson, among others. Another ran into Lee Marvin and Richard Boone (not at the festival). Which goes to show you, Vikings don’t change much, even after a millennium.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue’

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In those days, the language in England was the same as that spoken in Norway and Denmark, but there was a change of language when William the Bastard conquered England.

The passage above (whose historical truth is disputed by some scholars) represents one of the moments of particular historical interest in The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, a saga which is not particularly notable in terms of artistry (in my opinion, though saga scholars rate it one of the best – no doubt for reasons readers in translation, like me, can’t well appreciate).

Most of us are familiar with the character Grima Wormtongue in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. This saga would seem to be the source of that name, since the word “orm,” common (I think) both to Old Norse and Old English, can mean worm, serpent, or dragon. However, in the saga, no moral judgment is implied by the name. I wish some information were provided as to why the nickname was bestowed in the first place, but all we’re told is that our Gunnlaug was named after an ancestor called the same thing. I assume it could mean something like “smooth-tongue,” or even “shrewd tongue,” since dragons were thought to be very crafty.

As one reads Gunnlaug’s Saga in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, as I am (or in the book I’m pushing in this review, the Penguin Collection, Sagas of Warrior Poets), along with other sagas about skalds, one can’t help noticing similarities. Not little similarities in style or theme, but great big similarities that look more like plagiarism. It would appear that when a saga writer wished to write the saga of a skald, he had a ready-made template to follow, and most of them did just that. This increases my respect for the author of Egil Skallagrimsson’s saga (very likely Snorri Sturlusson), for resisting that temptation.

The story goes as prescribed – Gunnlaug Illugasson is tall, handsome, and a fine warrior and poet from his youth. He wants to go abroad as a merchant, but persuades his father to arrange his betrothal to a girl named Helga. The contract calls for her to wait for him three years. At the court of Jarl Eirik in Norway (who’s mentioned, but doesn’t appear as a character, in a couple of my novels) he encounters his rival Ravn. Again following the formula, the two men are polite to one another before the ruler, but privately come to hate each other. Gunnlaug stays abroad past the deadline prescribed in the marriage contract, and Ravn rushes home to claim Helga – who bitterly resents it. The saga departs from the script a bit when the first fight between the two men turns into a general melee which ends with everybody but the principals getting killed. This calamity, the saga writer informs us, is the reason why dueling was abolished in Iceland.

Both men agree to go back to Norway and fight there, but (for some reason) Gunnlaug delays for some time before finally meeting Ravn in a duel fatal to them both. The saga ends with a touching coda telling how Helga mourned Gunnlaug the rest of her life, even though married to a third suitor.

I found Gunnlaug’s Saga a bit of a disappointment, and not only for its boilerplate quality. The main obvious failing in the narrative (in my view) was the omission of a martial resume for the hero. The usual pattern is to tell how he fights in wars for his lord or lords, becoming a formidable fighting man. Gunnlaug fights only one duel in the course of his travels, with a berserker – and he wins that not by skill but by overcoming magic. I felt this was a critical failure in character development.

However, the pathos of the ending was pretty moving.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People’

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I’m assuming very few of you are going to go out and buy The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, but I continue with my reading reports as I work my way through the volumes. I’m still on the poets’ sagas, and it occurred to me (and I should have remembered this) that most of the big ones are included in the Penguin volume, Sagas of Warrior-Poets. And the translations there are perfectly good.

My latest saga is the Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People. We have only an imperfect text for this one, since the first five chapters have been lost, as well as a page and a half out of the middle. The missing first chapters are fairly adequately supplied by text from a shorter version included in the Separate Saga of Saint Olaf by Snorri Sturlusson. About the second lacuna nothing can be done. But enough remains to provide an interesting tale. Scholars believe this to be one of the earlier sagas to be written down.

Bjorn Arngeirsson’s story begins in a way reminiscent of Laxdalasaga. Bjorn goes out into the world to make his fortune, but not before he and his father arrange his marriage to the lovely Oddny. The agreement is that he must come back to Iceland before five years have passed, or else the deal is canceled. Bjorn goes out and has adventures, including fighting a duel on behalf of King Valdemar (Vladimir) of Kiev, which earns him the tile of “Champion.” But he suffers a wound that prevents his returning home as soon as he’d like. Meanwhile his childhood enemy, another poet named Thord Kolbeinsson, travels back to Iceland and reports that Bjorn is dead. Thord then takes Oddny for his own wife.

Once Bjorn returns, a long succession of mutual offenses follow. Aside from personal hatred, one suspects an element of professional jealousy – the way the saga tells it, Bjorn is superior both as a man and as an artist, and Thord can’t forgive that. However, I imagine the story could be told just as well from the other point of view. Unlike the Saga of Hallfred, the last one I reviewed, Christianity seems to have little influence on this cycle of violence. People try to make peace, but these two men share an implacable hate.

There are interesting elements from the historian’s point of view. Bjorn, knowing that Thord has been at King (Saint) Olav’s court and will have slandered him, goes personally to set the record straight – showing considerable courage. (Olav acts just as I portray him in my novels, urging Bjorn to give up Viking raiding as an un-Christian activity.) There’s an interesting scene involving baths – the saga says that baths in tubs are “the only kind” that were available in Norway at the time. I assume the reference is to the custom of sauna bathing in Iceland (where thermal springs are plentiful). I’d always thought the Norwegians took steam baths too – but I’m not sure this saga can be trusted on historical details. The bath scene involves the wearing of garters by men, a subject of some contention among reenactors. It ends with Bjorn in possession of one of Saint Olaf’s own garters, which in time will become part of the bishop’s regalia in Iceland. Descriptions of shields in a battle scene are clearly anachronistic – the writer assumes a shield with arm straps and a point, which weren’t commonly in use at the time of these events.

Another interesting point comes up when the men are gathered at the Thing to work out a legal settlement between Bjorn and Thord. They actually go to the trouble of making up competing lists of all the lampoons each man has written about the other. When it’s found that Thord has written one fewer, he’s allowed to compose another on the spot so that they’ll balance.

A matter that’s mentioned, but rather underplayed in the saga, is the question of who is the actual father of Thord’s son Kolli. If I’m not mistaken, I I believe this is given more attention in Laxdala Saga (and in my novel West Oversea.)

The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People is a flawed and somewhat artless story, but of considerable interest to the saga scholar.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Saga of Hallfred the Troublesome Skald’

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A scene from a production of “Hallfred Vandraadeskald” presented by the Norwegian National Theater in 1908. Photo property of Nationalteatret.

Another Icelandic saga, read by me in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. (Unfortunately, I can’t find another translation in print anywhere.) I’m reading through a section of skald’s sagas, from which you may infer that The Saga of Hallfred the Troublesome Skald is another story of a poet.

Hallfred’s Saga bears some (actually a lot of) similarity to Kormak’s Saga, the subject of my last saga review. Like Kormak, Hallfred falls in love with a girl at home in Iceland, fails to show up for their wedding, and harasses any other suitors who appear. Also like Kormak, he sails abroad to make his fortune as a Viking.

But this is where his story distinguishes itself. Hallfred ends up at the court of King Olaf Trygvesson (whom you may remember from my novel, The Year of the Warrior). Hallfred seems to be a predecessor to every song writer who ever nagged record producers in Nashville or Las Angeles. The king has other things on his mind than listening to songs, but he finally agrees to give Hallfred a hearing, calling him a “troublesome skald” (vandræðaskáld). In the event the song pleases Olaf, who accepts Hallfred as one of his court poets.

But this happens at the peak of Olaf’s evangelistic zeal.  Receiving the king’s offer (actually a threat) of baptism, Hallfred makes a counterproposal. He wants Olaf himself to be his godfather, a singular honor. Like a squeaky wheel, Hallfred gets what he wants. But his relationship with the king is an uneven one. He seems to have trouble getting the swing of Christianity. He falls out of favor when he invokes the old gods or falls into heathen customs. Then the king sets him to various tasks to regain favor, opening up opportunities for the kinds of adventures that always show up in sagas.

Although Hallfred’s saga is not one of the best in terms of its artistry, it is interesting for the picture it gives of the religious transition in Iceland in the 11th Century. As compared to Kormak’s Saga, one senses the pressure of the new faith as it alters people’s mores. Hallfred’s attentions to another man’s wife are treated more seriously here, less as merry pranks, and his family urges him to let it all go. In the end even Hallfred decides to leave the woman’s husband alone.

One of the saga’s main weaknesses is that, although it’s based on Hallfred’s own poems, the saga writer appears to often misunderstand them. Poetic allusions (always very thick in Viking poetry) are mistaken for statements of fact. Thus, a man uses a heathen sacrificial trough as a weapon, highly unlikely in real life. Or Kormak’s great enemy is named “Gris,” which means pig. I would suspect that’s an insulting name Hallfred bestowed on him, rather than the name he actually carried. (Pigs enjoyed higher status among the Vikings than they do with us, but I’ve never heard of any Viking actually named “Pig.”)

In short, The Saga of Hallfred the Troublesome Skald is a flawed saga which contains, nonetheless, numerous points of interest for the saga enthusiast.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Kormak’s Saga’

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Kormak, as this old illustration shows, was not shy about public displays of affection, even with married women.

When the brothers put out from their place of anchorage, a walrus surfaced beside the ship. Kormak fired a weighted staff at it, hitting the animal, so that it sank. People thought they recognized Thorveig’s eyes when they saw it. The animal did not surface from then on; and it was reported of Thorveig that she was dangerously ill, and people say that she died as a result.

When we think of troubled poets today, we tend to imagine languid aesthetes wasting away with alcoholism or drug addiction. Troubled poets in the Viking Age seem to have been rather different sorts – pugnacious types and psychopathic killers. We discussed the greatest of them, Egil Skallagrimsson, a little while back. Today our topic is a lesser poet in a lesser saga, Kormak’s Saga, as published in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, but available in other formats as well.

Kormak’s name, I might mention, is the same as the Irish name Cormac. This is yet another testimony to the heavy infusion of Irish and Scottish elements into Icelandic society and culture (the same is true of the saga hero Njal’s name, which is the Irish Niel). Like Egil, Kormak is big and strong, though less ugly.

Kormak first notices Steingerd Thorkelsdatter of Tunga when he catches a glimpse of her foot through a doorway. Immediately he dedicates a poem to the foot, and when he sees the rest of the girl he’s not disappointed. He pursues her, and their marriage is arranged. However, when the wedding day occurs, he doesn’t show up. Yet when her family tries to marry her off to other men, Kormak routinely makes war on them – in some cases killing them. This behavior looks like prolonged adolescence and fear of commitment to the modern reader, but the saga explains it as the consequence of a witch’s curse. One looks in vain here for the kind of psychological insight we find in Egil’s Saga.

The most interesting character in the saga, in fact, is not Kormak himself but Bersi the Duelist, who dominates the middle part of the story. Though a famous man-killer, he’s far more sympathetic than Kormak, something like the Old Gunfighter trope in Western movies.

Kormak’s Saga is believed to be one of the oldest ones that’s been preserved, but that’s no guarantee of artistic quality. The episodes in the story appear to have been reconstructed (rather freely) from hints in the poems the hero left behind. And the hints look very much as if they’ve been misinterpreted a fair amount of time. Many of the incidents, frankly, make little sense.

Kormak’s Saga is interesting for its age, and also – in particular – for accounts of dueling customs in the Viking Age. As a piece of art, it’s fairly middling.

I should mention that a couple of Kormak’s love poems include pretty explicit descriptions of sexual organs.

Fiction, Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Egil’s Saga,’ by Snorri Sturlusson

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That same evening that Egil left home, Skallagrim had his horse saddled, then rode away from home when everyone else went to bed. He was carrying a fairly large chest on his knees, and had an iron cauldron under his arm when he left. People have claimed ever since that he put either or both of them in the Krumskelda marsh, with a great slab of stone on top.

Skallagrim came home in the middle of the night, went to his bed, and lay down, still wearing his clothes. At daybreak next morning, when everybody was getting dressed, Skallagrim was sitting on the edge of the bed, dead, and so stiff that they could neither straighten him out nor lift him no matter how they tried.

If you ask a saga fan which is the best saga, they’re likely to say either Egil’s or Njal’s Saga. In my case, it usually depends on which one I’ve read last. Both sagas excel in one quality you don’t expect in a medieval book – complex, layered characterization. In some ways they’re like modern novels.

But they don’t start out like novels. A novel writer tries to start with a bang, to engage the reader in the conflict from page one. Icelandic sagas are localized stories written for a localized audience. The first thing the Icelandic reader wanted to know was where the action would occur, and where in the matrix of interrelationships around him the story falls. So we start Egil’s Saga with the tale of Egil’s grandfather Thorolf, who supported King Harald Fairhair’s conquest of Norway, then fell out of favor and was finally killed by the king Then we see how Egil’s father Skallagrim relocates to Iceland (getting his vengeance along the way), and stakes his claim as one of the early settlers. Finally Egil himself appears – big and strong, ugly and soon bald, but wicked smart and the greatest of all skaldic poets.

Egil goes out as a Viking – what else could he do? – and also tries to claim his inheritance in Norway, becoming a mortal enemy to King Eirik Bloodaxe, whose son he murders. He fights as a mercenary in England (on the English side) and has the kind of set-piece side-adventures that tend to show up in sagas.

Eventually, we come to the dramatic climax of the saga – amazingly, not a battle or even a duel. It’s an act of headstrong audacity. Shipwrecked on the coast of Northumbria, Egil learns that Eirik Bloodaxe is the new king of the country. Instead of putting on a hooded cloak and making tracks, Egil heads straight for York, to beard the king in his den. Supported by his best friend, the king’s man Arinbjorn, Egil offers Eirik a proposition. In return for his life, he will compose a poem for the king so brilliant and memorable that it will secure his fame forever. When he succeeds (brilliantly), Eirik is left with no choice. To kill Egil now would shame him forever.

Make no mistake – Egil is a bad man. He’s a thief, a slave-taker, a cold-blooded killer. He cherishes his hatreds and dabbles in magic. And he doesn’t mellow as he gets older; only weakness makes him a little safer to be around.

Yet there’s pathos there as well. His poetry provides a glimpse into his heart as he mourns the friends and family he’s lost, and the injustices he’s suffered. He’s as faithful a friend as he is dangerous as an enemy. And his courage is mind-boggling. Possibly pathological (there are many theories about brain and psychological disorders he may have suffered from).

I was pretty effusive in my praise of the translation of the Vinland sagas in the collection I’m now reading, The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. I must admit I was less happy with this translation (by a different translator). I thought it erred a bit on the side of literalism, suffering the awkwardness that literal translation entails. (Stylistically, I prefer the Penguin edition.) I also noted a couple textual oddities I hadn’t remarked on before. One is name spelling. Some of the choices seem to me odd – Hakon for Håkon, for instance – it gives English reader the wrong impression about pronunciation. And Kari for Kåri – a Norwegian acquaintance once complained to me about using that spelling in The Year of the Warrior, as in modern Norwegian Kari is a woman’s name (I changed the spelling in the next volume). The orthography is oddly mixed – they use double quotation marks in the American style, but English spelling, as in “harbour.” A lot of characters’ nicknames are rendered in novel ways; I’m not sure that adds to the value of the thing.

What we have here, I think, is a scholarly translation. I still recommend the collection for its completeness, if you can afford it. But you can get Egil’s Saga in a perfectly adequate translation for much less.

In either case, I do recommend you read it.