Tag Archives: Iceland

Fiction, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘Bard’s Saga’

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There was a king named Dumb. He ruled over the gulfs that stretch north across Helluland and are now called Dumbshaf after King Dumb. He was descended from giants on his father’s side, a good-looking people and larger than other men; but his mother was descended from the tribe of trolls….

When I made my one visit to Iceland involving more than a stopover in the airport, I took a day trip out to the Snæfellsnes peninsula, to see locations I’d be using in West Oversea, which I was working on at the time. At one point we visited the construction/statue shown on the cover of the book shown above (which is not the one I’m reviewing). Our guide told us this was a guy named Bard, who did things like wading across fjords. I’d never heard of this Bard, and it meant nothing to me at the time.

Years later, Bard came up again in some material I translated for Saga Bok Publishing (not likely, alas, ever to see publication now). Bard, it turned out, was the subject of one of Iceland’s legendary sagas – a late saga full of folkloric elements.

The saga opens with the regrettably named King Dumb mentioned in the quotation above. Dumb and his wife have a son named Bard, the hero of this saga. Bard is, for a time, foster son to the giant Dofri, for whom Dovre Mountain in Norway is named (Dofri features in certain legends concerning the youth of King Harald Fairhair, legendary uniter of Norway, which Snorri Sturlusson quite understandably omitted from Heimskringla), but eventually, unable to get along with that same King Harald, he emigrates to Iceland and settles on the Snæfellsnes. Later, unable to live at peace with lesser men, he retires to dwell in a cave in the mountain, becoming a legendary figure (“the god of Snæfell”) who comes at the nick of time to rescue friends when they are in need. In time he has a son named Gest who is effectively identical to himself and performs the same kinds of feats.

In the end, Gest goes to Norway to meet King Olaf Trygvesson. The king exhorts him to adopt the true faith, but he resists. Later, in a scene reminiscent of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an armored troll (or giant) shows up at Olaf’s court and challenges him to send a hero to claim his (the troll’s) treasure. Gest accepts the challenge, traveling in company with a priest, who eventually baptizes him. But Gest (perhaps because of his other-worldly family roots) cannot survive long as a Christian.

It’s a peculiarity of the Icelandic sagas that the genre did not generally improve with time. Later sagas (and Bard’s Saga is one of the latest ones we have) lack the verisimilitude and psychological insight of the classic sagas. Bard’s Saga is interesting for its legendary elements, and also for the geographical assumptions that seem to be in play (the author appears to think North Norway and Greenland are close to each other).

We tend to think of Norse mythology as a sort of closed canon, as in Christian theology. Stories like Bard’s Saga offer abundant clues to whole branches of pre-Christian belief that are remembered, if at all, only in fragmentary or distorted form.

Fiction, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘The Saga of Hord and the People of Holm’

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Southeast across Hvalfjörður toward the mountains north of Þingvellir (left) and Esja (right), November 21 09:00 Iceland, November 2007 Photo by me user debivort (or friend, with permission given to upload and license freely). CC BY-SA 3.0.

Back to the sagas, from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. Today’s report is on “The Saga of Hord and the People of Holm.” This is one I’d never heard of – perhaps because it’s so perfectly typical of the form that it doesn’t stand out a lot. This is a saga of which we only have late copies, and it certainly shows the effects of generations of artistic embroidery.

Hord Grimkelsson is a young man of good family, living in the neighborhood of present-day Reykjavik. We’re told that he was a late bloomer in terms of his development, but eventually he grew into the kind of tall, strong, handsome figure a saga demands. He develops a close relationship with his foster-brother, who is his constant companion to the end. And he has a sister with a strange background – rejected by her father, forced to live with beggars for a while, then finally returned to her own family with a chip on her shoulder. She will impact the story eventually, in a bloody way.

Eventually, Hord joins a merchant expedition. One interesting element of the story is an encounter Hord’s friend Geir has in Bergen, Norway (which did not actually exist as a town, I’m pretty sure, at that time). He runs into one of King Harald Greycloak’s men, who tries to steal his vararfeldir cloak (vararfeldir was a woolen cloth with short threads woven through the fabric, to produce a fleecy appearance). Defending himself, Geir kills the king’s man, which forces the whole crew of Icelanders to flee to Gotland, where Hord marries the jarl’s daughter. (This sounds like a romantic invention, but may actually have been true, as the wife returns to Iceland with him and bears his sons.)

What’s interesting about this cloak incident is that it seems to be inspired by a famous episode in Heimskringla, the kings’ sagas – a much more genial anecdote explaining King Harald’s nickname. In that story, the king himself chats with an Icelandic merchant, who complains that no one is buying his wool cloaks. The king then asks him to give him one of them. He wears it, and of course it becomes the height of fashion. The merchant is then able to sell off his whole stock at a good profit.

In any case, Hord and his companions finally return to Iceland, where he proceeds to live prosperously for some years, until he gets involved in a feud. His enemies use witchcraft to ruin his luck, and he and his household end up holding out on an island in the Hvalfjord, until their final violent end.

Some sagas, such as Egil’s and Grettir’s, seem to be written by authors with enough honesty, or understanding of human nature, to admit that their heroes are partly responsible for their own tragedies. But more commonly, the hero is portrayed as pretty much blameless, victim to either fate or witchcraft, the only things that could overcome so outstanding a man. That’s how I read “The Saga of Hord.” The unvarnished record looks pretty ugly – to survive on a desolate island, Hord and his people steal valuable supplies and foodstuffs from the people in the area – and this is in a marginal economy. Hunting Hord down was a matter of survival for his victims.

Sagas are commonly loaded with characters, many of whom come complete with genealogies. This makes it hard for English readers to keep track of the players. I found this one heavier loaded than most in that way. Hord fills out most of the conventional saga tropes – he digs for treasure in a grave mound and overcomes the revenant there, who curses the sword Hord takes from him. He visits foreign courts where the lords entreat him to stay with them because of his noble qualities. And all his failures are blamed on bad friends or supernatural forces.

In fact, I’d say “The Saga of Hord” probably qualifies as a good representative saga. It’s not the cream of the literary form, but it checks most of the boxes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Saga of Grettir the Strong,’ part 2

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The father and son parted with little love lost between them. Many people wished Grettir a safe journey, but few a safe return.

I have finished reading The Saga of Grettir the Strong, in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. I have much to say about it, though I fear a lot of it strays into the deep grass.

My main takeaway from the saga, as I stated yesterday, is that the real-life hero, Grettir Asmundarsson, seems to have been a psychopath, very likely suffering from PTSD. Even in a book written in the 14th Century, his status echoes ancient tribal attitudes. The heroes of ancestral times were not admired for their moral virtue. A remnant of this world view remains, in residual form, even in our English language. Our word “great” has two meanings. The common one (in our time) is that of “important” or “admirable.” But its older meaning was “large.” We still speak of a Great Hall or a greatcoat. In the same way, old heroes like Sigurd the Dragon Slayer could massacre whole villages of innocent people and still be considered heroes and great men. Because greatness was about magnitude, not virtue. Likewise, Grettir is a hero because he does things in a big way, whether it’s killing men or lifting heavy objects.

Reading the saga from a historical perspective, I noted that most of the episodes where Grettir comes off as heroic by our standards – a virtuous hero – are implausible scenes involving either invulnerable berserkers or supernatural creatures like witches or ghosts. Even the scenes of Grettir’s death, which are likely to have some factual base, are embroidered with elements of witch’s curses, which the saga writer found necessary in order to explain his invulnerable hero’s death at the hands of common men. (Though in an odd interpolation, Grettir finds a friend who’s even stronger than himself. No actual magic is attributed to this character, but one gets the feeling he’s not entirely human.)

The only plausible episode where Grettir exhibits mercy is one calculated to advance his own interests. He spares the life of a son of Snorri the Godi [Chieftain] (an important saga character who makes a brief appearance in my novel, West Oversea), who has come out after him as a sort of bounty hunter. Grettir understands that winning Snorri’s friendship through letting his son live could win him a powerful friend, something he badly needs by now.

Indeed, one remarkable thing about Grettir’s saga is the fact that he had all kinds of prominent connections – “Almost all the chieftains in the country were related to Grettir… either by blood or by marriage.” He’s related to the Norwegian royal family too. And yet he can’t seem to catch a break with the law. (For all I’ve written and said about the importance of the Law to the Norse, your father’s status and who you knew counted for a lot. Rich men’s sons could usually find a way to wiggle out of legal scrapes with their skin intact, even as today. The fact that Grettir couldn’t make this old boy network work for him, seems to have convinced his family and friends that he must have been under some unique curse).

There’s a hint of character development in the later chapters, when Grettir, formerly entirely reckless of consequences, now searches for a way to attain a peaceful life. He’s been outlawed, which means he can’t leave the country and is legal prey for killing. In the end, he will hold the record for survival in an outlaw state – 20 years (though there’s some inconsistency about that figure in the text here). He holes up on the natural fortress of Drangey island, where he fights off repeated attacks. It’s at this point that he becomes a more sympathetic character. He’s terrified of the dark and of being alone – though he knows from experience that few men are to be trusted. Still, I couldn’t help wondering what his killers’ real story is – Grettir has been living by robbery, and he never hesitated to use violence. Stealing sheep and other food could have serious consequences in a marginal economy  The charge that his killers employed witchcraft is not impossible (at least technically – I don’t believe their magic actually worked), but it seems to me more likely the witchcraft stuff was added by the author (who was possibly related to Grettir) in order to make his hero more sympathetic. No small task, with this guy’s record.

An element in the saga which I’d never noticed before (perhaps it was bowdlerized in previous translations I’ve read, or maybe I just forgot) is a couple sexual situations. In one scene, which would have played better in the 14th Century than it does today, a serving woman makes fun of Grettir’s physical endowment, so he rapes her to teach her a lesson. In another, he spends some time sharing a house with a woman whose husband is away, saving her from a monstrous troll woman who’s been ravaging the farm. He leaves a souvenir behind:

Towards the end of that summer, Steinvor from Sandhaugar gave birth to a boy named Skeggi. At first he was said to be the son of Kjartan…. Skeggi was distinguished from all his brothers and sisters by his strength and build. By the age of fifteen he was the strongest person in north Iceland, and then his paternity was attributed to Grettir. Everyone thought he would grow into an outstanding man, but he died at the age of sixteen and there are no stories about him.

In sum, the Saga of Grettir the Strong is a powerful and memorable tale, and an amateur psychologist like me can spend unlimited time picking out clues concerning its underlying facts. That game can go on forever, because there’s no way to prove them wrong.

Fiction, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘Gisli Sursson’s Saga’

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Gisli, his wife Aud, and their foster-daughter from Dasent’s 1866 translation. The weird headdress is (I believe) based on a much later Icelandic folk costume.

Today, we return to the world of the sagas as I report on Gisli Sursson’s Saga from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. It’s one of the more popular sagas, though the manuscript versions we have (there are three) exhibit a fair number of textual problems.

The story begins, as so many sagas do, with the hero’s ancestors in Norway. One of those ancestors, also named Gisli, borrows a sword from a thrall (how did a thrall get a sword? Outside of one of my novels, I mean?). He refuses to return the sword, he and the thrall kill each other, and the sword ends up broken. The shards are kept, and are later forged into a spearhead. But the metal carries the thrall’s curse.

The family relocates to Iceland, where Gisli is born. He grows up to be a tall man and a great warrior. But he finds himself in a classic honor dilemma – his sister’s husband kills his wife’s brother (who is also his best friend), and Gisli is torn between loyalties (Note: this line has been edited, thanks to a correction by Matt McKendrick). He finally kills his sister’s husband, in his bed, with the cursed spear.

This is an odd element in the saga for me, because I’ve often read that a murder at night was considered shameful murder among the Norse. However, in this translation, it’s explained that if the weapon is left in the body, that mitigates the crime.

In any case, eventually the truth comes out, and Gisli is outlawed. He manages, with the help of a couple rich friends and (especially) his wife, to avoid the avengers for many years – surviving second longest of any Icelandic outlaw, after Grettir the Strong. His last stand is legendary, and his killers go home without honor.

Gisli’s Saga has a high reputation among Icelanders, though there are elements that make it hard for the modern reader to appreciate. Part of the trouble is moral. Gisli (and he’s not alone among saga heroes) has a sense of humor that looks pretty cruel to us. In particular, on two occasions he switches clothes with a thrall to confuse avengers – in one case getting the thrall killed. In both cases, the thralls are described as very stupid – to the original saga readers, the killing of a stupid thrall seemed a triviality.

Another problem is story gaps. At one point, we’re told that Gisli drops his sword as he’s fleeing his enemies. Later on, he has it again. How that happens is not explained. Twice Gisli receives leg wounds under identical circumstances, but they lead to nothing.

What sets the saga apart for the modern reader, I think, is the prominence of Gisli’s wife Aud in the plot. That’s especially remarkable considering that Gisli killed her brother. Aud is utterly faithful, even refusing a large bribe to betray him, and he acknowledges at one point that he wouldn’t have lasted so long without her help.

Gisli Sursson’s Saga is an important outlaw saga, but I don’t think it’ll ever be one of my favorites.

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

Egil’s Saga: On the ground

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In the video above, Dr. Matthew Roby discusses Egil’s Saga (which I reviewed the other day), filming at some of the precise Icelandic sites where the action occurred. I found it atmospheric and fascinating.

I was also interested to note that the large blue book from which he reads Egil’s poem to his dead son is the very volume I’ve been reading myself (thanks to Dale Nelson’s generosity) from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders.

Non-fiction, Publishing, Reviews

‘Eirik the Red’s Saga,’ and ‘The Saga of the Greenlanders,’ from ‘The Complete Sagas of Icelanders’

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One morning Karlsefni’s men saw something shiny above a clearing in the trees, and they called out. It moved and proved to be a one-legged creature which darted down to where the ship lay tied. Thorvald, Eirik the Red’s son, was at the helm and the one-legged man shot an arrow into his intestine. Thorvald drew the arrow out and spoke: “Fat paunch that was. We’ve found a land of fine resources, though we’ll hardly enjoy much of them.” Thorvald died from the wound shortly after. The one-legged man then ran off back north. They pursued him and caught glimpses of him now and then. He then fled into a cove and they turned back. (Eirik the Red’s Saga)

I hope I don’t cause any embarrassment when I publicly thank my friend (and our frequent commenter) Dale Nelson, formerly of Mayville State University in North Dakota, for these books. Along with his wife Dorothea, Dale has gifted me – entirely to my surprise – with the full, boxed set of The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. It’s published by Leifur Eiriksson Publishing in Reykjavik, and is a collection of brand-new scholarly translations, carefully selected and edited by a team of scholars.

When you read the title, The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, you’ll probably assume, as I did, that this is a collection of all the Icelandic sagas. Once I’d read the introductions (there are several) I realized that that would involve a very large collection indeed. It would have to include legendary sagas of pre-historic legends, as well as later sagas about bishops, saints and courtly love. What the editors here mean by “the sagas of Icelanders” is in fact the classic sagas – the tales of the Icelandic settlers, heroes, and feuding in the Viking Age.

Just my meat, in fact. I have a good number of saga translations in my library already, but this collection gives me a set of uniformly high-quality translations living up to the latest standards of criticism. I’m delighted to have it.

In this post I’ll review the first two translations in the first volume – Eirik the Red’s Saga and The Saga of the Greenlanders.

These two sagas are (as the editors freely confess) not the best, considered purely as texts. What we have is two different accounts based on the same original events, but developed into two highly divergent narratives. (This is embarrassing, I must admit, for someone like me who spends a lot of time defending the use of sagas as historical sources. But nobody’s saying the saga texts didn’t suffer alteration with time – only that they contain useful information, which certainly remains true even of the Vinland sagas. We’ve got an archaeological dig in Newfoundland to prove it.)

Generalizing a great deal, I can say that Eirik the Red’s Saga (I should mention that the editors here have chosen a different manuscript source from most previous translations, so this version is a little different from other published editions) describes Leif Eiriksson discovering Vinland (America) by accident, blown off course in a storm while sailing to Greenland from Norway. Later the focus switches to Thorfinn Karlsefni the Icelander, and his wife Gudrid.

The Saga of the Greenlanders, on the other hand, attributes the first sighting of land in Vinland to Bjarni Herjolfsson, who is similarly blown off course, but never touches land. Leif later buys his ship and makes a voyage of exploration, followed by two of his brothers, and Thorfinn Karlsefni, and finally his sanguine sister Freydis.

When I was young, most historians considered The Saga of the Greenlanders earlier and more reliable than Eirik the Red’s Saga. Today I’m given to understand that historians consider both of them useful in parts. Both, it must be admitted, are also garbled in places, and contain preposterous elements.

What they have in common, it seems to me, is the fact that the story of Vinland is in a way secondary. The discovery is recounted, not primarily for its importance as a watershed historical event, but as a family achievement.

What lies behind both versions (it seems to this reader) is the fact that it was written by, and for, the descendants of the married couple Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid the Far-Traveled. Both narratives mention (as briefly as possible) the fact that Gudrid was descended from slaves. This was embarrassing in that culture – though pretty common in Icelandic society, many of whose Norse pioneers had married slave women. Great pains are taken in both versions to explain to the reader that, in spite of her low birth, Gudrid was recognized as a remarkable person very early in her life. Then we are told of her many adventures, culminating in her pilgrimage to Rome late in life and her death as an anchoress, a highly respected woman.

This professional translator finds no fault in the translation here. I’m not qualified to judge how well the Icelandic text is interpreted, but I know a clunky translation when I see one, and these two are very good, very smooth. I might also mention that the physical volumes are sturdily bound in signatures between handsome leather-covered boards, and the text, printed on heavy, acid-free paper, is in a highly readable font.

(One point that amused me is that, though the publisher uses Icelandic spelling in calling itself Leifur Eiriksson Publishing, the translators chose to use the more familiar form of “Leif” in the text.)

The Complete Sagas of Icelanders is an expensive set, but if you can afford it, I recommend it highly.

Reviews

Netflix review: ‘The Valhalla Murders’

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I must have enjoyed Netflix’s The Valhalla Murders, which I discussed last night in somewhat acerbic terms. It’s actually pretty good of its kind, though probably not a good choice for our audience here.

This Icelandic production centers on Kata, a Reykjavik police detective, played by Nina Dögg Fillipusdottir. She is, as will surprise nobody, a Plucky Single Mother. However, she does vary from the standard template by being a rather bad mother in important respects. She also has the expected conflicts with her superiors at work, but, less expectedly, her main oppressor is another woman. When a couple of people are found murdered with multiple knife wounds, her superiors don’t think she and her team are up to the challenge. Serial murders are pretty rare in Iceland. So they decide to call in an expert from Norway.

This expert is Arnar, played by Björn Thors. He’s actually a Reykjavik native, but he broke sharply with his family some time back and had no wish to return. He comes in with a bad attitude, and only gradually warms to the rest of the team.

Meanwhile, as further murders occur, a commonality is found – all the victims were involved with a group home for boys, The Valhalla Home, located out in a rural area. Nobody wants to talk about what went on there, either the kids, now grown up, nor the staff. And if anyone shows signs of talking, they tend to turn up dead.

What I liked: Winter in Scandinavia (not least in Iceland) works extremely well for a noir mood on screen, and this production takes good advantage of that. You’ll probably want to put a sweater on while you’re watching. The acting was pretty good, and I’m still not sure whether the English dialogue was spoken or dubbed. If it was dubbed, it was very well done. (If you turn on the subtitles, you may note that at least one character has an entirely different name on the subtitles than is spoken on screen. That’s one reason I suspect the subtitlers worked from an early production script, before certain changes were made.)

But there were plenty of annoyances here for traditionalists like me. One of my standard complaints about today’s entertainment is a new kind of Victorianism. Every story must teach a moral, acceptable to approved contemporary values. That’s why there are so many tropes in shows today – the Plucky Single Mother, the Sensitive Gay Friend, the Wise Muslim Who Forms the Moral Center of the Narrative.

Well, we’ve got the PSM. The sensitive gay isn’t all that friendly, though. And there’s not a Muslim in sight (they’re kind of scarce in Iceland). However, the conservative evangelical church that turns up in the story is (predictably) as legalistic and repressed as the strictest jihadist madrassah.

So, all in all, I found The Valhalla Murders technically well done, but not something I could recommend to our readers. Individuals among you might enjoy it, though. Cautions for language, violence, and a homosexual scene.

Authors

Snorri on my mind

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An old friend of mine, Brad Day, mentioned on Facebook that today (actually yesterday) was the anniversary of the death of an author I’ve talked about a lot on this blog – Snorri Sturlusson (your spelling may vary), author of Heimskringla, the Prose Edda, and (very likely) the Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson).

Snorri is an author I identify with, not because of his genius, but because he wrote better than he lived. Born to a powerful Icelandic family and well-educated in the home of a learned relation, he grew up to cherish both literary and political ambitions. These sometimes overlapped. His great historical saga, Heimskringla, was clearly composed to gain favor with the Norwegian king. His Prose Edda was an effort to present the myths of the old religion in a way acceptable to the Church, so that the tradition of Norse poetry might carry on.

He sailed to Norway twice, and got to see a lot of the country. That familiarity comes out in Heimskringla. Lacking the gift of prophecy, he made a bad tactical mistake, attaching himself to the powerful Duke Skuli, uncle of the king, Haakon IV Haakonsson. This would prove fatal, as Skuli and Haakon fell out, and Haakon won the war. Snorri’s second visit to Norway turned out badly, and he actually offended the king. This led eventually to his murder at the hands of his enemies, one of whom was his son-in-law. It is thought that the killers were acting on Haakon’s orders.

Snorri did not die like a saga hero. We are told he was speared to death while cowering in his cellar, crying “Don’t strike!”

It is believed that Snorri also connived in Iceland’s loss of independence to Norway.

But he was a literary genius. Every Viking and mythology buff owes Snorri a tremendous debt. Tolkien’s work would have been vastly different without Snorri – perhaps it might not have been written at all.

Fiction, Reading

“Gifts of the sea”

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Sumbergh Head, Shetland. (Photo credit: Joe DeSousa.) This is one of the locations in Scott’s The Pirate.

I’m currently reading Sir Walter Scott’s The Pirate. This is a pleasant thing, for several reasons. First, it’s a fairly enjoyable read, for anyone who can handle the old novel style. Second, it’s public domain, hence cheap. Third, it’s very long, reducing my book buying expenses. Fourth, it’s set in Shetland, and thus full of Norse tradition and custom. The main problem is that it forces me to think creatively about what I’ll blog about, until I finish the interminable thing and can review it.

But the book solves that problem too, by dropping topics in my lap, through its many long digressions. Tonight: the curious Shetland taboo against rescuing shipwreck victims.

As Scott tells it, the Shetland Islanders had a strong cultural prohibition against rescuing anyone from a shipwreck. This seems peculiar for Christians, especially in light of Acts 27 and 28, which describe St. Paul’s shipwreck in Malta, and praise the kindly Maltese who took the victims in.

Nevertheless, I can believe this story about the Shetlanders. Not that they’re bad people. But due to reasons I learned when I visited Iceland.

As Scott tells it, it was the firm belief of the Shetlanders that if you rescued anyone from a shipwreck, it would bring disaster on you. And that disaster would come through the very person you rescued. So if the sea took someone, that was their fate – one in which you dared not interfere.

The cause of this was the Shetlanders’ economic situation. These were poor people, dependent on subsistence farming and fishing. When a ship broke up on their shores, they (like the southern islanders with their cargo cults) saw it as a gift from God. But if God had sent the flotsam, what of the previous owners? Their deaths must also be God’s will. If they survived, their property claims would be a major inconvenience.

When I visited Iceland, the guide told us is that for a very long time, the Icelanders refused to build lighthouses on their coast. The reason was the same – loot from shipwrecks formed an important, sometimes a lifesaving, supplement to their economy. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn they had a similar superstition.

This is a caution to all of us. I like to think I have a pretty good grasp on biblical morality, and submit my personal interests to God’s commands. But nothing blinds you like the cares of this world.