Tag Archives: Icelandic sagas

Fiction, Reviews

Trojumanna Saga, translated by Jeremy Jasper Owens

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Everyone is bound to follow their fate, and no one is so strong as to not be overcome by anyone.

Jeremy Jasper Owens, the translator of Trójumanna Saga from Old Norse, offered me a free review copy, which I gratefully accepted. I found it a novel reading experience. It told a familiar story in a different way (I wish I knew the Iliad better than I do; I read it long ago), but it offered a few difficulties as well.

Trójumanna Saga is not, as one would expect, an Icelandic adaptation of Homer. It turns out (I did not know this) that medieval scholars had a low opinion of Homer, and preferred a short Latin history called De excidio Troiae historia, which is the main source for this saga.

Most readers, I’m pretty sure, will be particularly impressed – as I was – by the differences they’ll find from the familiar story. First of all, the Greek gods become Norse – Zeus and Hera become Thor and Frigg (the gods don’t actually play a big part in this version, though). The story begins earlier here, with Jason’s voyage to seek the Golden Fleece. Hercules is a main Greek leader in the early stages of the war, and participates throughout. When “Helena” is abducted, there is no Paris, but a prince named Alexander.

Achilles is here, but he’s not invulnerable – he suffers several wounds before finally being killed. A group of Amazons (called Shield Maidens) show up to join the defense of Troy. When the walls are finally breached, there is no Trojan Horse – the city is betrayed from within, and (gratefully) the bloodshed is (apparently) less.

I’ve always been very adamant that Greek stories are very different from Norse stories. The Greek hero dies because of his Fatal Flaw, while the Norse hero dies because he’s fated to. Trójumanna Saga is thoroughly Norse in that regard – everyone in this world is a fatalist. Courageous because he (or she) is certain his (or her) death is predetermined and inescapable.

In terms of translation, there are difficulties in this work, and I asked the translator about them. He replied that he has produced as exact a translation as he could – including the weaknesses of the original text. There are moments here where something happens, but we’re not actually told about it. The writer just goes on to describe the aftermath, and you have to assume what happened. And there are a number of idiomatic expressions that are incomprehensible to the modern reader, unexplained.

In my own opinion as a translator, such moments should be clarified through text in brackets or footnotes. Mr. Owens has chosen not to do that, which suggests great confidence in his readers’ intelligence. That may be the right choice, but I think potential readers ought to be warned about it.

Trójumanna Saga is a peculiar and fascinating historical and literary artifact. Jeremy Jasper Owens deserves our thanks for producing it.

Reading

Saga reading report: ‘The Saga of Gunnar, the Fool of Keldugnup,’ and ‘Gisl Illugason’s Tale’

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No doubt you’ve been waiting for my saga reading report from the second weekend of Viking Fest Minnesota. You are in luck; I did read a couple short sagas from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders during the festival, and my reports follow.

The Saga of Gunnar, the Fool of Keldugnup

This saga is one of the late ones, in which so many fairy tale tropes are employed that it’s questionable whether it has any basis in true events at all.

Gunnar is another example of the “Kitchen Sitter,” “Male Cinderella,” or “Kolbitar” (Coal-biter), a hero who loafs by the hearth all the years of his youth, then suddenly springs up with astonishing strength and skill to do what a man’s gotta do. He has some adventures in Iceland, in which (in an implausible plot development I’ve also noted in other sagas) he kills one of a pair of troll sisters, but spares the life of the other, who then becomes his devoted slave and helps him find great treasure. (Apparently, in the saga view, trolls have no sense of self-interest at all, but can be domesticated like wild animals.)

Later he travels to Norway (in the time of Jarl Haakon, whom you might recall from my novel, The Year of the Warrior) and manages to survive, even though Haakon plots to have him killed. Eventually Gunnar returns to Iceland and makes peace with the sister of a man he killed, in a rather anticlimactic manner.

At one point, Gunnar tells the jarl that he is twelve years old – which seems implausible to the modern reader, but that was indeed the age when a boy became a man under Viking law. A very short time later, though, he declares himself eighteen, so maybe it’s just a storyteller’s or scribal mistake.

Gisl Illugason’s Tale

The Tale of Gisl Illugason is a different kind of story. It takes place later in time than the classic sagas, in the days of King Magnus Barefoot (or Bareleg – he picked up the fashion of wearing the kilt in Scotland) of Norway. This story possesses enough plausibility to perhaps be based on true events.

Gisl travels to Norway, where he recognizes one of the king’s guard as the man who killed his father. So, naturally, he kills him. King Magnus wants to hang him immediately, but (in a development that resembles the story of Asbjorn Seal’s-Bane, which you may recall from my novel King of Rogaland), is persuaded to postpone the execution to the following day, so that the killing won’t be done at night, which was against the law. The next day – in a surprising twist – Gisl’s dying victim asks the king to spare his life. The king does so, and gives Gisl his victim’s place in his household.

We’re told, amusingly, that during his trial, Gisl offers (in the classic saga style) to recite a poem in praise of the king. The king gives permission and he does so, but the saga writer tells us “it was not much of a poem.”

Low points for drama; high points for realism.

Fiction, Reviews

Saga reading report, three sagas

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A venerable custom on this blog is my post-Viking event saga review. During reenactment events I like to (at least most of the time) read from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, to keep myself from (further) violating authenticity standards through reading off my Kindle device. During the Scandinavian Festival in Moorhead I read three sagas, two of them connected, all of them weird to various degrees. We’re getting into late sagas here, and weirdness goes with the territory.

The Saga of the People of Kjalarnes

The first one is The Saga of the People of Kjalarnes, which deals with early settlers in the area around Reykjavik. It’s also interesting because it depicts early Christian-heathen conflicts, and features one of the few saga descriptions of a heathen temple (historians consider this description pretty much worthless as evidence).

Helgi Bolan is an early Iceland settler, and we’re told he welcomed a group of Irish immigrants who were Christian. (I believe these people should probably be considered mixed Norse-Irish, ones who fled Ireland following military reverses in the Emerald Isle. These people would have thought of themselves as Norse, but had converted to Christianity.)

Every saga begins with a can of genealogical worms, and this can finally brings forth the saga’s main hero, Bui Andridsson. Bui is an open “Christian,” and is actually prosecuted at the Thing assembly for false religion. He is outlawed but (interestingly) simply ignores it. Nobody seems to be able to do much about it, because he’s such a skillful fighter. He has a foster-mother who keeps egging him on to desperate acts, justifying it by saying that his fate is already determined, so there’s no point playing safe. He finally burns Helgi Bolan’s temple down, killing a man in the process. (I think we’re supposed to sympathize with Bui, but objectively he sounds like a jerk.)

Outlawed, he flees to Norway, where the king sends him on a quest to the giant Dofri (identified with Dovre mountain in Norway; this element connects this saga to lesser-known legends about King Harald Fairhair). While staying with Dofri, Bui cohabits with the giant’s daughter, who is (we are told) very tall but very beautiful. (The mind boggles.)

Later he returns to Iceland where he’s finally killed fighting with Jokul, his own son, born to the giant’s daughter, whom he’s never met. The saga ends by telling us that they don’t know what happened to Jokul, but read on…

Jokul Buason’s Tale

Somebody must have wanted a sequel about the patricide Jokul, because that’s the next story in the collection. This is a saga that seems to have no historical basis at all, and so it runs wild along fairy tale lines. In his adventures, Jokul encounters a couple of giant sisters. He and his companion kill one, but spare the other, and she becomes their useful and devoted slave (giant psychology would seem to be somewhat different from human psychology).

The saga goes on to take Jokul, in the end, to the land of the Saracens, where he rescues a prince and princess. He marries the princess and succeeds her father as king of the Saracens.

To live, one assumes, happily ever after.

Gold-Thorir’s Saga

Gold-Thorir’s Saga returns us, tenuously, to some connection with the real world. Gold-Thorir is Thorir Oddsson, who as a young man vows sworn-brotherhood with a group of other young men. They go out to have adventures. They rob a grave mound, where the ghost prophecies great wealth but a bad end for Thorir. After that, we’re told, Thorir’s personality changes.

They go on to assault a clutch of dragons in a cave, managing to kill the dragons and seize their treasure. As their leader, Thorir is awarded the larger share of the loot.

[One peculiarity of this saga is that a few pages are missing. They weren’t lost, but were erased, probably with the intention of re-using them (not uncommon with old book manuscripts). Someone wrote in a summary of the missing material, but we don’t know if it’s authentic.)

In his old age, we are told, Gold-Thorir becomes increasingly sour and antisocial. Finally, according to the saga, he actually turns into a dragon. And his treasure disappears.

That, you must admit, is a dramatic ending.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Saga of Finnbogi the Mighty’

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It is my custom sometimes, during Viking events, to read sagas from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders instead of something off my Fire device, as if that made me more historically authentic. This past weekend, at the iFest in St. Paul, I read The Saga of Finnbogi the Mighty. Finnbogi’s Saga is not one of the great ones, but it does (as Sherlock Holmes used to say) present certain points of interest.

All the sagas tend to settle into what I would call tropes (scholars no doubt have a better term for them). But the later sagas become both implausible and predictable. Finnbogi’s Saga contains a number of boilerplate elements, combined with what seem to be genuine family anecdotes.

We begin in fairy tale (or even mythological) mode with the familiar theme of the abandoned child. The hero’s father, miffed at his wife, orders her to “expose” their next baby (that means to leave the child out on a hillside for wild animals to kill; it was a common choice for deformed babies or ones whose parents couldn’t afford to raise them). Sorrowfully she does so, building a sort of hollow cairn on a scree-covered hill and leaving the child inside. Of course a poor couple discover him and raise him as their own. They name him “Urdacott” (Scree-cat). However, no one believes this strong and handsome baby could be theirs – from the beginning people suspect who the real father is. Eventually, the real father’s brother convinces him to accept the boy. Later on, Urdacott is fortunate enough to rescue a shipwrecked Norwegian merchant who – when he later dies – leaves both his wealth and his name – Finnbogi – to the boy.

Then young Finnbogi, like most saga heroes, sails off to Norway (this is in the time of Jarl Haakon), proves his strength and courage in various fantastic adventures, and gains the jarl’s favor along with more wealth. After that he goes home to Iceland, where his exploits gradually become more prosaic. He gets involved in a long feud but is eventually reconciled with his enemies.

An intriguing element here is that Finnbogi’s final feud is also dealt with in another saga, Vatnsdal’s Saga. Some scholars believe it was composed in response to Finnbogi’s negative portrayal in that story.

There was a scene that amused me in the section describing Finnbogi’s time in Norway. In one adventure, Finnbogi comes up against a dangerous bear that’s been marauding in a certain neighborhood. The local residents begin their countermeasures with a legal proceeding:

So it came about that Bard called together an assembly, outlawed the bear, and placed a price on his head.

The bear is in fact treated as semi-human. It would be fun to draw the conclusion that people in those days thought of bears as a wilder kind of human being, but I suspect it’s just a narrative device.

I also noticed that in a couple cases, over the course of the feuding, people are killed, but nobody bothers to prosecute for homicide, because the victims didn’t have enough status to make it worth anyone’s trouble. A reminder that the majesty of the law becomes injustice when everyone isn’t equal in its sight.

Not a great saga, The Saga of Finnbogi the Mighty is nonetheless intriguing in many ways.

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Where do legends come from?

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Robin Hood on a horse, ca. 1475. Wikimedia Commons.

As you may recall, I am peripherally involved in the world of Viking scholarship – not as a real researcher, but as a lowly translator. I am also, of course, a creator of historical fantasy, which means I’ve had to learn a few things. Not as much as I think I’ve learned, of course, but a few things. And, of course, I have ideas.

Here’s one of them.

The scholarly controversy over how the Icelandic historical sagas should be understood, as I’ve often mentioned, is about how much we can believe of what the sagas tell us. Many historians won’t use the sagas at all, because they were written after a period of oral transmission. And a lot of historians are very suspicious of oral tradition.

For instance, I often come across a statement like this: “Historians disagree whether King Harald Fairhair of Norway ever actually existed.” They mention that there are no clear mentions of him anywhere except in the sagas.

For some historians, in fact, it seems that a mention in a saga is proof of non-existence.

Which makes no sense to me.

One comes across the same argument with figures like King Arthur and Robin Hood. “There are legends about these characters,” the historians say. “Therefore, we’re sure they never existed.”

“Why?” Walker screams.

Historians seem to think that legends spring out of the human mind, ex nihilo. As atheists think the universe was created – by nobody, out of nothing.

It makes more sense to me that legends probably come from something. Perhaps something trivial, perhaps they happened to a different historical character – but they came from something.

What historians don’t seem to remember is that in this real world they write about, actual things do happen. Sometimes they’re quite exciting things. People remember them, and repeat them to others.

At the Green Bay Viking festival, a friend told me a story about building a working guillotine on commission, and nearly chopping his hand off. I’ve been retelling that story ever since.

It happened. Interesting things do happen in real life.

Why should the default explanation for a good story be that somebody just made it up?

Reading

Njal’s saga, on the ground

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Another post in between reviews. I searched for “Icelandic Sagas” on YouTube and came up with this video by Dr. Matthew Roby of the University of Iceland. I’ve posted one of his other videos, about Egil’s Saga, here before. What I like about these videos is that he describes the action on the actual historical sites.

This one is about Njal’s Saga, which may be the greatest of the genre. It certainly deserves the attention it’s gotten.

I’m bemused by the Icelandic pronunciations. I was never aware before that Icelandic words ending in “L” get a “K” sound added. That’s just the sort of thing you’d expect from the Icelanders, who do their best – it seems to me – to make their language as unlearnable as possible.

This situation creates a problem for people like me, who produce what is (laughingly, in my case) known as “popular” literature. I’ve maintained the custom of including a character list in my Erling novels. In that list, I include my suggested pronunciations. These pronunciations, you may have noted, bear no resemblance to how Dr. Roby pronounces them.

It’s essentially an insoluble problem from my point of view. If I went to the trouble of learning how to pronounce Old Norse as Dr. Roby does (something I’m not inclined to do in my limited time), I’d be offering pronunciations that a) nobody would bother with, b) listeners would not understand, and c) are not even precisely what the Vikings used, as scholars admit the language has changed somewhat in the last thousand years.

So I give my suggested pronunciations, based (more or less) on contemporary Norwegian speech. This is mostly the way English-speaking scholars pronounce them in lectures, and they’re more or less comprehensible to other English speakers.

It’s a makeshift.

So much of fiction is a makeshift.

So much of life is a makeshift too, if it comes to that.

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.

Authors

Snorri’s place

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Tonight, in the absence of any ideas from my corner, here’s a short video from the great Jackson Crawford, filmed at Reykholt, the home of Snorri Sturlusson, the great Icelandic saga author, poet, and chieftain. Crawford explains some things about Snorri’s life. And death. Which happened right there. That pool is geothermally heated, by the way.

Have a good weekend.

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.