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.
