{"id":18936,"date":"2023-11-15T20:40:19","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T01:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18936"},"modified":"2023-11-15T20:40:19","modified_gmt":"2023-11-16T01:40:19","slug":"saga-reading-report-tales-of-three-thorsteins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18936","title":{"rendered":"Saga reading report: Tales of Three Thorsteins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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King Olaf Trygvesson, as painted by my friend (okay, my acquaintance) Anders Kvaale Rue. I’ve never asked him why he pictures Olaf with a haircut documented as being popular with Danes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tonight, three more tales <\/strong>from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders.<\/a><\/em> Oddly, they\u2019re all about guys named Thorstein. Perhaps the name was a statistical favorite among Icelanders. Or perhaps the name was becoming a go-to for storytellers, like \u201cJack\u201d in so many British folk tales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, there\u2019s \u201cThe Tale of Thorstein of the East Fjords.\u201d <\/strong>We\u2019re told that he was \u201cyoung and fleet of foot,\u201d though those qualities don\u2019t really figure in the story. He is on a pilgrimage to Rome, and while traveling through Norway he comes upon a richly dressed young man defending himself against four attackers. Thorstein decides to intervene and kills three of the attackers. The young man he rescued tells him that once he gets back from Rome, he should go to King Magnus\u2019s (Magnus the Good, I assume) court and see him. Just ask for Styrbjorn. (Styrbjorn was the name of a famous Swedish hero. I don\u2019t know of more than one man who bore that name, and he was long dead by this time.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One assumes that Thorstein goes to Rome and returns to Norway, though the saga writer fails to mention that. The next scene shows Thorstein showing up at the king\u2019s hall, where he sends a message in, asking for Styrbjorn. All the kings\u2019 men have a good laugh at somebody asking for Styrbjorn (like somebody today asking for Eliot Ness or Frank Sinatra, I suppose), but eventually the king himself silences them, explaining that he himself is this \u201cStyrbjorn.\u201d Thorstein ends up going home to Iceland with a lot of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second tale is \u201cThe Tale of Thorstein the Curious.\u201d <\/strong>This Thorstein went to Norway and joined the court of King Harald (Hardrada, I suppose). One day the king assigns him to watch his clothing while he\u2019s taking a bath, and Thorstein can\u2019t resist looking into his bag. There he sees a couple knife handles made from a strange, golden wood. When the king comes out of the bath, he intuits that Thorstein has peeked. Displeased, he demands that Thorstein fulfill a quest or lose his favor. He must fetch the king two more knife handles of the same wood \u2013 but he won\u2019t give him a clue as to where such trees grow (considering Harald Hardrada\u2019s history, it might have been anywhere in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, or Scandinavia). Thorstein eventually fulfills the quest, but only by way of escaping a giant serpent. In an oddly prosaic epilogue, we\u2019re informed that this Thorstein died with Harald in England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally we encounter \u201cThe Tale of Thorstein Shiver.<\/a>\u201d <\/strong>This Thorstein has joined the household of King Olaf (at first I assumed this would be Saint Olaf, but by the end it\u2019s clear that it\u2019s Olaf Trygvesson). One night the king gives a command (for no apparent reason) that no man is to go out to the privy without a buddy. Thorstein wakes in the middle of the night and is reluctant to wake anyone else, so he sneaks out alone. In the privy he encounters a demon. Then follows a sequence in which he asks the demon three times about which damned souls scream the loudest in Hell. The demon tells him about three famous Nordic heroes, describing their sufferings in the fires of perdition, and (at Thorstein\u2019s request) each time screaming in imitation of that hero. Meanwhile, with each question the demon inches closer to Thorstein. But just before the demon can grab him, the church bells start ringing, and the demon flees back where he came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the morning, the king asks how everyone slept. Thorstein confesses his disobedience, but King Olaf isn\u2019t much bothered over that. He explains that he heard the diabolical screaming, and therefore ordered the bells rung, saving Thorstein from Hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an interesting addendum. The king asks Thorstein if he felt frightened at any point, and Thorstein says he doesn\u2019t know what fear feels like, though he shivered a little during the demon\u2019s final scream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This seems to anticipate a motif <\/em>we find in several Scandinavian folk tales catalogued in the 19th<\/sup> Century \u2013 \u201cThe Boy Who Did Not Know Fear.\u201d It seems to me that what we\u2019re observing in these stories is a stage in the evolution of the folk tale \u2013 the point where stories are still connected to actual historical figures (likely the storytellers\u2019 ancestors), but are growing increasingly extravagant and fabulous in the process of retelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight, three more tales from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. Oddly, they\u2019re all about guys named Thorstein. Perhaps the name was a statistical favorite among Icelanders. Or perhaps the name was becoming a go-to for storytellers, like \u201cJack\u201d in so many British folk tales. First, there\u2019s \u201cThe Tale of Thorstein of the East Fjords.\u201d We\u2019re … Continue reading Saga reading report: Tales of Three Thorsteins<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,13,15],"tags":[4650,4953,4955,4954],"class_list":["post-18936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reading","category-reviews","tag-the-complete-sagas-of-icelanders","tag-the-tale-of-thorstein-of-the-east-fjords","tag-the-tale-of-thorstein-shiver","tag-the-tale-of-thorstein-the-curious"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18937,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18936\/revisions\/18937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}