{"id":19337,"date":"2024-02-15T21:06:55","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T02:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19337"},"modified":"2024-02-15T21:06:55","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T02:06:55","slug":"the-saga-of-grettir-the-strong-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19337","title":{"rendered":"‘The Saga of Grettir the Strong,’ part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n

The father and son parted with little love lost between them. Many people wished Grettir a safe journey, but few a safe return.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I have finished reading<\/strong> The Saga of Grettir the Strong, in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders.<\/a><\/em> I have much to say about it, though I fear a lot of it strays into the deep grass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/sup> 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 \u201cgreat\u201d has two meanings. The common one (in our time) is that of \u201cimportant\u201d or \u201cadmirable.\u201d But its older meaning was \u201clarge.\u201d 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\u2019s killing men or lifting heavy objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading the saga from a historical perspective, I noted that most of the episodes where Grettir comes off as heroic by our standards \u2013 a virtuous hero \u2013 are implausible scenes involving either invulnerable berserkers or supernatural creatures like witches or ghosts. Even the scenes of Grettir\u2019s death, which are likely to have some factual base, are embroidered with elements of witch\u2019s curses, which the saga writer found necessary in order to explain his invulnerable hero\u2019s death at the hands of common men. (Though in an odd interpolation, Grettir finds a friend who\u2019s even stronger than himself. No actual magic is attributed to this character, but one gets the feeling he\u2019s not entirely human.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 <\/em>[Chieftain] (an important saga character who makes a brief appearance in my novel, West Oversea<\/a><\/em>), who has come out after him as a sort of bounty hunter. Grettir understands that winning Snorri\u2019s friendship through letting his son live could win him a powerful friend, something he badly needs by now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, one remarkable thing about Grettir\u2019s saga is the fact that he had all kinds of prominent connections \u2013 \u201cAlmost all the chieftains in the country were related to Grettir\u2026 either by blood or by marriage.\u201d <\/em>He\u2019s related to the Norwegian royal family too. And yet he can\u2019t seem to catch a break with the law. (For all I\u2019ve written and said about the importance of the Law to the Norse, your father\u2019s status and who you knew counted for a lot. Rich men\u2019s sons could usually find a way to wiggle out of legal scrapes with their skin intact, even as today. The fact that Grettir couldn\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s 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\u2019s been outlawed, which means he can\u2019t leave the country and is legal prey for killing. In the end, he will hold the record for survival in an outlaw state \u2013 20 years (though there\u2019s 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\u2019s at this point that he becomes a more sympathetic character. He\u2019s terrified of the dark and of being alone \u2013 though he knows from experience that few men are to be trusted. Still, I couldn\u2019t help wondering what his killers\u2019 real story is \u2013 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 \u00a0The charge that his killers employed witchcraft is not impossible (at least technically \u2013 I don\u2019t 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\u2019s record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An element in the saga which I\u2019d never noticed before (perhaps it was bowdlerized in previous translations I\u2019ve read, or maybe I just forgot) is a couple sexual situations. In one scene, which would have played better in the 14th<\/sup> Century than it does today, a serving woman makes fun of Grettir\u2019s 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\u2019s been ravaging the farm. He leaves a souvenir behind:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

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\u2026. 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In sum, the Saga of Grettir the Strong <\/em>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\u2019s no way to prove them wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading ‘The Saga of Grettir the Strong,’ part 2<\/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":[7,15],"tags":[1265,2465,4650,5073],"class_list":["post-19337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-iceland","tag-sagas","tag-the-complete-sagas-of-icelanders","tag-the-saga-of-grettir-the-strong"],"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\/19337","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=19337"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19339,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19337\/revisions\/19339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}