Read The Sagas of the Icelanders Online
Authors: Jane Smilely
The Sagas of the Icelanders (5 page)
Many of the
Íslendinga saga
heroes were poets, in the sense that their sagas include poems said to have been composed by them. Language is often a field of conflict and competition, with poems and speeches serving as missiles that are intended to harm and humiliate. Some of the greatest fighters (Egil, Gisli, Grettir, Viglund) were poets. But four of the
Íslendinga sögur
are about men whose main claim to fame is as love poets:
Kormak’s Saga, The Saga of Hallfred the Troublesome Poet, The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People
and
The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue
. Both love poetry and heroic poetry are important themes in a fifth ‘poet’s saga’,
The Saga of the Sworn Brothers
. If this group deserves to be distinguished from the sagas of other poets it is on account of their focusing on the notion of language as a field of combat, with two rival poets contending for the hand of the same woman.
There may be good reason for believing that the earliest of the
Íslendinga sögur
, including some of these poets’ sagas, used poetic verses in the spirit of the kings’ sagas, that is as sources of information and historical authority. But as the genre evolved, the verses lost their antique flavour, which suggests that they were probably composed as a means of characterization as well. The saga style does not permit either interior monologue or a narrator’s paraphrase of a character’s thoughts, and the verses occasionally serve as the only available window into a character’s mind.
Ari the Learned was not the only scholar whose authority was cited as a source or as a commentator on the significance of the saga’s events. There are several examples in the
Íslendinga sögur
. Here is a rich combination of authenticating devices in
The Saga of Grettir the Strong
, a saga of an outlaw and poet (which is to appear in Penguin Classics):
The spear that Grettir had lost was not found for a long time, until the days that people still alive today can remember. It was found towards the end of Sturla Thordarson the Lawspeaker’s life, in the marshland where Thorbjorn was killed, which is now known as Spjotsmyri (Spear-Mire). This is taken as proof that Thorbjorn was killed there, although some accounts say that he was killed in Midfitjar. (Ch. 49)
Such an apparently painstaking effort at recording variant accounts, citing the evidence of a place-name and tracing the relationship between a distant historical past and the ‘present time’ is a characteristic feature of saga style, an aspect of a narrative art which aspires to counterfeit reality. But the question also arises of the extent to which this style reflects an intellectual feature of the saga’s method as history, as it does in Snorri’s kings’ sagas. The question itself may be seeking a distinction where none existed when the sagas were being written. The
Íslendinga sögur
create fictional worlds
lawavisa
) from Chapter 58 of
Egil’s Saga
The technical features of the typical
drdttkvatt
stanza are illustrated in this verse, which is by Egil Skallagrimsson. It has eight lines (
visuori
), each with six syllables. The lines are rhymed in three ways: alliteration, half-rhyme and full-rhyme.
The sounds represented with bold letters are in alliteration (
stuiluri
). There are two alliterating sounds (
stuðlar
) in the odd lines and one (the ‘head letter’ or
hofudstafur
) that comes at the start of the even lines: stórt, stáli and stafnkvígs (the höfufistafur) in lines 1–2. The sounds represented with italics are internal rhyme. They are either half-rhyme (
skothending
) as in
þél
and
stál
i or full rhyme (
adalhending
) as in
stafn
kvígs and
jafnan.
þ | With its chisel of snow, the headwind, |
stafn | scourge of the mast, mightily |
út með éla | hones its file by the prow |
and | on the path that my sea-bull treads. |
en sv | In gusts of wind, that chillful |
sverfr | destroyer of timber planes down |
G | the planks before the head |
gandr | of my sea-king’s swan. |
The greatest difficulty in understanding dróttkvardi, at least for the beginner, may be its departure from conventional prose word order. For example, the logical order of the words in this verse would be this:
Andarrjotunn vandar hSggr stórt pelfyr stdli medela meitliútdjafnan veg stafnkvigs, ensvalbúinn seliju gandr sverfr eirar vanr of stál peiri Gestilsdlft med gustum fyr brandi
. To convey some idea of the challenge faced by the translator of such verse, here is a very literal and somewhat nonsensical rendering of the rearranged words:
‘The opposite-rowing giant of the mast strikes hard, a file before the prow, with a chisel of sudden hail out on the smooth road of the young prow bull, and a cold wolf of wood files mercilessly with it about the prow of Gestil’s swan with gusts before the decorated prow board.’
What makes this verse far from nonsensical in the original language is its use of a form of metaphor called
kenning
. Kennings consist of two parts: one which calls a thing by the name of something that it is not and then a second part which modifies the first in such a way as to make it poetically appropriate. Here ‘giant’ (or ‘enemy’) is one half of a kenning for ‘wind’, a thing that a giant is not. But when ‘of the mast’ is added to ‘enemy’, ‘enemy of the mast’ becomes a good metaphor for ‘wind’. Going through the rearranged phrases of this verse we might paraphrase it:
jötunn vandar
= giant (enemy) of the mast = wind;
andarr
= rowing in opposition: wind rowing in opposition = headwind
pelboggurstórt
= a file strikes hard
fyr stdli
= before the bow stem
md meitli
= with a chisel;
éla
= of sudden hail: a chisel of sudden hail = a storm
út á jafnan veg
= out on the smooth road
stafnkvígs
= prow + young bull’s; young prow bull’s = ship’s: ship’s smooth road = the sea
en svalbúinn
= and a coldly dressed
gandr
= wolf (enemy);
selju
= wood (of which the ship is made): enemy of wood = wind
sverfr eirar vanr
= files without mercy
of stál peiri
= around the prow with it (i.e.
pél
, the file)
Gestilsdlft
= Gestil’s (a sea king’s) swan = ship
medgustumfyrbrandi
= with gusts of wind before the decorated prow board
which are largely consistent with those of
Íslendingabók
and
Landnámabók
, including the settlement of Iceland, the establishment of a national government, the testing of its laws and constitution, the discovery of Greenland and North merica and the conversion to Christianity. Many of those great events can be confirmed by archaeology and the testimony of historical writing in other languages. By and large they must have happened more or less as they are said to happen in the fictional worlds of the sagas. They constitute a story, a national myth, within which the more local and detailed stories of the individual
Íslendinga sögur
take shape.
For readers interested in North America, few historical events in the sagas arouse greater curiosity than do the Icelandic settlement of Greenland and the discovery of America. The settlements in Greenland lasted for about 500 years, beginning with Eirik the Red’s arrival from Iceland in
985–6
. They perished by gradual stages in the fifteenth century, apparently on account of increasingly cold weather and the difficulties of sailing in ice-filled waters to and from Iceland and Norway. Archaeologists have excavated the remains and even the earliest of them are as impressive as Icelandic sites of the same period. A movement is now under way to reconstruct some of the Viking Age buildings in Greenland, as has been done in Newfoundland and, of course, Iceland. In the Saga Age, Greenland was an independent country with a population at the height of its prosperity of about 4,000. It had an annual national assembly like Iceland’s at a place called Gardar. An extremely interesting and well-told episode in
The Saga of the Sworn Brothers
takes place at the assembly at Gardar. Six other
Íslendinga sögur
have episodes set in Greenland.
The story of the discovery and exploration of America is told in two works,
Eirik the Red’s Saga
and the shorter
Saga of the Greenlanders
. These differ from each other in a number of details,
Eirik the Red’s Saga
agreeing more frequently with other written sources, such as
Heimskringla
. Neither work is among the best sagas, and yet in their blending of myth and historical tradition they are typical of the genre. Modern archaeology, especially the work of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad in the 1960s at L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland, has confirmed that explorers from Greenland and Iceland spent time in North America and constructed buildings of the sort found in Iceland.
The Saga of the Greenlanders
attributes the first sighting of America to a merchant named Bjarni Herjolfsson, who in about 985 went off course on his way to Greenland, whereas
Eirik the Red’s Saga
gives the credit to Eirik the Red’s son Leif, who made the discovery through a similar accident about 1000. Altogether,
The Saga of the Greenlanders
describes six trips to America, including Bjarni’s sighting and an extensive expedition by Leif.
Eirik the Red’s Saga
mentions only three, the most thorough of which was made by Thorfinn Karlsefni, a very able Icelandic merchant who also figures importantly in
The Saga of the Greenlanders
.
The sagas describe three different landscapes from north to south along the American coast,
Helluland
(Stone slab land, probably southern Baffin Island or northern Labrador),
Markland
(Forest land, southern Labrador) and
Vínland
(Vine land, possibly the St Lawrence Valley, but more likely the coast of New England). Written evidence indicates that the Greenlanders maintained a connection with
Markland
as a source of timber until at least the fourteenth century. With
Vinland
, however, contact seems to have been lost after the explorations of Leif and Karlsefni in the early eleventh century. About the country we know very little with precision, although we do know that it was not an invention of the two sagas. Well before they were written
Vinland
was mentioned by Ari in
Íslendingabók
and even earlier by Adam of Bremen in his
History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen
of about 1075. Both
The Saga of the Greenlanders
and
Eirik the Red’s Saga
describe a land that has wine grapes, maples and self-sown grain (probably wild rice). They report that the weather in
Vinland
was warm enough for cattle to graze outside all winter, pointing to both a southerly location in New England or Long Island and a milder overall temperature than exists today. (There is much other evidence, including the demise of the settlements in Greenland, that the northern hemisphere experienced a radical cooling off in the fourteenth century.) The accounts of
Vinland
include descriptions of a fierce native population, whom the sagas call
Skraeling jar
(the origin of this word is obscure: it may be related to words meaning ‘wrinkle’ or ‘shrink’, possibly referring to the treatment of animal skins; it is translated in this edition as ‘natives’). The same word is used of the natives of Greenland, who must have been a quite different people.
The Saga of the Greenlanders
and
Eirik the Red’s Saga
blend to an equal extent the navigational and geographical accuracy for which they are famous with stories of magic and the supernatural. Both employ all of the standard authenticating techniques of the
Íslendinga sögur
, together with other features of saga style. Both are associated with King Olaf Tryggvason and the conversion of Greenland to Christianity. Leif Eiriksson, in fact, had reluctantly accepted from the king the difficult duty of converting Greenland when he took the voyage that resulted in his lucky discovery of
Vinland
. His father Eirik was a hard-bitten old Viking, who was banished from Iceland and who resented Christianity. He had several children, the most memorable of whom – aside from Leif – was an illegitimate daughter named Freydis. She is the epitome of evil in
The Saga of the Greenlanders
, being responsible for killing a number of her fellow explorers and for personally taking an axe to five women whom her men had refused to kill. Somewhat more benignly but no less mythically, in
Eirik the Red’s Saga
she frightens off an attacking band of natives by running after them, even though she is pregnant, and then, when surrounded by them, picking up a sword from a dead Greenlander, pulling one of her breasts out of her clothing and slapping it with the naked sword. The natives were terrified at the sight and ran to their boats and rowed away. Almost as good a woman as Freydis was evil, Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir was the wife of Thorfinn Karlsefni and the mother of Snorri, the first person of European ancestry to be born in America. She has been described as the true central character of these sagas. After a pilgrimage to Rome, she lived out her life as an anchoress in Iceland, and from her were descended several of the early bishops of Iceland. What precisely these extreme examples of good and evil in the Vinland sagas, as well as other instances of magic and the paranormal, might have to do with the coming of Christianity to the north, the saga composer (as usual) does not tell us.