Eyrbyggja saga, p.1
Eyrbyggja Saga, page 1
EYRBYGGJA SAGA
HERMANN PÁLSSON studied Icelandic at the University of Iceland and Celtic at University College, Dublin. He was formerly Professor of Icelandic at the University of Edinburgh, where he taught from 1950 to 1988. He is the General Editor of the New Saga Library and the author of many books on the history and literature of medieval Iceland; his more recent publications include Legendary Fiction in Medieval Iceland (with Paul Edwards), Art and Ethics in Hrafnkel’s Saga and Vikings in Russia (with Paul Edwards). Hermann Pálsson has also translated Hrafnkel’s Saga, and collaborated with Magnus Magnusson in translating Laxdæla Saga, The Vinland Sagas, King Harald’s Saga and Njal’s Saga for the Penguin Classics.
PAUL EDWARDS read English at Durham University, Celtic and Icelandic at Cambridge, and then worked in West Africa for nine years. He was Professor of English and African Literature at Edinburgh University until his death in May 1992. In addition to books on Icelandic studies with Hermann Pálsson, he published books and articles on African history, and on English and African literature.
HERMANN PÁLSSON and PAUL EDWARDS also translated Egil’s Saga, Orkneyinga Saga and Seven Viking Romances for Penguin Classics. Their translations of Knytlinga Saga, The Book of Settlements, Magnus’ Saga, Hrolf Gautreksson and Göngu-Hrolfs Saga have been published elsewhere.
EYRBYGGJA SAGA
TRANSLATED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
AND NOTES BY
HERMANN PÁLSSON
AND
PAUL EDWARDS
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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First published by Southside (Publishers) Ltd 1972
Published, with extensive revisions, in Penguin Books 1989
13
Translation, introduction and notes
copyright © Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards, 1972, 1989
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
LIST OF CHARACTERS
EYRBYGGJA SAGA
1. Ketil Flat-Nose
2. Bjorn is outlawed
3. Thorolf Mostur-Beard
4. Thorolf goes to Iceland
5. In the Hebrides
6. Bjorn goes to Iceland
7. Other settlers
8. Thorolf Twist-Foot
9. Desecration
10. Terms of settlement
11. Thorstein Cod-Biter dies
12. A new generation
13. Snorri travels to Norway
14. Snorri wins Helgafell
15. Snorri the Priest
16. Gunnlaug’s mishap
17. Illugi the Black
18. Hostilities
19. After the fight
20. Sorcerers put to death
21. Arnkel’s advice
22. Exile
23. Insults
24. Eirik the Red
25. The Swedish berserks
26. Attempt on Snorri’s life
27. Thorgerd gets help
28. The end of the berserks
29. A love affair
30. Thorolf Twist-Foot
31. Arson
32. Ulfar is killed
33. Thorolf Twist-Foot dies
34. Thorolf’s ghost
35. New troubles
36. Attempt on Arnkel’s life
37. Arnkel is killed
38. Settlement
39. A new dispute
40. Bjorn comes back to Iceland
41. A marriage offer
42. Attempt on Arnbjorn’s life
43. The price of a slave
44. The Battle of Alfta Fjord
45. The Battle of Vigra Fjord
46. Settlement
47. Attempt on Bjorn’s life
48. To Greenland
49. Christianity in Iceland
50. Thorgunna
51. Thorgunna dies
52. An omen
53. The hauntings begin
54. More ghosts
55. The ghosts are banished
56. Snorri’s enemies
57. Ospak
58. Fighting
59. More looting
60. Thorir is killed
61. Alf and Snorri
62. The criminals are killed
63. Thorolf comes back from the dead
64. In the New World
65. Snorri’s descendants
GLOSSARY OF PERSONAL NAMES
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
MAP OF WEST COAST OF ICELAND
INTRODUCTION
Writing in 1813, Sir Walter Scott says that ‘of all the various records of Icelandic history and literature, there is none more interesting than Eyrbyggja Saga’.1 It is not surprising that a novelist as fascinated by the past as Scott should so respond to the world of Eyrbyggja Saga, which indeed is in many respects akin to that of the romantic imagination. There are antiquarian elements, such as the detailed (though largely invented) description of the temple at Thor’s Ness and of the duties of a pagan priesthood; there are gothic elements, such as the eerie hauntings at Frodriver and the unquiet graves of the malevolent dead; and along with these there are violent encounters with vikings and berserks and a pervasive heroic spirit. But the author of the Waverley Novels must have been still more powerfully fascinated by the elaborate structure of a narrative in which the lives of many remarkable and varied individuals are set against a background of actual historical events to produce an imaginative view of history. For it must be stressed at once that although the saga often seems to be recording history, its true spirit is imaginative and interpretative, a thirteenth-century view of the past. As Magnus Magnusson remarks,
These Sagas of Icelanders… were written in the vernacular, in prose, and can best be described as historical novels – the first novels to be written in Europe. They were not, strictly speaking, histories; they were imaginative works of art created around an historical framework and using many different sources: written records and genealogies, traditional oral stories, earlier sagas, fragments of remembered verses uttered on special occasions. Their purpose was to entertain and edify their audience, like the great novels of the nineteenth century.2
It is interesting that Scott’s appraisal of Eyrbyggja Saga as a proto-historical novel was written at Abbotsford in 1813, one year before the publication of the first of the Waverley Novels. Later Scottish novelists have also borrowed from Eyrbyggja Saga: R. L. Stevenson in his tale The Waif Woman, and Eric Linklater in his enjoyable pastiche-saga, The Men of Ness.
On the surface, Eyrbyggja Saga reads like an historical record, tracing the lives of several generations from the late ninth century to the early eleventh. The narrative opens with the pagan anarchy of the Viking Age, but moves rapidly to an account of the settlement of Iceland and the beginnings of an organized society. A period of internal strain and violence, as the laws are hammered out on the lives of spirited and inflexible individuals, closes with the arrival of Christianity and the gradual establishment of the ordered civilization of medieval Iceland early in the eleventh century. Later we shall examine the artistic pattern of the saga in some detail and shall have more to say about its historical framework: at this point, however, we might generalize and say that Eyrbyggja Saga describes a community progressing from lawlessness to collective responsibility. But by the time the saga was written in the thirteenth century, Icelandic society was both politically and economically in decline, and so it could be seen as essentially nostalgic, reflecting pride in the past rather than in the author’s own times, though that nostalgia shows no trace of sentimentality, and the past is seen as in many respects harsh and uncompromising.
The precise date and provenance of Eyrbyggja Saga are matters for speculation; and, as with the other Sagas of Icelanders, its author is unknown. All the same, it seems likely that it was composed not long after the middle of the thirteenth century, and quite probably at Helgafell, the focal place of the story. It is tempting to speculate that it may have been written in the Augustinian house founded at Helgafell in 1184 and an important intellectual centre and scriptorium right through to the end of the medieval period. A number of manuscripts still extant were written by priests who were either inmates of the house, or had been trained there. Two of the heads of the house were direct descendants of Snorri the Priest, the main figure of Eyrbyggja Saga: these were Thorfinn Thorgeirsson (1188–1216) and Ketil Hermundarson (1217–30). It was at Helgafell, too, that Ari Thorgilsson the Learned, Iceland’s first vernacular historian, was born. There was a considerable library there of nearly 120 books around the year 1186, and towards the end of the fourteenth century about 120 books in Latin and 35 in Icelandic. It has been suggested that Laxdæla Saga and Eyrbyggja Saga were composed at about the same time by two members of the house at Helgafell, and that they used each other’s work, for each saga shows knowledge of the other. This would explain why Helgafell becomes the focal place of Laxdæla Saga precisely at the point where it ceases to be that of Eyrbyggja Saga.3
The structure of the saga is so complicated that many readers have compared it unfavourably with Njal’s Saga, Gisli’s Saga, or Grettir’s Saga, in which the hero’s life is so central to the narrative that it provides a clearly defined structural core, no matter what the surrounding complexities may be.4 Once Eyrbyggja Saga is read in its own terms, rather than in terms of the organization of other, deceptively similar sagas, distinct patterns begin to emerge. These patterns display an interrelation of families and individuals in two dimensions. First there is the linear movement from the ninth to the eleventh century, from the first settlers to their great-grandchildren. Then there are all the complex social relationships between these people living in a small community, bound by duties often arising out of marriage ties, or out of enmities caused by the grabbing of land or the killing of a kinsman. The pattern could best be illustrated by guiding the reader initially through the events of the saga and pointing out the landmarks. The saga might be broken down into eight sections, as follows:
1. Prologue (Chapters 1–8). This describes the rise of Harald Fine-Hair, King of Norway, and the pressure placed upon certain powerful and rebellious chieftains and landowners who are unwilling to accept Harald’s rule. Under these pressures a number of them leave Norway, some going to the newly discovered, uninhabited land called Iceland. Two of these in particular are described, Thorolf Mostur-Beard and Bjorn the Easterner. Thorolf is a priest of Thor, and establishes strict rules of conduct:
Thorolf gave the name Thor’s Ness to the region between Vigra Fjord and Hofsvag. On this headland is a mountain held so sacred by Thorolf that no one was allowed even to look at it without first having washed himself, and no living creature on this mountain, neither man nor beast, was to be harmed until it left of its own accord. Thorolf called this mountain Helga Fell and believed that he and his kinsmen would go into it when they died.
Thorolf used to hold all his courts on the point of the headland where Thor had come ashore, and that was where he started the district assembly. This place was so holy that he would let no one desecrate it, either with bloodshed or with excrement; and for a privy they used a special rock in the sea which they called Dritsker [literally, ‘Dirt Skerry’].5
Bjorn’s respect for the old gods is also made clear, and at this point in the narrative there is no reason to expect anything but friendship between the descendants of these two founder-fathers, Thorolf and Bjorn the Easterner.
2. Quarrels between Thorsnessings and Kjalleklings (Chapter 9–28). In the next generation, however, trouble begins between the people of Thor’s Ness, who are descendants of Thorolf, called the Thorsnessings, and the sons of Kjallak, Bjorn the Easterner’s grandchildren. Both families have become very powerful, and family pride leads to conflict. Quarrels begin over what might appear at first sight a trivial and rather comical matter, the refusal of the Kjalleklings to go out to Dritsker to ease themselves. But the descendants of Thorolf take their attempted desecration of the holy place very seriously indeed, and tensions build up, in spite of efforts at peacemaking, to a series of clashes. In due course a battle is fought between the followers of Thorarin the Black (related by marriage to the Kjalleklings) and Thorbjorn the Stout (related by marriage to Snorri the Priest, descendant of Thorolf Mostur-Beard). Once again the basis of the quarrel, the alleged theft of some horses, hardly seems to justify the bitterness of feelings and the killings that follow. But the very triviality of the surface causes of conflict only serves to emphasize the undercurrents of unreasoning pride and smouldering neurotic violence. This particular sequence of quarrels slowly resolves itself, mainly as a result of the skilful manceuvrings of Snorri, who ends up giving advice and aid over two troublesome berserks belonging to Styr, one of the leading men of the Kjallekling clan. The berserks are killed; Snorri marries Styr’s-daughter; Thorarin the Black goes overseas and is, we are told, ‘now out of the story’. This, however, is only a lull, and a new set of tensions has already begun to develop, to explode into violence in the next part of the story. Indeed, the enmity between the descendants of Thorolf and those of Bjorn rears up from under the surface of many a subsequent conflict.
3. The Conflict between Snorri and Arnkel (Chapters 29–38). Arnkel is the virtuous but strong-minded son of a malicious viking settler, Thorolf Twist-Foot, and, like Snorri, a great man and a temple priest. Since he and Snorri are the two greatest men in the district, people with lawsuits naturally come to them for guidance and support. The seeds of conflict have earlier been sown over Snorri’s killing of a man called Vigfus. With the support of the Kjalleklings, Arnkel had taken up the case against Snorri on behalf of Vigfus’s kin. Now once again it seems that pride and honour will not allow two cocks to crow in the same district. Arnkel had inherited the fighting qualities of his viking father, without his malice, for he also has the generosity of spirit shown by his grandmother Geirrid:
She built a hall right across the main road, and every traveller was expected to pass through it. In the hall stood a table always laden with food, which all were welcome to share, and for this people thought her the finest of women.6
It is inevitable that a man as great-hearted and as firm-minded as Arnkel should come into conflict with the cunning and ambivalent Snorri, about whom we shall have more to say in due course. In his purity of motive and his strength of purpose, Arnkel is what Snorri is to become in the later stages of the narrative. Tensions culminate in the heroic last stand of Arnkel, alone against Snorri and his blood-brothers, the trouble-making Thorbrandssons. Arnkel is killed, but his death is lamented as a great loss, and as an indication of what is wrong with this society:
Arnkel was mourned by everyone, for of all men in pagan times he was the most gifted. He was remarkably shrewd in judgement, good-tempered, kind-hearted, brave, honest, and moderate. He came out on top in every lawsuit, no matter with whom he had to deal, which explains why people were so envious of him, as is shown by the way he met his death.7
Since Arnkel leaves no male heir to take legal action over his killing, Snorri gets off very lightly. That the death of a man as outstanding as Arnkel should be so neglected in law is seen as a social disgrace, and the author makes the point that in consequence the law was changed. So we are made aware of the growing social responsibility underlying all the violence and pride. However, another sequence has been completed, Arnkel is dead, and Snorri’s power continues to increase.
4. Snorri and the Thorbrandssons versus Bjorn and the Thorlakssons (Chapters 39–48). Yet another set of enmities has been developing during the previous sequence of events. Snorri’s blood-brothers, the Thorbrandssons, who aided him in the attack on Arnkel, are now in conflict with a group called the Thorlakssons, who are living at Eyr. Snorri is also at odds with a man from Breidavik, Bjorn Asbrandsson, who has been having an affair with Snorri’s married sister Thurid. It is generally known, though apparently not talked about, that Thurid’s son, Kjartan, is the child of Bjorn, not of her husband Thorodd. In his disgrace, Thorodd has appealed to Snorri for help, so that now these new conflicting groups are ranged against one another. The surface causes of tension are as usual quite trivial – a blow with a hot porridge-ladle, a piece of turf thrown in a game – but the cuckolding of Thorodd sharpens the tension; Snorri secretly sends a slave on a mission to kill one of the men of Breidavik; Bjorn and his brother catch and kill the slave; and once more violence breaks out. There are two major battles, Alfta Fjord and Vigra Fjord, and the strain which is being put on society is clearly marked by the dilemma of Styr, who is not only a Kjallekling, related to the Thorlakssons, and so tied by blood to Snorri’s enemies, but is also Snorri’s father-in-law, and indebted to him for help given against the troublesome berserks. At the Battle of Alfta Fjord, Styr is fighting on the side of his kinsmen the Thorlakssons against Snorri. But when Snorri’s twelve-year-old son (and so Styr’s own grandson) is wounded, Snorri exaggerates, telling Styr that the boy is dying:
