Grettir in a 17th-Century Icelandic Manuscript - (Wikimedia)
YOU CAN LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE OR ON YOUR USUAL PODCAST APP
Today, in keeping with the late-October spirit, it’s a medieval traveller who did indeed wander, who did not stay at home. He had no choice in that matter, and we’ll get to that, but his travel is not the focus of the day. As this is the Halloween season, I thought, as I have in previous years, that I’d cover something appropriately spooky. This time, that takes us to the 14th-century Icelandic Saga of Grettir the Strong, opening up a rich new vein of names and terms for me, despite my best efforts, to mispronounce.
Our saga was recorded in that 14th-century, and survived in four 15th-century vellum manuscripts, but it was drawn from earlier sources, earlier Sagas of Icelanders or oral sources, the 13th-century Book of Settlements, describing the Norse settlement of Iceland, and other works. From them, it portrayed many historical figures and events, attested to elsewhere, and also, as you’ll hear some of, a few presumably ahistorical, supernatural ones, the stuff of folklore and legend.
The saga was recorded in an Iceland ruled by the Norwegian king but was set in one which did not have a king or standing army. There was a well-established legal system, however, one by which individuals might bring forward suits for damages and injuries to property, possession, body, and reputation. Fines might be decided on by a jury, blood vengeance might be taken, or, as will happen to our protagonist, outlawry, exile, either for a set term or indefinitely. Stripped of all rights and status, a person receiving such a judgement might choose to eke out an existence in the inhospitable inland regions, away from society and vulnerable to being slain without penalty, but more likely they’d leave, would go to Norway, for example, or, if you were Erik the Red, to Greenland. Once their punishment had elapsed, if ever it would, they returned.
Our protagonist will be one of those subjected to such laws, and not only once.
Hello, and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, a history podcast exploring the medieval period through the stories of its travellers, its friars, envoys, frauds, and merchants, and a history podcast with a Patreon. One where you can enjoy episodes ad-free and a day early, along with bonus mini episodes, and also help keep this whole one-person vessel afloat in the process, all for as little as a dollar a month. This time, I want to especially thank Mindy Bayne for doing so. Thank you very much!
And now to the story.
We will end today’s episode, spend the second half, with the violent hauntings of Thorhallstadir by the undead Glamr. We will begin where the saga begins.
Our source, though it is called the Grettis Saga, the Saga of Grettir, does not begin with its title character. It opens with his ancestry, reaching back to his great grandfather, Önund Tree-foot, the birth-foot having been lost in battle against King Harald, someone who sought to unify Norway and here appears as something of a tyrannical figure. You may know him from Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. It speaks of Önund in the strife that followed and spurred him on to sail for Iceland, a microcosm of the 9th-century migration from Norway and elsewhere that saw 10-20,000 take up homesteads in their new land. It speaks of Önund's son, Thorgrim Grey-head, and then Thorgrim’s son, Asmundar Grey-hair, the family living in diminished circumstances at a place which translates to Cold Ridge, Önund having come late to find land after staying to settle his affairs in Norway. It speaks of Asmundar’s son, our protagonist, Grettir Ásmundarson, alive in the years when the Christian conversion is only young but still renders him a figure out of time, a hero who does not fit.
Grettir’s life does not begin as a horror story, or if it does, it is only in the most mundane sense possible. He is a difficult child, “antagonistic both in words and deeds.” He clashes with his father, who is not fond of him, and when forced to work, he makes it not worth the effort to force him to do so, maybe lazy, maybe defiant, maybe just arrogant or easily angered. He kills geese he is meant to care for and then, when confronted, grins and jests in rhyme. He is given to such “boyish tricks” that may have been more charming in their original context but now read as verging on unhinged, flaying the back of a horse for example. Maybe there’s more of his difficult relationship with his father in those deeds than it first seems, maybe not. Of his other son, Asmundar says he thinks he will make a good farmer. Of Grettir, that he will be a strong and ungovernable man.
Grettir infuriates, not just in what he does, but also in what he says. He speaks in quips and rhymes, often ones with double meanings. He angers those around him and clearly can be cruel, but he’s also oddly funny. When his father speaks to him of the horses, he responds that “Many lack wisdom, even those from whom you expect more,” seeming, to his father, to also speak of the horses, but more likely talking about his father. When his father pats a horse’s back, and is just about to discover that the skin has been flayed away as it slides from the body, Grettir remarks that “The expected happens, and also the unexpected.”
Grettir is in his mid-teens when he gets in an argument with a farm worker over ownership of a lost bag. It’s unclear in the telling if it's really Grettir’s or not, if he truly believes it to be his or not, but either way he kills the man with their own axe, the punishment: three years as an outlaw. Grettir’s father arranges for him to be taken on by a trading ship, but will send no weapon with him, correctly thinking he will do no good with it. “Nothing given,” replies Grettir, “nothing owed.” His mother sends him off with a fine looking sword, correctly thinking he will have need of it. “Many wish him farewell, but few a safe return.”
On the trading ship, Grettir’s behaviour is, very much as you’d imagine, intolerable. He lies about doing nothing, mostly spending his time with the captain’s wife, while the rest of those aboard struggle with the rough seas, and if that isn’t enough, he constantly composes insulting rhymes about the rest of them. It’s only with the intervention of the ship’s owner that they do not throw him overboard.
But there’s more to him that starts to emerge, a startling physical capability demonstrated before departure when he lifts an enormous boulder, a feat that will connect him to local rocky landmarks, and then, when he is actually convinced to work, mostly by reference to what that captain’s wife will think of him, a near-otherworldly endurance in bailing out the ship that outlasts all others aboard. For the rest of the crossing, he is ever helpful, and the others ever thankful. It marks a bit of a turning point in his story, and also an indication that this is not a static character. He’s going to grow and, at times, to gain your sympathy.
When they reach land, an island off the coast of Norway, the rest travel on, off the island and out of the narrative, but Grettir does not. He stays there with Thorfinn, the lord of the island, for a while, giving no sign of leaving, not really aggravating his host like he had others, but not exactly endearing himself either. He stays long enough for a few important events to occur.
In the first of these, he’s visiting a man who he’s befriended, a new development in itself, when he glances away into the night sky and sees fire, and not just the usual fire, for “if anything like that was seen in our country,” he says, it would be said “that it was flaming up from gold.” And so it is in this case—gold indeed, but in a burial mound belonging to Thorfinn’s father, Karr the Old. Grettir’s new friend wants nothing to do with it, but eventually he allows himself to be talked into the enterprise and agrees to meet Grettir the following day with digging tools.
That next day, Grettir goes to the mound, and he digs. By evening, he’s reached the roof beams below the earth, and he’s ripping them out. His friend is again telling him to leave it, but he doesn’t. He breaks through and leaves his friend at the surface holding the rope, while he lowers himself down, into the chamber below, into the barrow.
He sees little, at first, but he can make out the horse bones on the dirt and can smell something foul, and then, exploring the room, he turns up gold and silver, and a chest. In the dark, he bumps into the back of a chair, and in it, the figure of a man. It’s Karr the Old, seated in his place of rest.
Grettir actually seems to be unbothered by this, busying himself with gathering up his loot, and taking it all over to the rope. It is, after all, no surprise to find a body in a grave. It’s only when that body’s hand grabs him from behind and yanks him back that he pays attention. Karr is not just a body. He’s a draugr, as such beings were called, the animated dead that often guarded their barrows.
Back and forth the two of them wrestle, there beneath the ground, first one gaining the upper hand for a moment, and then the other, crashing about through the horse bones and back again, until finally the mound-dweller topples to the ground and Grettir, seizing the opportunity, draws his sword and cuts off the dead man’s head, placing it beside the body so it cannot rise again. His friend having long since run away, Grettir pulls himself up out of the burial mound, and the treasure along with him.
Twice more Grettir will prove himself on Thorfinn’s island, earning a real friend and benefactor in his host with feats of physical power and also trickery. He’ll single-handedly fool and then defeat a boatload of marauding berserkers who come when Thorfinn and his men are away, and he’ll fight and kill a cave-bear by himself. But then he’ll duel a man who has offended him. He doesn’t need to opt for violence, could just, as his friend urges him, accept the settlement offered to appease him, as is standard and accepted in this society, but he does. He does kill the man, leading to a chain of events that are going to send him out of Norway and back to Iceland. No individual seems capable of standing against him, but even he cannot hold back the broader forces of society.
This killing initially brings the jarl and the deceased’s brother both against him. Only the intervention of Thorfinn and other sympathetic voices manage to satisfy the jarl, and the brother isn’t satisfied at all. The brother ambushes Grettir in the street, wounding him with an axe, so Grettir kills him too, along, aided by a companion, with five others. Now the jarl is really enraged because even if you can claim defence, you can’t just keep slaughtering people without repercussions. The jarl expresses regret that Grettir didn’t simply die in the attack himself, along with the concern that more men will now die as a result. And indeed they do.
There is a third brother and he and his friends catch Grettir alone, smashing in the door where he drinks and rushing at him. Grettir drops back into a corner, fending them off with his shield, killing one and then pushing the others back. Killing another. He cuts off both the brother’s hands and then kills him too. A fourth assailant escapes to run and tell the jarl, and the jarl, who has connections to this family through one of the dead brothers, will not allow himself to be persuaded this time, not by Thorfinn or anyone else. It all comes down to an armed confrontation between the jarl and his men on the one side, and Grettir, Thorfinn, and their supporters on the other. Only with the pleading of the bystanders and the willingness of Thorfinn and a few others to pay any costs required, only by the promise that Grettir will immediately leave Norway, is further bloodshed avoided.
Once again, Grettir was being banished, this time being sent back to Iceland, once again, on a merchant’s ship, but this time with a much warmer send-off, with gifts and the promise of friendship from Thorfinn, and with a newly won reputation for being courageous and strong if, also, a man around whom trouble and death tended to congregate.
After this quick break, we’ll go back to Iceland with him, and we’ll get to the story of the haunting at Thorhallstadir, the risen dead, and the curse that came of it.
…
When Grettir returned to Iceland, he was free to do so, the term of his exile having passed, and he found more affection on his arrival than he had at his departure. When he returned, it was with new standing, renown, and confidence, but this wasn’t all for the best. He’d lost his laziness, if that was really what it was, but not so much his belligerence, that tendency toward confrontation which drove him even to seek out and fight a boy who’d once beaten him at a ball game, then a boy, now an established and well-thought-of farmer. He looked for opportunities to test himself and his strength, and sometimes he found them, but for all his physical prowess, there was something about him that people did not always want around, not even on their own side.
In one story here, the leader of a party soon heading off to battle asks one his people who they have enlisted to help and is told that they’ve recruited someone whose support in war they value more than any other two men. And there’s a pause. And then the leader says that this must be Grettir Ásmundarson that he speaks of. His suspicion confirmed, the leader acknowledges that Grettir is probably unmatched in arms, but the problem is Grettir’s luck, something of a theme to this saga. I do not think it will last, he says, and you should not have unlucky men on your expeditions. “He shall not go at all if I have my way.”
And he did have his way, for Grettir would not go along. He would only realize later that they had ventured off without him. He would try to instigate a fight when they returned, partly out of anger at being left behind, an aggrieved sense that he had been insulted, partly out of that pressing desire to test himself. He continued to search for opportunities to do so, and in the troubles at Thorhallstead, Thorhallstadir in the Icelandic, he found one.
Thorhallur was a respectable farmer and quite a wealthy one, particularly in livestock, but he had been going through a difficult time and sought help from a man known to offer practical advice. There were hauntings on the farm, he told the man, an evil of some kind, and it had become impossible to hold onto shepherds, for under such circumstances, none could be found to tend his sheep for long.
For this problem, the man had a recommendation, a man who many found disagreeable but who was unmatched in size and strength, and no, this was not actually our Grettir. This was someone named Glamr who had arrived from Sweden the summer before. He would surely take up the role as shepherd if anyone would, and so he did, agreeing to join Thorhallur at his farm that winter. He was not afraid of ghosts, he said. It might even make the work less boring.
There was truly something a bit different about this Glamr. He was “heavily built and strange in appearance with eyes dark and wide open, wolf-grey in the colour of his hair.” “No one knew anything of him,” but he showed up when he said he would, he did the work well, marshalling the sheep with a voice that was loud and deep, and he went about unbothered by the hauntings that had driven off those before him. He was, in this sense, a model-employee, but then there was his rudeness. He was “awkward and uncivil,” and he refused to go to church, caring neither for religion nor song. The people in general found him to be “repulsive.”
It was Christmas when all this unpleasantness came to a head, Christmas Eve to be specific. Glamr rose that morning and called out to Thorhallur’s wife for food. She, whose name is not given, informed him that this day, the day before the first day of Christmas, was a day of fasting, when none of them would eat. But Glamr had no time for these superstitions, complaining that people were no better off now than they had been in the pre-Christian past when they had no such beliefs, and insisting that he at least be fed. She warned him against it, saying only evil would result, but eventually she did as he asked. Glamr would eat and then leave in a foul mood.
The weather was dark, snowy, and stormy, increasingly so. People later recalled hearing Glamr’s voice at times, but less so throughout the day. By evening, there was a full blizzard, and by nightfall, the surly shepherd still had not returned, not after church service when there was talk of going out in search of him, talk that was quickly quieted given the conditions, and not by Christmas morning. Then they went out to look.
Sheep were everywhere, scattered about by the weather, some of them up into the mountains. In the high valley, the searchers found trampled snow and signs of violent struggle that had torn up earth and stone. Then they found Glamr, dead, blue, and enormously swollen. They also found large tracks leading away with great splashes of blood. The shepherd had fought with the evil creature that had long haunted the farm, they concluded, and though only one body was to be seen, both must have died. At least some good had come of it.
As for Glamr’s large body, they tried that day to bring it down from the valley, but they couldn’t, only getting him partway, for the remains were uncannily heavy. They tried again on the second day of Christmas, using draft animals, but even then they could not bring him all the way to the churchyard. On the third day, a priest came along with them, but this time, they could not even find the body, presumably because of the snow. On the fourth, the priest refused to again come with them. They gave up on bringing Glamr down and buried him there where he lay beneath a pile of stones. It was not long before they knew that he did not rest peacefully, and that they had exchanged the previous haunting for that of Glamr.
The dead shepherd was seen on the farm, sending men who saw him into faints or out of their wits. He was heard on the rooftops, riding the ridges at their peaks, and beating his heels on either side. He was feared, and even those with business there would not go up into the valley.
That spring, Thorhallur again found workers for his farm, and again he recruited an especially powerful man, one named Thorgaut, recently arrived by ship and said to have the strength of two men. Like Glamr before him, he confidently proclaimed that he would not be put off by some “little phantom,” and would not allow it to affect his work. Like Glamr, he took over the sheep when winter came.
Thorgaut seemed ideally suited to the role, once he’d started. He was a capable shepherd and got along well with everyone. Even Glamr’s visitations didn’t bother him. He actually found them entertaining and laughed off Thorhallur’s warnings to keep his distance. Then came Christmas Eve.
That morning, Thorhallur’s wife worried aloud that the same thing would happen again, but Thorgaut reassured her that there was nothing to fear. It was a cold day, with driving snow, and by half-day, Thorgaut had not returned. He wasn’t back in time for church, and Thorhallur tried to muster a search party, but no one could be found who would risk the trolls in the darkness. He wasn’t back by Christmas morning, and after the people had eaten, they went out to look for him. They knew where to look.
Straight to Glamr’s cairn they went, and there Thorgaut was, neck broken, bones all smashed, and very much dead. Not wanting to fully repeat the Glamr story, they hurriedly took him to the churchyard to be buried.
No one felt safe at Thorhallstadir then, and you can understand why. Glamr became even more aggressive after Thorgaut’s death, and soon none would stay there with Thorhallur and his family save for one last herdsman who had been there for many years. Then, one morning when Thorhallur’s wife went out to the cowshed, she heard a loud crack and a bellowing from the cows. They were attacking one another in a fury, and among them was the old herdsman’s body, legs in one stall, head in the next, back broken over a raised stone edge. Finally, Thorhallur and his family fled, leaving behind them all their animals to be killed by Glamr.
The rest of the winter, they spent with friends, neither they nor any other going to Thorhallstadir, no one taking horse or dog safely up into the valley. But in spring, astonishingly, Thorhallur and his family went back again. Glamr was less active when the sun was high, the days long and light, but the early winter came, and with it, more Glamr. This time, it was Thorhallur’s daughter that was killed, and the farmer again abandoned his home.
This, and you may have been wondering when we’d get back to him, was when Grettir reentered the narrative. We find him doing well, really, visiting people, befriending that boyhood ballgame rival who he’d fought on his return to Iceland. He’s in his social era. We find him visiting an acquaintance who relates to him the goings-on at Thorhallstadir. Of course, Grettir is intrigued.
Remember how much he wanted to test his strength, whether his adversary was human or not. That was really what seemed to fuel his belligerence as an adult. Now, as he spoke with his friend about the draugr that haunted Thorhallstadir, he saw such a chance. His friend spoke against the idea, saying it was a threat to his good luck, another reference to his very finite luck. He said that only evil came from evil such as Glamr, but Grettir would not be dissuaded, and off to Thorhallstadir he went.
Thorhallur greeted him warmly. He warned him that he should not stay there at the farm—he made no attempt to pretend that it was ever anything but deeply unsafe, and in this he had been constant. But when he saw that Grettir really would be staying, he welcomed him in and saw his horse locked securely away.
One night, Grettir slept there, and there were no disturbances in the night, no threat to Thorhallur’s visitor or his horse, and Thorhallur was happy, saying that usually Glamr rode the roofs of houses every night, or else smashed in the doors. Another night, he slept there, and again it passed in peace. But this time, when they went out to check, they found Grettir’s horse dragged through the broken doorway and its bones all broken. Thorhallur warned his guest one last time to leave, or else he would certainly die. You already know that Grettir wouldn’t leave.
On the third night, Grettir slept fully clothed on the floor. He had a cloak wrapped over him and tucked beneath his head and feet, with a gap at his eyes to see. He had his feet pointing toward the entry and set against a bedframe.
He lay there, looking at that entry. The frame had been ripped away, a door crudely installed, and a partition that had been in front of it had been broken. Beds and bedding had been torn and tossed about, and a burning light lit the scene.
Late in the night, Grettir heard Glamr’s coming. He heard him banging against the wall and then climbing it. He heard him riding the rooftop, thumping his heels against the wood so that the timber creaked, heard him up there for a long while before clambering down. He saw him come through the door, bending to enter and then stretching up, his hands to the roof beam. Glamr seemed to him impossibly large and large-headed. But still Grettir lay there, not moving, not giving himself away.
He lay there as Glamr approached him, the draugr wondering what this bundle on the floor was. He lay there and braced his feet against as Glamr grabbed a handful of his cloak and pulled, once and then again harder. At the third pull, even harder this time, Grettir was yanked to his feet and Glamr left staring at the fragment of cloak in his hand.
Immediately, Grettir tried to take advantage of Glamr’s surprise. He lunged in, wrapping his arms round the dead man’s middle, looking to put him to the ground. But Glamr was too strong for that, pushing back against Grettir’s arms and holding himself up. Back toward the doorway Glamr went, Grettir gripping on, trying to find purchase with his feet and keep the fight inside, within the lamplight, while Glamr pulled and pulled, dragging him always out toward the dark. Grettir had finally found a contest of strength he couldn’t win, not by strength alone.
Now, as he realized that he could not pull more mightily than Glamr, that he was being drawn ever closer to the opening, Grettir changed his approach. With Glamr straining to pull him along, Grettir suddenly kicked off of the threshold stone and threw himself forward into the draugr. Together, they crashed through the doorway, Glamr smashing through the beam over the door and bringing the roof down behind them. Together, they tumbled down to the ground, Grettir landing on top.
Outside, the moon was flickering between the clouds, and just then the moon shot through clearly, fully illuminating Glamr’s staring face. It was, Grettir would say, the only thing that had ever scared him. Exhausted from the struggle and transfixed by Glamr’s eyes, his strength abandoned him entirely, and “he lay between life and death.” He could only listen helplessly as Glamr, who had more evil power within him than other draugr, began to speak.
“You have been very determined to meet me, Grettir,” he said, “but it will hardly surprise you if you do not get much luck from me. I will tell you this: you have acquired by now only half of the strength and vigour which you were destined to get if you had not met me. I cannot take away from you what you already have, but I can see to it that you will never be stronger than you are now, and yet you are strong enough, as many will find to their cost. Up until now your deeds have brought you fame, but from now on outlawry and slaughter will come your way, and most of your acts will bring you ill luck and misfortune. You will be made an outlaw and forced to live by yourself. I also lay this curse on you: you will always see before you these eyes of mine, and they will make your solitude unbearable, and this shall drag you to your death.”
When Glamr finally finished speaking his curse, Grettir was at last able to regain his strength, to rise, draw his sword, and cut off Glamr’s head. He and Thorhallur burned the draugr’s body. They gathered up the cold ashes in a skin bag and “buried them at a place far away from all paths of men and pasture of animals.”
In the aftermath of his deed, the people of the neighbouring farms hailed Grettir for his strength and courage, for truly no one in Iceland could be found to match him. He found what he’d wanted, a true match for his powers and abilities. He’d been tested, and he had passed the test, but he had paid a high price in doing so. Just how high, we are going to see next episode, as follow the saga of Grettir on into its next chapters.
Thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you then.