John Vernon Lord from “Gísli's Saga” in Icelandic Sagas, Volume 2
YOU CAN LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE OR ON YOUR USUAL PODCAST APP
Last episode, we started in on the story of Grettir the Strong, and as it was around Halloween at the time I really focused on the seasonal elements there. In particular, we saw Grettir’s confrontations with the undead, first in the form of a kind of barrow-wight who he fought there beneath the ground, then in the risen figure of Glamr who caused terror whenever the Christmas season came around and with his final moments cursed Grettir. I focused on those thematic elements, quickly becoming holiday appropriate again with the approach of Christmas, but there was much, much more to the story than just battling with the undead. Here, we’ll get into that “much, much more.”
We’ll see how that antagonistic youth who we met last time was not going to entirely shed that particular aspect of his personality, but how his story, that of a cursed life of solitude, was going to become a tragic one, an increasingly sympathetic one. We will see it range once more to Norway and criss-cross back again to Iceland, and then, in an unlikely epilogue to the story, take us all the way to Constantinople. But we won’t be getting there just yet. Grettir’s story had a long way still to go.
Hello, and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, the podcast that covers medieval history through the stories of its travellers, its merchants, envoys, and combative outlaws. And it is, as I may have heard me mention on here before, a podcast that is supported by a Patreon, a place where you can enjoy early, extra, and ad-free listening, all for less than a cup of coffee a month, significantly less if you happen to drink from the fancier end of the coffee pool. This time, I want to especially thank Elijah Ross and Nick Nerja for coming aboard and supporting the podcast. Thank you both very much!
And now, back to the story. Back, I should say, to the saga, the Saga of Grettir the Strong.
Last time out, we covered Grettir’s origins, and those of his family as they settled in Iceland, part of the rare story of settlement in an actually unsettled land but late to that particular party and left without first pick of the best land. We talked about his time as a rather difficult youth and his term in exile after he killed a man in an argument over a bag that may or may not have belonged to him—it’s not totally clear. He went to Norway and built a reputation for heroic deeds in combat with animals, undead, and human beings, but there were more arguments, more killings, and in the end he was forced to leave, to go back to Iceland, where the time of his banishment had conveniently concluded. That’s where he would test himself against the mighty Glamr and suffer from him that curse, to ill luck and check on his strength, to a life of outlawry, and to ever have Glamr’s eyes before him, making his solitude unbearable and dragging him to his death. And that’s where we left off.
We pick Grettir’s story back up as he went away from that battle with Glamr, and immediately, we see that the curse was on his mind, and on that of the saga’s author. I have never before faced such a struggle or test of strength he told his friend who he stayed with after the fight. He was advised to act with restraint from then on. His friend, who had urged him not to go face Glamr in the first place, now told him to rein himself in, or else there would be problems. But he said that his anger had become more difficult than ever to control, and besides that, he was now terribly afraid of the dark. He could not bear to be alone with all the nightmarish visions he saw when night came. He had, “Glamr’s sight,” Glámmskyggn, an expression apparently surviving in Iceland, though I don’t know how commonly, for those who see things not as they are. His story was entering a phase of misfortune, one in which he would not know peace, and one bit of trouble was going to lead ever on to another.
What came first was a series of encounters stemming from a confrontation he’d had at a recreational horse fight, where the sporting violence of the horses had spilled over into that of their handlers and the men who were with them. Opposing Grettir had been a man named Kormak, and Grettir, along with a few of his brother Atli’s men, would later have another encounter with Kormak. They’d be accosted by him and his people on the road and again come to blows, one of Alti’s men dying and two of Kormak’s before they were separated by a group that happened to come along, led by Thorbjorn Oxen-Might. An unusually strong man, as you might expect from his name, and with a reputation for being a difficult one, but it was his kinsman Thorbjorn the Traveller, a seafaring merchant, who looked to provoke, making insulting remarks there and then later. That had all been before the Christmas hauntings and the killing of Glamr, but Thorbjorn the Traveller hadn’t forgotten, had not let go.
At Oxen-Might’s feast, Thorbjorn was still talking about the encounter between Kormak and Grettir. Oxen-Might himself spoke highly of Grettir when the subject of the fight came up, saying that Kormak would have fared badly if they hadn’t come along to put an end to things, but his relative the Traveller was less complimentary. He was outright dismissive, saying he’d seen nothing much to impress him in Grettir. Even when he was cautioned not to speak rashly of our protagonist, who was not there but would surely hear of it, he basically called Grettir a coward, saying he’d looked scared at that fight and all too glad to be separated from his enemies. “I find no courage in him unless he is backed up by a large following,” he concluded.
“There was a lot of animosity between the … farms [that] winter,” read the saga, “but neither one attacked the other.”
With the arrival of spring came a ship from Norway and with it word that the land had been unified by a new king, Olaf II, or Olaf the Stout, who had done so in 1015. There was news of his need for good retainers, an appealing opportunity for young men looking to carve out something for themselves. Grettir heard the call and was determined to answer it, to earn honours from King Olaf, and arranged his place on a ship, one of many that came to a northern market where foreign merchants would come ashore and trade from tents or turfed booths. Thorbjorn Traveller heard it too, and he arranged a place on the very same ship bound for Norway. As they had when he’d spoken rudely before, those around the Traveller warned him against angering Grettir. They said Thorbjorn should avoid sharing the ship with him, but he would not listen.
It is quite possible that the enforced proximity of the voyage would always have brought Grettir and Thorbjorn to blows, but as it turned out, events weren’t allowed to get that far. Thorbjorn’s mouth wouldn’t let them.
Grettir’s father had been known to be ill of late, and his health had recently taken a turn for the worse, when Thorbjorn came riding from his region to the beach where the ship waited, along with the merchants and others bound for Norway.
What news, they asked him. Only that Grettir’s father had probably died, he replied. It was sad news, they all agreed. How had it happened? It had been no kind of death for a warrior, he said. The old man “suffocated like a dog from the smoke in his own fireplace,” but anyways, he’d already grown senile. One more time the people around the Traveller told him how foolish he was to speak so, but he just scoffed at this, boasting that Grettir would need to lift his sword much higher than he had the last time they’d seen one another. He would not listen, but this time, Grettir had been there and heard for himself, and this time, he did the cautoning.
Your death will not be in a smoke-filled room, he said, and it may not be long in coming. But Thorbjorn wouldn’t listen to him either, and he wouldn’t apologize. He refused to retract anything, only adding further insult against Grettir’s bravery, only saying Grettir had been lucky back when they’d rescued him the previous year, back when he’d been beaten like a bull’s head. Grettir replied in verse then:
“How long you’ve got in the tongue,
it endlessly waggles on!
Some bowmen get strung up
to nip that fault in the bud.
Many who yearned for a scrap
committed lesser offences
than you, Traveller, and still
they paid the price with their lives.”
The threat was pretty clear, not that Thorbjorn acknowledged it as such. I do not see that I’m any closer to death now, he said, whatever you mumble.
This was all too much for Grettir. Defend yourself now, he declared, for you will not have a chance later, and so saying, he drew and swung his sword, cutting through Thorbjorn’s raised arm and through his neck, killing him instantly.
Everyone present agreed that it was but little loss, for Thorbjorn Traveller had been a “quarrelsome and sneering” sort. They agreed that Grettir’s blow had been a heavy one, worthy of a king’s man and a king’s honours. Soon after, they were aboard the ship and sailing for Norway, Grettir there with them, hopeful of presenting himself before that king. He was not always responsible for initiating these fatal incidents, but then he did keep on being involved in them, and that wasn’t about to stop.
East to Norway went other ships that same year, all seeking favour with the king. Among them went the sons of an important Icelander, a chieftain and seafarer named Thorir of Gard, and they reached the coast ahead of Grettir, comfortably protected from the foul weather that assailed him.
His ship had reached the coast and then followed it north, bad weather worsening as they went, until one evening, foul conditions turning worse, they had to take shelter. In the driving snow, they found a grassy bank and were able to bring their cargo safely ashore, but for all their efforts, they could not manage to start a fire, more and more necessary for health and life as the night went on. They could however start to see a fire, something pretty substantial across the channel from where they’d come ashore. They could see that promise of warmth, and they started to talk about how they might reach it.
The boat was too unsafe in this weather, of that they were certain, but they wondered whether anyone might be fit enough to make the swim. Grettir’s only contribution was to say that such a deed was nothing for the great men who had lived in the past. He probably should have said nothing.
The others had little interest in this talk of the past. Could he manage it now, they questioned. Was he not now the most accomplished of the Icelanders? He allowed himself to be talked into the effort, expressing doubt all the way that it would turn out very well for him in the end. In wool pants and tunic, and with a wooden basin tethered to his waist, he made the swim.
Waiting for him on the other side, though unaware of his coming, were those sons of Thorir of Gard and others with them, all gathered comfortably in a hall used by passing travellers. They had a large fire and good amounts of straw at the ready. When Grettir burst in on them, clothes frozen to his body and hulking in the doorway like a troll, they attacked. They struck at this apparition from the darkness outside with anything and everything they could lay hands on, including burning branches from the fire. There was no time for Grettir to explain himself, only to defend his face as best he could, and, when he saw the opportunity, to snatch away one of those fiery branches and run with it. He swam it back across the channel in that basin and was greeted enthusiastically by the others, who acclaimed him as unequalled in courage and best of men. The rest of the night, they passed safely round their newly won fire.
In the morning, it was decided that they should all go and deliver their thanks to that hall, to thank them for the gift of heat and light, Grettir evidently not having told them exactly how that “gift” had been received. Of course, when they crossed the channel, there was no hall to be found, only smouldering piles of ashes and scorched human bones. In the violent chaos that had greeted Grettir’s monstrous appearance, the fire had gotten out of control, and the hall and all it contained had been burned up.
Now, those around Grettir did not praise his bravery. They spoke of misfortune and held him responsible for this “horrible crime,” even though Grettir insisted he had left all alive and had no knowledge of what had followed. He grumbled that he had always known they would repay him poorly for his aid and bitterly regretted having extended a hand to help such a bunch of cowards.
In the aftermath of the fire, the story of what had happened spread, with the merchants from the boat telling everyone of Grettir’s misdeed, and when it was learned that Thorir’s sons had died in the hall, they cut him loose entirely, refusing to have anything more to do with him.
It was a difficult period for Grettir, not an outlaw in law but certainly cast out by society, unwanted and despised everywhere he went along the Norwegian coast, alone, trying still to reach King Olaf in Trondheim, now more to clear his name than to win honour, though he still had that hope, but struggling to get there, only managing it long after the unflattering story of the fire had done so ahead of him.
You must be Grettir the Strong, said the king to Grettir when they met, Olaf not really needing help in identifying the large man who stood before him, and Grettir acknowledged that he was. Grettir asked to explain himself, to explain the events of the night when the hall had burned, and then, when he’d done so, to submit to any ordeal the king thought lawful so that he might clear his name of the deaths.
As it had before and would again, the topic of Grettir’s luck came up here, with Olaf expressing doubt that it would hold for him to throw off these charges, wondering if his fortune would be sufficient even as he also said that he “thought it most likely” Grettir had not willingly burned the men to death. Still, he agreed to allow Grettir to attempt an ordeal, to “carry the glowing iron” a fixed distance in answer to the charges, a common method of seeking heavenly judgment that still had a few hundreds years to go before the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council barred clerical involvement in such matters.
In Grettir’s case, he fasted in preparation, and he showed up at the church on his assigned day. He walked through the crowds that had thronged there to see this most unusual man to look at. But as he passed through the crowd, a strange and ugly child leapt out in front him. Some, the saga records, have said that it wasn’t really a boy at all but actually some kind of “unclean spirit.” The boy, if that’s what he was, confronted Grettir, protesting the injustice in this land “where men call themselves Christians,” the injustice of this “evil man” given the chance to prove himself after being responsible for the deaths of so many. He taunted Grettir, calling him “the son of a sea-witch and many other evil names.” Finally, Grettir lost his patience and struck the boy with his fist, knocking him immediately unconscious, some said killing him.
When King Olaf came to see what had caused the scuffle in the crowd and saw Grettir there at the centre of it over the fallen boy, he shook his head. The ordeal would not go forward. Grettir expressed his wish still to serve at the king’s side, saying there were few if any to be found there to match him and that he and the king were related, as indeed they were, if distantly, but Olaf, though he did not disagree with either point, told him only to pass the winter in peace there in Norway, but that he must then return to Iceland, where his bones were fated to lie. “There are few men like you on account of your strength and courage,” he said, “But you are a man of such great ill luck that you cannot be with us.” “Trouble always comes from thoughtlessness, and if ever there was a man who was cursed, then it must be you.”
Grettir went away from his audience with Olaf disappointed. He stayed a while longer in that town, in hopes of further help from the king, but there was no help to be had. He spent much of the winter on a farm, where he aided its owner against a threatening berserker of the classic, shield-biting variety, and he visited with his half-brother Thortsein, who lived in Tonsberg, south of Oslo.
There’s a scene here where the two of them lie close to one another, their arms out of the covers. Thorstein remarked that he had never seen an arm like that of his brother, nor was he surprised that it had struck such famously fearsome blows. Grettir, in turn, said his brother’s arms were more like tongs. “I would scarcely imagine you have the strength of a woman,” he said. “That may well be,” answered Thorstein, “but you should know that these slender arms will be the ones to avenge you, or [else] you will never be avenged.”
His time in Norway finished, Grettir arranged his return passage to Iceland, and he parted in friendship from his brother Thorstein. The two would never see each other again.
…
Back in Iceland, events had not stood still for Grettir’s time abroad. For one thing, his father Asmund had died. That sickness which Thorbjorn the Traveller had rudely mocked, he had finally succumbed to. In his last moments he had called his family to him and left the management of his land and wealth to Atli, though he worried that his son would not be left in peace to do so. He spoke of the hope that his youngest son Illugi would become a fine and full-grown man, if only he could stay alive. About Grettir, still abroad, he would only say “I have nothing to say, because to me his life seems like a wheel spinning.”
Asmund’s had not been the only death in the family.
In the aftermath of Thorbjorn Traveller’s killing at Grettir’s hands, those present had been largely unconcerned for the contentious and argumentative man who had, they generally felt, gotten what he’d deserved, but his kinsman Thorbjorn Oxen-Might had not taken the matter so lightly, and he’d promised that blows would be dealt to match.
The surviving Thorbjorn had friends staying with him, a pair of brothers. One day, when Atli and five other men journeyed home with a load of dried fish, these friends, at Thorbjorn’s urging, waylaid Atli on the road. They and their people outnumbered him and his eight to six, but in the end both brothers were slain. Atli, though a farmer who said he had never killed with weapons before, conducted himself well, “peaceful but courageous when put to the test,” the saga would say, killing three men, including one of the brothers, whose shield and knee he sliced through before the finishing blow.
In the legal proceedings that followed, both sides gathered supporters at the thing, the assembly for deciding such matters, and both sides chose arbitrators, with Thorbjorn selecting a man known to be vain but shrewd to be his. The settlement that was reached called for half-compensation to be paid by Atli for the killing of the brothers, only half because those brothers had been the aggressors in the first place. The other killings on the day, those of people of the house of one side or the other, were deemed to have balanced themselves out, and Atli’s kinsman who had been with him was made to leave the region but was not considered an outlaw. It was all pleasing enough to Atli, who had been insistent all along that he should not be exiled, but not so much to Thorbjorn Oxen-Might who even as they reconciled made clear that matters were not settled. And they were not.
There was more disagreement between Thorbjorn and Atli, this time over a farmhand who had left Thorbjorn’s farm and gone to Atli’s, though Atli seems to have thought little of him. There was Thorbjorn’s envy of Atli, who was well-liked. There was the morning when Atli’s men were away cutting the hay or else fishing, and Thorbjorn rode to Atli’s home. He knocked loudly at the door and then scampered round the back like a child, unseen when Atli’s wife came to answer. He knocked again, was not there when Atli first went to the doorway, but then, as Atli leaned out to look, he appeared from behind the frame and drove his weapon into Atli’s chest. Atli looked down and remarked rather dryly on the spear sprouting from him. “Broad spears are now in fashion,” he said, before falling to the ground.
Thorbjorn made no effort to conceal his responsibility, shouting from his horse as he rode off that the killing had been his. People thought poorly of him for what he’d done, but there was no power to bring him to justice. It fell to Grettir to prosecute the grievance, and he was still away, not that this stopped his enemies from bringing action against him.
With summer came a ship from Norway carrying, not Grettir, but news of his deeds abroad, news of the hall-burning and the deaths of the sons of Thorir of Gard. Thorir, understandably, was enraged, and he sought vengeance at the althing, the annual general assembly of representatives from all over Iceland where he brought his case.
What Grettir had going for him was his absence. With no one there to answer the charges and defend themselves, many thought they should not and could not proceed. As one well-respected legal expert said of the accusation, “Certainly this is foul work, if it is true as reported. But a story is always half told if only one side speaks, because many people willingly choose the worst if there are two interpretations of what happened.” He and others would not act against someone who could not defend themselves. But there were those who would.
Thorir was extremely powerful, popular both in his own region and with other powerful men, persuasive and absolutely unwilling not to have his way in this matter. Many saw more spite than justice in what was done there at the althing, but by the time it was done, Grettir had been made an outlaw, and Thorir had declared a reward for the taking of his head.
These were the circumstances in which Grettir arrived back in Iceland, in the late summer, circumstances which he of course knew nothing about, though he’d quickly learn. When his ship reached land, he was given this news all at once: his father had died, along with his brother, and he was an outlaw. It was a lot to take in all at once, and he responded, as he often would in important moments, in verse:
"That threefold onslaught stunned
a smart verse-smith to dumbness:
my father’s death; my brother’s
slaying; myself an outlaw.
Yet, come tomorrow morning,
fellow swordsman, those
who seek out strife will feel
these griefs far more than I."
Grettir made his way home, leaving at night so the merchants wouldn’t notice, hooded as he rode. He stayed for a few days with a relative named Grim who told him of how things had gone, of the growing power of Thorbjorn and the risk it posed to Grettir’s mother Asdis, the doubt as to whether she would be able to remain at her home at Bjarg if matters went on as they had. Grim told him he was welcome any time but also said that he didn’t want to be outlawed himself for hosting him. So it would be now.
Reaching his home in the middle of the night, Grettir entered in the dark and found his way to his mother’s bed. Who was it, she asked, and when she knew it was him, Asdis spoke again, with a sigh. “I welcome you, kinsman, even though my sons are for me a fleeting joy. That son on whom I most depended is now killed, while you have been made an outlaw, a criminal for whom there will be no compensation. The third is so young that there is nothing he can do.”
“It is an old saying,” answered Grettir, “that one loss is cured by suffering an even greater one. People can be consoled by more than compensation alone, and it is likely that vengeance will be taken for Atli.”
This chain of conflict and bloodshed stemming from a violent encounter at a sporting event, the other party in which had long since exited the story, was not complete. Not as far as Grettir was concerned, and not for Thorbjorn either.
Grettir stayed on at Bjarg, but not for long. He didn’t want his enemies to learn of his presence there. But he learned of Thorbjorn’s presence, there at the end of haycutting season, learned that Thorbjorn Oxen-Might was to be found at home, and few men there around him. As for what came next, you may be able to guess, but we’ll be getting to it next time, as the Saga of Grettir the Strong continues, and his story becomes a largely lonely and desperate one.
Thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you then.