John Vernon Lord - Grettir and Illugi’s ram at the door from “Grettir's Saga” in Icelandic Sagas, Volume 2
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Life on Drangey was good for the brothers Asmundarson. It seems to me that they would have spent fairly little time together before this, with Grettir having been away for many of Illugi’s years of childhood, away in Norway, looking to serve the king there, or still in Iceland but also away, cast out from polite society and forced ever to move here and there, only occasionally coming back to the family home, and only temporarily, until his enemies learned of his location and he was again forced to move.
But now the two brothers made up for lost time. They had an ideal situation, under the circumstances. They apparently had no shortage of food between the birds and their eggs, and for the first period of their stay at least, there were the sheep, left there by the farmers from the mainland. They had the company of that grey-bellied ram which they’d spared, a cheerful presence in a harsh place, providing levity that one might expect to be lacking. They had someone there to do their bidding, to go out looking for wood and tend to the fire, but this last benefit was a double-edged sword. That helper of theirs, that “slave,” by at least one translation of his status, was not so content with the situation as they were.
Glaum had chosen to come with them in the first place—he had freely offered his services—but he could be forgiven for not anticipating exactly what kind of life that would entail, and it had actually been a few years, 3 or 4, that he’d spent sharing the brothers island-bound isolation. As someone without their same stake in the game, those years had begun to lengthen, to wear away at him until discontent built in tandem with disinclination to labour away in their service. They in turn, Grettir in particular, lost patience with him, becoming increasingly biting toward him, threatening whippings of their now-reluctant volunteer.
Or at least, that’s how I tend to read it. Pálsson and Fox, in the introduction to their translation, actually praise Grettir for his patience with Glaum, seeing generosity, charity of a kind, in bringing the, quote, “despicable buffoon” along, showing “great tolerance,” and providing a place for him to live at their side, even if we might view it as a not especially desirable place. And fair enough. Glaum had seen them on the road and wandered over to ask leave to join them. He’d seen them from a farm, but that he had dropped everything so quickly to leave it indicates that there was probably nothing there to drop and he was giving up nothing in doing so.
Glaum had initially entertained. He had, in a detail I’d missed on first reading, told them “many stories about people in the district,” and Grettir had been amused. Maybe there’d been more to come from those stories than just laughter though. Maybe there’d been useful information there about the people the brothers would be dealing with, the ones who would try to pry them from the island.
But to whatever degree Glaum had been useful or pleasantly distracting, to whatever degree he had become an irritant, however we judge Grettir’s treatment of him, it was clear that Glaum was the weak link in their little company, that he should never have been there in the first place. If Grettir’s belligerence was going to bring their enemies to the door, it was Glaum’s carelessness that was going to leave that door unlocked.
Hello, and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, a history podcast which covers the stories of medieval travellers, whether they be friars or merchants, whether they leave their own account or drift further into the world of fiction in the sagas of later writers. And it is, as you may have heard, a history podcast that is supported by a Patreon, where you can listen early, ad-free, and more often for as little as a dollar a month. Thank you, everyone who is currently supporting the Patreon or has done so in the past.
And now, back to the story, back to the end of the story of Grettir the strong.
When last we spoke, Grettir, his younger brother Illugi, and their reluctant helper Glaum had arrived at the island of Drangey. They’d found it uninhabited but certainly not unwanted. They’d seen off those who’d come from the mainland to check on their holdings, showing enough resolve that only one man remained invested in doing so. When last we spoke, that one man, Thorbjorn Hook, was turning away in disgust and dismay from yet another attempt at dislodging Grettir and his brother from their island home. It was not looking promising for him.
That summer brought the althing and with it new discussion of Grettir’s case, but his cause was weakened by the recent deaths of two powerful and sympathetic figures, people who didn’t exactly want him staying in their home but would have been inclined to speak for him and had voices that people were inclined to listen to. There were still those in attendance who argued for his side. They asserted that Grettir had now served 20 years as an outlaw, counting the lesser outlawry away in Norway and the greater one there in Iceland, and having spent 20 such years, he should now be released from this condition.
But there were others who countered that he’d committed many deeds since that would in themselves have had him outlawed, far too many to be granting him peace now. Besides, Thorir of Gard, who had not forgotten or forgiven his sons’ deaths, pointed out that it had actually only been 19 winters that Grettir had spent as an outlaw, for there had been a year he’d spent as a free man between the two sentences of outlawry. This, the law-speaker accepted but said that he would not accept that any man should suffer as an outlaw for more than 20 years, not any kind of law that is attested to elsewhere apparently, but an important point in this story. As the althing ended, Grettir looked like being in his final year of exile from society.
For the people of the district of Dragney, you’d think this would have come as pleasing news—maybe Grettir would finally go away—but the farmers who had agreed to let Thorbjorn Hook have their shares now complained to him that he must either deal with Grettir as he’d promised to—he must kill him—or else he must return their shares. Maybe they feared that a Grettir freed of legal restrictions would simply remain where he was. The clock was ticking, and Thorbjorn was motivated to widen his search for solutions, ending up at his foster mother, apparently not the step mother who I mentioned taking his eye last episode, not according to the story which has him perhaps having killed her in response.
The very much still alive foster mother’s name was Thurid. She was disregarded by many as feeble and old, as one who had forgotten anything she had ever known that was worthwhile to tell, but she seemed, in conversation with Thorbjorn, to have lost nothing of the sort and to have, in addition, had knowledge of the kind of magic and sorcery that had faded with the Christian conversion. The law, the saga tells us, held that sacrifices and pagan rites were only banned as public spectacles but still might be, and indeed were, pursued in private without legal penalty. In this story, taking place around the seams of conversion, this was the sort of help that Thorbjorn was now after, the sort of help that Thurid promised she could provide.
The first step, she told him, was that he had to go back to Drangey and this time take her with him so that she could get a better sense of Grettir and, crucially, of his luck. She had to see and hear him for herself. Thorbjorn, for his part, didn’t really want to do this. He had made bold pronouncements about the kind of thing that was going happen should he make another trip to the island, and besides, he always left in a worse mood than he arrived, but he did need her help, someone’s help certainly, and off they went.
To begin with, it all went much as it ever did, with Grettir up there at the top of the ladder, Thorbjorn stuck down below, Thorbjorn offering to wave away his losses and let the matter rest uncompensated, if only Grettir would leave, Grettir smugly assuring him that he would be doing no such thing. “You can do whatever you want,” he called down to Thorbjorn, “but here I will wait for whatever comes.” Along these familiar lines, the encounter proceeded, until Thurid made herself known, speaking up suddenly from where she’d hidden herself among some blankets.
“These men are brave but not lucky, and there is a great difference between you. You make them good offers and they refuse everything. Few things lead more certainly to misfortune than not being able to accept what is good. Now I pronounce the following on you, Grettir: your good fortune has now left you along with your luck, your defences, and your good sense. Things will become worse for you the longer you live. I expect that, from now on, you will have fewer carefree days than you have had up to now.”
Grettir, who had never shied away from threats of any kind, now recoiled from this outburst, wondering aloud what devil it was that Thorbjorn had brought along in the ship. “Curse that old witch,” he spat, when Illugi had identified her. “...words have never disturbed me more than those she just spoke. Of this I am sure: she and her sorcery will lead to harm. But she ought to have something from me in return, since she came to visit us,” “something” like a large rock that he then hurled down into the ship, breaking Thurid’s thigh and bringing a “I would have preferred that you hadn’t done that” from Illugi.
Thorbjorn went away that day without hope that anything at all had changed for the better in his situation, lamenting that he had endured one disgrace upon another without compensation, the injury to his foster mother now heaped upon each earlier insult. People in the district talked openly of his repeated failures to solve the Grettir problem. They mocked him for it, but Thurid was more confident than he, assuring Thorbjorn that so long as she survived injury, she would avenge what had been done to her and bring about his success.
It was late autumn of that year when Thurid recovered enough to act, to ask that she be taken by cart down to the shore, though for what, she would not specify, only that it was but a small errand but one which might lead to greater consequences. When they got there, it was a piece of driftwood that she went to as if drawn by some power, a large one that, unusually, still had all its roots attached.
She had them turn the wood over, revealing a spot at the root that had been burned and scraped. She had them smooth that spot with knives, making a surface on which she could work, and then, with her own knife, she carved runes, reddening them with her own blood and speaking spells aloud as she did so. She circled the wood, walking backward and counter to the movement of the sun, and chanting more incantations all the while. Then she had them set the log adrift, sending it out to sea toward Drangey, where it would “bring full harm to Grettir.” Witness to all of this, Thorbjorn despaired at what good it could possibly do.
What nonsense is this, I picture him grumbling. He would have preferred some more immediate and practical help, but that was coming sooner than he could have anticipated, something we’ll get into after this quick break.
…
It was the very next day after Thurid had worked her magic at the shoreline, that Illugi and Grettir were out walking when they saw the large piece of driftwood that had washed up in the night, a real prize worthy of celebration given their need for fuel, but Grettir saw through it right way. “An evil tree and sent with ill intent,” he said, kicking at it. The two of them threw it out to sea and continued their search.
The day after that, they were again out looking for wood, for that need was a constant one, when they saw that the same driftwood had returned, this time closer to the bottom of the ladder. Again, they sent it back out to sea, both agreeing that they should have nothing to do with it. But crucially, they did not share this information with the other person on the island.
On the third day, the winds and rains were fierce. As Grettir did not wish to get out into the foul weather himself, he ordered Glaum to go and gather wood, and Glaum was of course not pleased to hear this, for who would be? He bemoaned his poor treatment at their hands and the way he was always the one who had to suffer the worst conditions, but when he stomped off all the same, he was delighted to immediately find a sizeable piece of wood and right next to the ladder too. Incredibly pleased with himself, he wrestled it up the ladder and over to the hut, hurling it to the ground with a loud crash that brought out Grettir and his axe.
Do your job as well in cutting the wood, as I did in bringing it here, Glaum rather pompously told him. And Grettir, boiling over with irritation at the man the text again terms his slave, did not recognize the wood before him for the cursed object he had already twice rejected. He was too bothered. Glaum had the reputation of a talker, a boaster, one who amused some, but they’d been stuck together in their island retreat for years. Filled with annoyance, Grettir swung his axe. But the blade turned as it struck the wood. It skipped aside and slashed right into his leg above the knee, all the way to the bone. He had come through so many fights unscathed, with foes both human and monstrous, it was almost as if he alone could have inflicted such a wound on his body, as if he could have fended off any hand but his own.
Now Grettir looked properly at the driftwood and saw it for what it was. “The one who wishes me harm has turned out to be the more powerful,” he said, gloomily, before lashing out at Glaum. “You have now caused two accidents,” he told him, referring back to the issue with the fire. “If you make a third blunder, it will be your death and that of all of us.”
Maybe a threat, maybe more just a stern reminder that their enemies hunted them and they could not afford such slip-ups.
As for the wound itself, it was deep, but Illugi bandaged it up and thought it not too serious. Grettir, considering how he’d acquired it, was not so certain.
Nights passed, and the injury seemed to be healing well, giving every appearance of closing up quickly and healthily. For three nights, it caused Grettir no pain or bother at all, but on the fourth he thrashed about in pain. He could find no rest and called on Illugi to unbind his leg. The wound had split open and looked worse than ever. It was sorcery, he said, and as he often did, he spoke in verse, telling of many times he had bested those who came against him with force of arms and then concluding that, quote:
“Time after time I saved
my neck from their probing spears
by trusting my strength
to spoil each ambush.
But, mumbling her spells, that haggard
crone with her stone-set necklace
stumbled me: a godlike power
resides in her cruel decrees.”
Grettir warned that now was the time they must be most watchful, for his enemies would soon be coming to insure his death. Though he could not comfortably lie still, he could not go anywhere, so Illugi was to stay by his side while Glaum was ordered to guard the cliffs each day and see to the ladder. Glaum dismissed Grettir’s concerns, saying that no one would come for them in such weather, for it was worsening, but he agreed to do as he was asked.
A week passed from the wounding, and then a second, Grettir’s whole leg swelling up with infection, Illugi tending to him day and night, and Glaum dragging himself to and from the cliffs.
Meanwhile, on the mainland and unaware of all of this, Thorbjorn was beginning to despair that he’d dealt yet another knock against his own reputation with their wasted trip, when Thurid urged him go once more to the island. Didn’t she want to go with him, he asked her, but she said no. Her greeting had already been sent and would by now have been received. So Thorbjorn gathered men to him. Many turned him down, and his own brother-in-law spoke against the whole venture, saying that there was something not entirely Christian about the whole thing, urging him to at least avoid killing Illugi at all costs and warning that if he did not deal with Grettir honourably, there would be consequences. Still Thorbjorn went, and 18 men went him, their ship arriving just as darkness was falling.
Immediately, they knew that the situation was different, that this time Thorbjorrn’s efforts might not be so fruitless. The ladder was left down for them and apparently unguarded, for Glaum, who had grown increasingly irritated at being forced to carry out this task which he saw as basically unnecessary, had finally refused to do it. He’d been driven out of the hut as usual, but when he’d gotten to the cliff, he just lay down and slept there. And that’s where Thorbjorn and his men found him snoring when they climbed up the ladder. “Truly he is in bad straits,” remarked Thorbjorn, “who lets his life depend on you.”
They slapped Glaum awake and made him talk, made him tell them everything of the brothers’ situation. They expressed disgust at his betrayal of his master even as they declared that it was not a good master. They beat him unconscious, more it seems as punishment for that betrayal than out of any concern for what he might do, for indeed, what could he have possibly done?
When their knock was first heard at the hut door, it was interpreted first by Illugi as that of their friend the grey-bellied ram. “This time he knocks rather hard,” observed Grettir, “and not in a kindly manner either.”
That was when the door burst inward, but Thorbjorn and his men could not get in. Illugi was up too quickly, weapons in his hands and pressing them back, slashing the blades from their spear shafts and then spearing one of them himself before they tried something else. They climbed to the roof and started to tear at it, but Grettir clambered to his feet and impaled one of them from below. It was going to be the last time he would get to his feet.
Thorbjorn called for calm and caution. Victory was theirs—they needn’t expose themselves to too much risk. They ripped at the roof-beam and broke it down, and then they climbed into the hut. Grettir was up on his knees slashing all around him, and he cut one his assailants in half as they jumped down. Their corpse crashed into him, and he struggled to get free, taking a heavy wound in the back from Thorbjorn as he did so.
“Bare is the back of each man, except those who have a brother,” he said, as Illugi covered his back with a shield. And who guided you, he demanded of Thorbjorn, there in the hut of men there to kill him. “Who guided you to the island?” Presumably he was not really asking how he had found his way to Drangey, for Thorbjorn had clearly been there before. He was, I think, asking whose guidance had brought these enemies successfully into his presence, had arranged for his death.
“Christ showed us the way,” went Thorbjorn’s answer.
“I would guess that evil old woman, your foster mother, showed you the way,” replied Grettir, “because you would be one to trust her counsel.”
“It is now all the same for you,” said Thorbjorn, “whomever I trusted.”
He and his men attacked, but they could do nothing more to harm Grettir with the fight that his brother put up. Try as they might, they suffered worse than they gave, and in the end, they had to press in at Illugi from all sides with raised shields and wood torn from the hut, gradually constricting him more and more, until they had him trapped, immobilized, and then, finally, captured. He had managed to wound most of them in the process, and killed three.
Grettir by that point had fallen forward—he was barely alive. The infection would soon have killed him as it was, and then there was that wound in his back. They dealt him many more, but the wounds scarcely bled. Finally, they judged him dead, and Thorbjorn stepped forward to take his sword, the one he’d taken from the barrow wight, but Grettir’s hand would not release it. They had to cut the hand off before Thorbjorn could have his prize. Then he looked to take another.
With that sword, wrestled by Grettir from the undead below the earth of Norway, Thorbjorn struck at Grettir’s neck, the hard blow breaking a portion of the sword’s cutting edge. His men counselled him not to ruin the blade, for there was in any case no need, for Grettir was already gone. But Thorbjorn chopped down two or three more times, until the head came free.
“We have felled a great champion,” proclaimed the victorious Thorbjorn, speaking then of rewards to come for what they had accomplished, but the men with him had lost their enthusiasm, for all of this now seemed somehow improper, this killing of a sickly man, disfiguring a dead one, the questionable deeds that had brought it about.
Then Thorbjorn turned to Illugi. A shame for you to show such courage, he said, when it is done in the service of an outlaw. Now, like an outlaw, you can be killed with impunity. But Illugi was not cowed in the least.
We’ll see about that, he replied. We’ll see when the althing comes, when wiser judges than yourself and your foster-mother will hear of what has happened, when they hear how you disgraced yourself by turning your weapons on a dying man, how you resorted to magic and sorcery to bring him to that point.
It was a brave speech, and Thorbjorn acknowledged it as such, but what was to be done with Grettir’s little brother who had fought so well. He turned to those who were with him, asking them what they thought ought to be done, but they would only say that he should be the one to make the decision. They perhaps didn’t want to take responsibility for such a deed. So Thorbjorn turned back to Illugi. Would he swear not to bring vengeance against anyone there? So long as he would swear it, then his life and freedom were his. But he wouldn’t.
“That might have been … a matter of discussion, if … you had overcome [Grettir] honourably and with courage. Now, however, there is no chance that I would seek to spare my life by becoming a coward like you. … no one will be more an enemy than I, if I should live …. I would rather choose to die.”
Thorbjorn could not allow him to go free after that. All present praised Illugi’s courage, commending him as without equal among his age, and they executed him in the first of the morning’s light, burying both the brothers beneath piles of stone there on the island. Only Grettir’s head would leave that place.
“In this way,” the saga tells, “the boldest man ever in Iceland lost his life. At the time he was killed he was one winter short of [thirty]-five years of age.”
He was a full outlaw at twenty, after that fire, and for fifteen more winters, an incredibly long time to survive under such circumstances, vulnerable as one was to any who might choose to take your life, unpunished and even monetarily rewarded, kept as one had to be, largely to the outskirts and wild places, to caves or to valleys where trolls watched their sheep. “He was a person who could foresee what was going to happen,” went the musings of the saga, “even though he could do little about it.” He was a person who had been warned not to trust in others and to be wary of sorcery, but that didn’t help him, and perhaps it never could have.
Maybe he was doomed even if he were to seclude himself entirely from others, even if he trusted no one, or at least no one other than Illugi, that little brother who he shared his final years and seems to have found some degree of happiness with. Maybe fate and his bad fortune made it so that it would always be so. That’s certainly what his mother had indicated when she spoke of her prophetic dreams and parted from her sons.
We’ll end things here today, with Grettir and Illugi buried together on Drangey, with Thorbjorn Hook heading triumphantly off, head filled with the promise of prizes to come, not just the island but the riches on offer for the brothers’ killings. Next episode, in a peculiar postscript to this story, we see how that goes for Thorbjorn, and more. We see the legal fallout of the case—would Thorbjorn get what he wanted?—but we also see a startling swing in the story that suddenly whisks us off, back to Norway, but also Rome, and even to Constantinople, as the saga settles its focus on quite a different character, though one you’ve met before.
Thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you then.
Sources:
Grettir's Saga, translated by Jesse Byock. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Grettir's Saga, translated by Denton Fox and Hermann Palsson. University of Toronto Press, 1974.