The Saga of Grettir the Strong by Unknown

First transcribed:Grettis Saga, c. 1300 (English translation, 1869)

Type of work: Folklore

Type of plot: Adventure

Time of plot: Eleventh century

Locale: Iceland, Norway, and Constantinople

Principal characters

• Grettir the Strong, an outlaw
• Asmund Longhair, his father
• Illugi, his youngest brother
• Thorbjorn Oxmain, Grettir’s enemy
• Thorbjorn Slowcoach, Oxmain’s kinsman, killed by Grettir
• Thorir of Gard, an Icelandic chief
• Thorbjorn Angle, Grettir’s slayer
• Thorsteinn Dromund, Grettir’s half brother and avenger

The Story:

Grettir the strong is descended from Onund, a Viking famed for enemies killed in war and the taking of booty from towns plundered on far sea raids. In a battle at Hafrsfjord, Onund loses a leg and is thereafter known as Onund Treefoot. His wife is Aesa, the daughter of Ofeig. Thrand, a great hero, is his companion in arms. During a time of great trouble in Norway, the two heroes sail to Iceland to be free of injustice in their homeland, where the unscrupulous can rob without fear of redress. Onund lives in quiet and plenty in the new land, and his name becomes renowned, for he is valiant. At last he dies. His sons fight after his death, and his lands are divided.

Grettir of the line of Onund is born at Biarg. As a child he shows strange intelligence. He quarrels constantly with Asmund Longhair, his father, and he is very lazy, never doing anything cheerfully or without urging. When he is fourteen years old, grown big in body, he kills Skeggi in a quarrel over a provision bag that falls from his horse, and for that deed his father pays blood money to the kinsmen of Skeggi. Then the Lawman declares that he must leave Iceland for three years. In that way the long outlawry of Grettir begins.

Grettir sets sail for Norway. The ship is wrecked on rocks off the Norwegian coast, but all get safely ashore on land that belongs to Thorfinn, a wealthy landsman of the district. Grettir makes his home with him for a time. At Yuletide, Thorfinn, with most of his household, goes to a merrymaking and leaves Grettir to look after the farm. In Thorfinn’s absence, a party of berserks, or raiders, led by Thorir and Ogmund, come to rob and lay waste to the district. Grettir tricks them by locking them in a storehouse. When they break through the wooden walls, Grettir, armed with sword and spear, kills Thorir and Ogmund and puts the rest to flight. Sometime before this adventure, he entered the tomb of Karr-the-Old, father of Thorfinn, a long-dead chieftain who guarded a hidden treasure. For his brave deed in killing the berserks, Thorfinn gives him an ancient sword from the treasure hoard of Karr-the-Old.

Next Grettir kills a great bear that was carrying off the sheep. In doing so he incurs the wrath of Bjorn, who is jealous of Grettir’s strength and bravery. Then Grettir kills Bjorn and is summoned before Jarl Sveinn. Friends of Bjorn plot to take Grettir’s life. After he kills two of his enemies, his friends save him from the wrath of the jarl, who wishes to banish him. His term of outlawry ends, Grettir sails back to Iceland in the spring.

At this time in Iceland, young Thorgils Maksson, Asmund’s kinsman, is slain in a quarrel over a whale, and Asmund takes up the feud against those who killed him. The murderers are banished.

When Grettir returns, Asmund gives him the welcome that is his due because of his fame as a brave hero. Shortly after his return, Grettir battles with some men after a horse fight. The struggle is halted by a man named Thorbjorn Oxmain. The feud would be forgotten if Thorbjorn Oxmain’s kinsman, Thorbjorn Slowcoach, did not sneer at the hero.

Word comes that a fiend took possession of the corpse of Glam, a shepherd. At night Glam ravages the countryside. He can find no man with whom he can prove his strength, so Grettir goes to meet Glam. They struggle in the house of Thorhall and rip down beams and rafters in their angry might. At last Glam falls exhausted. Defeated, he predicts that Grettir will have no greater strength and less honor in arms from that day on and that he will grow afraid of the dark. Grettir cuts off Glam’s head and burns the body to destroy the evil spirit that possesses the dead shepherd.

Grettir decides to return to Norway. Among the passengers on the boat is Thorbjorn Slowcoach; they fight, and Grettir kills his foe. The travelers land on a barren shore where they are without fire to warm themselves, and Grettir swims across the cove to get burning brands at an inn where the sons of Thorir of Gard, an Icelandic chieftain, are holding a drunken feast. He has to fight to get the fire he wants; in the struggle, hot coals set fire to the straw on the inn floor and the house burns. Charged with deliberately setting fire to the inn and burning those within, Grettir goes to lay the matter before the king. To prove his innocence of the charge of willful burning, he is sentenced to undergo trial by fire in the church, but the ordeal ends when Grettir becomes angry and throws a bystander into the air. The king then banishes him from Norway, but because no ships can sail to Iceland before the spring, Grettir is allowed to remain in the country that winter. He lives some time with a man named Einar, on a lonely farm to which comes the berserk Snaekoll, a wild man who pretends great frenzy during his lawless raids. Grettir seizes him in his mad fit and kills the robber with his own sword. Grettir falls in love with Einar’s beautiful daughter, but he knows that Einar will never give his child to a man of Grettir’s reputation. Giving up his suit, he goes to stay with his half brother, Thorsteinn Dromund. They are men of the same blood, and Thorsteinn swears to avenge Grettir if he is ever killed.

Grettir’s father Asmund dies. On his deathbed he says that little good will come of his son. Grettir’s time of bad luck in Iceland begins. Thorbjorn Oxmain kills Atli, Grettir’s brother, in revenge for the slaying of Thorbjorn Slowcoach, and Thorir of Gard, hearing that his sons were killed in the burning of the inn, charges Grettir with their murder before the court of the Althing. By the time Grettir returns, he is proclaimed an outlaw throughout Iceland. He has little worry over his outlawry from the inn burning. Determined to avenge his brother, he goes alone to Thorbjorn Oxmain’s farm and kills both the man and his son. Grettir’s mother is delighted with his deed, but she predicts that Grettir will not live freely to enjoy his victory. Thorir of Gard and Thorodd, Thorbjorn Oxmain’s kinsman, each put a price of three silver marks upon his head. Soon afterward Grettir is captured by some farmers, but he is released by a wise woman named Thorbjorg.

Avoided by most of his former friends, who will no longer help him, Grettir goes far north to find a place to live. In the forest, he meets another outlaw named Grim, but a short time later, he is forced to kill his companion because Grim intends to kill Grettir for the reward. About that time there is a fear of the dark growing upon Grettir, as Glam prophesied. Thorir of Gard hires Redbeard, another outlaw, to kill Grettir, but Grettir discovers the outlaw’s plans and kills him instead. At last Grettir realizes that he cannot take any forest men into his trust, and yet he is afraid to live alone because of his fear of the dark.

Thorir of Gard attacks Grettir with eighty men, but the outlaw is able to hold them off for a time. Unknown to him, a friend named Hallmund attacks Thorir’s men from the rear, and the attempt to capture Grettir fails. Nevertheless, Grettir can not stay long in any place, for all men turn against him. Hallmund is treacherously slain for the aid he gave Grettir; as he dies, he hopes that the outlaw will avenge his death.

One night a troll woman attacks a traveler named Gest in the room where he lies sleeping. They struggle all night, but at last Gest is able to cut off the monster’s right arm. Then Gest reveals himself as Grettir. Steinvor of Sandhauger gives birth to a boy whom many call Grettir’s son, but he dies when he is seventeen years old and leaves no personal saga.

Thorodd then tries to gain favor by killing Grettir, but the outlaw soon overcomes him and refuses to kill his enemy. Grettir goes north once more, but his fear of the dark increases so that he can no longer live alone, even to save his life. At last, with his youngest brother, Illugi, and a servant, he settles on Drangey, an island that has no inlet so that men have to climb to its grassy summit by rope ladders. There Grettir, who was an outlaw for some sixteen years, is safe for a time, because no one can climb the steep cliffs to attack him. For several years he and his companions live on the sheep that were put there to graze and on eggs and birds. His enemies try in vain to lure him from the island. At last an old woman puts magic runes upon a piece of driftwood that floats to the island. When Grettir attempts to chop the log, his ax slips, gashing his leg. He feels that his end is near, for the wound becomes swollen and painful.

Thorbjorn Angle, who paid the old woman to cast a spell upon the firewood, leads an attack upon the island while Grettir lies near death. Grettir is already dying when he strikes his last blows at his enemies. Illugi and the servant die with him. After Thorbjorn cuts off Grettir’s head as proof of the outlaw’s death, Steinn the Lawman decrees that the murderer cut off the head of a man already dead and that he cannot collect the reward because he used witchcraft to overcome Grettir. Outlawed for his deed, Thorbjorn goes to Constantinople, where he enlists in the emperor’s guard. There Thorsteinn Dromund follows him and cuts off the murderer’s head with a sword Grettir took years before from the treasure hoard of Karr-the-Old.

Bibliography

Andersson, Theodore M. The Icelandic Family Saga: An Analytic Reading. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967. Unlike the many saga studies that focus on history and origin, this book examines sagas as narrative. Chapters on structure, rhetoric, and heroic legacy are followed by insightful commentary.

Arent, A. Margaret. “The Heroic Pattern: Old Germanic Helmets, Beowulf, and Grettis Saga.” In Old Norse Literature and Mythology, edited by Edgar C. Polomé. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969. Discussion of the pictorial ornamentations found on Germanic helmets, and how the cultural and religious themes depicted on typical helmets shed light on the literature. Includes twenty-seven illustrations.

Fjalldal, Magnús. The Long Arm of Coincidence: The Frustrated Connection Between “Beowulf” and “Grettis Saga.” Toronto, Ont.: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Fjalldal examines other scholars’ arguments that the Old Norse and Old English sagas are linked. While he explains how these theories may have originated, his close analysis refutes the idea that the two works are connected.

Hastrup, Kirsten. “Tracing Tradition: An Anthropological Perspective on Grettis Saga Ásmundarsonar.” In Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature, edited by John Lindow et al. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1986. Traces how Icelanders have perceived Grettir the Strong over the past seven hundred years, showing how the meaning of the outcast-hero has changed.

Hume, Kathryn. “The Thematic Design of Grettis Saga.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 73, no. 4 (October, 1974): 469-486. Explains the puzzling contrasts in Grettir’s character and the narrative tone between different episodes. Hunt demonstrates how the theme of the unacceptability of the heroic in a modern society accounts for the differences.

The Saga of Grettir the Strong. Translated by Bernard Scudder. Edited with an introduction and notes by Örnólfur Thorsson. New York: Penguin, 2005. In addition to a new translation of the saga, this edition features a plot summary, family trees, a glossary, maps, and an index of characters, as well as discussions of the saga’s narrative, social, political, and legal structures. Thorsson’s introduction examines the influence of Christianity on the work.

Schach, Paul. Icelandic Sagas. Boston: Twayne, 1984. Contains a brief but excellent introduction to this saga, including a discussion of its authorship, structure, and themes of intergenerational conflict and tragic isolation. Other sections provide historical and literary contexts, a chronology, and a bibliography.