Icelandic Antinomies in the Grettis Saga

Parenthetic references are to chapters in the Grettis saga. Bracketed numbers are footnotes.


     Many critics have commented on the singular phenomenon of the Icelandic sagas, an exceedingly rich body of literature from a small and poor land on the margin of civilization. To one translator the Icelanders “were and had been, for a thousand years, the most literary nation on earth.” [1] Though the sagas share some characteristics with Beowulf, for example, and indeed in a broader sense with heroic narratives from many lands, they have as well unique characteristics. Though many modern readers find the sagas of the highest literary value, they are in a sense highly local in their concerns, recording the legendary history of the leading families of the land with many specific details and place names. The Icelanders’ values are, like everyone’s, shaped by the specific conditions of their lives, in particular by tensions and contradictions they must resolve. The fundamental antinomies of the culture generate the form and content of classic Icelandic literature.
     Grettir, the leading figure of the thirteenth century saga named after him, is a hero of decidedly ambiguous character. [2] Like Gilgamesh before him, Grettir is, even within this heroic culture, too wild. His energy, valor, and ego overflow in such excess that he finds himself outlawed and then outlawed again. People respect him and even admire him, but all agree that he is hot-headed and thus presents a danger of useless violence at all times. He is overweening, arrogant, and rude at the best of times, his impulsive unpredictability always a threat. The best man to have at one’s side in a fight, he is an undesirable house guest. Though he subscribes to the values of his people and appeals through legal channels to plead his case, he is constantly on the lam or accepting hospitality from more solid citizens. Through much of the action of the story he is either abroad or isolated in the barren central portion of Iceland. Is Grettir a hero or an anti-hero? In his own nature he straddles the gap between a masculine ideal and a feared villain.
     Though Grettir never marries, female figures do play a significant role in his life. In general in a heroic narrative like the Grettis Saga values are hypermasculinized, leaving women in the shadows and on the margins, vulnerable things requiring male guardianship, hardly mentioned. [3] Yet, in the precisely structured world of this saga, the female gets her due both as a positive and a negative archetype. Eros plays no role in either.
     Grettis’ life is saved by Thorbjorn, “the mistress of Vatnsfjord,” after he had been disgracefully captured by a troop of farmers. (LII) She is described as “a person of great magnificence” and “tremendously wise,” and she makes a judicious decision in this case, later seconded by her husband. On the other hand, it is Thurid, a sorceress, who finally is able to do Grettir in when the strongest of warriors could not. (LXXVIII) He can wound her but he is defenseless against her spells.
     This depiction of the sexes, consistent throughout, is what makes the adventitious conclusion with its echoes of Tristan so discordant. The seductive Sera’s sexual aggressiveness is as out of place as is its counterpart, her turn toward asceticism when she feels her life is nearing a close. Suddenly at the end an anachronistic antinomy appears, palpably foreign to the structures of the rest of the story.
     In earlier times a person’s identity derived from family and ancestry to an extent scarcely imaginable today. The ancient Greeks and Hebrews took pride in tracing their descent from ancient heroes whom they believed to be historical; this interest lies behind passages that may strike the modern reader as tiresome such as the catalogue of the ships in the Iliad and the family trees of Abraham and Noah in the Torah. The Old Norse author can seem to a modern reader compulsive about providing details of ancestry; indeed, the early sagas are sometimes called “family sagas.” Hardly an individual is mentioned without providing data on his family for several generations with perhaps some information on his wife and cousins as well.
     The sagas are, to begin with, far more based in the facts of relatively recent history than the Iliad and Odyssey, and the odd details of wars and kings, while rarely the center of the plot, both enable and lend significance to genealogical detail. Since the country was settled by a small band of Norse exiles and then was largely isolated until recent times (the country is today one of the most popular travel destinations) it was in fact possible to trace one’s lineage to the early settlers. The information in the sagas constituted an earlier form of the cell phone apps that Icelandic youth use to discern how closely they are related to those they might date. [4]
     The interest in everyone’s ancestry since all in a sense are descended from heroes is reflected in a dialectic between the individual and the social. Since Iceland was established essentially to escape the rule of Harald as overlord, a potent individualistic ethos arose in which each landowner had very nearly absolute power over those in his domain. The sagas barely mention thralls and karls except for an occasional villain. Though each landowner was in law autonomous, to avoid wasteful bloodshed and constant conflict, a social order was established to mediate relations among the bondis. The All-Thing was a highly democratic and legalistic institution at a time when much rule was by fiat. (The Grettis saga makes it clear that the democracy was always imperfect. Such meetings were subject to force of numbers and influence at all times and the Thing did eventually approach more closely to the conventional feudal structure.)
     Religion, which in theory might claim absolute judgements, is likewise presented in an ambivalent light. The characters are almost all nominally Christians, but they make no reference to Christ nor do they live according to Christian precepts. Had Grettis been written before the conversion to Christianity, it would have made little difference. Trolls and ghosts do occur, but they are equivalent to extraordinarily daunting human opponents, endowed with power but liable, too, to defeat when challenged by a great fighter. When Thorarine excludes Grettis from Baldi’s expedition, saying he is ill-fated, one might think of the pagan Wyrd [5], but the fact is he might as well have said Grettir is obnoxious and unstable.
     Surely the monstrous afterlife of Glam as a troll is associated with his spurning Christianity (XXXII), yet the Christian priest who assists Grettir putting a ladder into the lair of the giant proves faithless and cowardly, deserving only obloquy in a heroic context. (LXVI) The text neither protests the prevailing religion nor allows it to influence his world-view, while conceding that potency may be seen in both the old and the new way.
     The story includes the accession of Olaf Haraldsson (XXXVII) to the throne, but, rather than mentioning his policy of forced conversion (itself a self-contradictory testament of Christianity), the author praises him, saying “he took into favour all men who were skilled in any way and made them his followers.”
     Analogous bipolar structures underlie the most significant rhetorical strategies of the saga.  
The simple fact that they are prose, though interlarded with many short poems, is unusual. In the Elder Edda, as in most mythic texts, the form of poetry indicates that the action unfolds in a realm far removed from the ordinary. Prose is the conventional medium for folk stories, which may include plenty of magic, but which do not define the fundamental terms of existence as myth does. Not only tales of gods, but those of legendary and semi-historical heroes such as the Mahabharata, the Iliad, and the Cantico de mio Cid are generally related in poetry.
     Poetry is included in Icelandic sagas such as Grettis, but it is set off by a prose background. The verses, in highly artificial language, typically occur when a character wishes to either signal dominance, such as by insulting an antagonist, or to boast after a victory. [7] The author marks such high points of ego expression by marking them linguistically as distinguished from the language of everyday life. The hero is different from others, not divine - indeed, his vulnerable humanity is what makes true heroism possible for both Njal and Achilles. The individual with powers beyond his fellows is glorified by the very language he uses. Thus the structural distinction between prose and verse serves a dramatically expressive role, heightening the heroic personality beyond that of his fellows while the prose narrative maintains the action in the historical past rather than a mythic realm.
     For instance, when Grettir is quarreling with Bjorn (XXII) he improvises verses several times, ultimately brags and then challenges his antagonist with an insulting poem.


Time was when the bear was slain by my hand;
My cloak in tatters was torn.
A rascally knave was the cause of it all
But now he shall make me amends.


     The Grettis Saga is also full of proverbs, making it a repository of normative community wisdom. Frequently such adages have a riddle-like or paradoxical aspect. For instance “Ale is another man.” (XIX) could be the solution to the question, “When is a man not himself?” Similarly, a surmise may be fact: “The guess of the wise is truth.” (XXXI); and solitude may include company: “ Oft in the woods is a listener nigh.” (LIX)
     Like other old Germanic authors, the saga writer makes liberal use of litotes, a rhetorical figure that typically involves the contradiction of an assertion to express its opposite. The simplest form may be illustrated by Grettir’s prediction when he is convinced against his better judgement to swim to fetch fire: “no good will come to me.” (XXXVIII) The use of such expression, common in Old Norse and Old English compositions suggests the laconic resignation so characteristic of the Germanic world-view, with its harsh weather, perils of sailing and warfare, and the metaphysical prospect of Ragnarok.
     Not all examples of litotes involve negations. Potentially lethal fighting is repeatedly described as “playing.” (e.g. Thorbjorn in LXXVI) Understatement may be used to great dramatic advantage such as when Atli Asmundsson, Grettir’s brother, demonstrates heroic nonchalance as he comments while dying “They use broad spear-blades these days.” (XLV)
     By using figures that may be described as “allegorical” in the broadest possible definition (that is, meaning, saying something other than the explicit message), the author implies two radical propositions. Using language in an indirect, suggestive, associative manner highlights the gap between signified and signifier, thus questioning the ordinary acceptance of words as an adequate representation of reality. The reader may ultimately winder whether even the artful words of aesthetic language with its elaborate socially constructed interpretive codes can convey accurate meaning. In the phrasing of the sagas, such considerations run consistently, if just below the surface.
     Tightly organized oppositions provide the plot’s motive energy: valor and arrogance, individual and family, law and anarchy, Christianity and paganism. Its rhetorical dynamism arises from analogous formal polarities: prose and poetry, what is said and what is meant.
     The Grettis saga moves forward, like all narratives, through conflict and tension. In this story the action is generated by the dualities central to the Old Norse culture: the individual and society, male and female, paganism and Christianity, prose and poetry. Neither is wholly privileged and neither wholly denied. Valor carried too far is arrogance. It is a man’s world, but the skills are women must be recognized. Everyone may be Christian but the old ways retain power. Neither prose nor poetry suits every utterance.
     As Saussure recognized, it is in expressions of difference that meaning arises. We think in dualities and dramatic action can arise only in conflict. Grettis represents one proposal, the working out of a series of oppositions resulting in one version of how to be human. If it does not entirely fit, if incongruities leak from every side of the polarities, this apparent weakness is in fact the inevitable result of imitating the experience of life. Sufficient erratic and unpredictable energies exist to propel the individual to the next hour, the reader to the next tale, and culture to formulations ever new.




1. Introduction by George Ainslie Hight, The Saga of Grettir the Strong, vii. This version, a 1914 Everyman volume translated by George Ainslie Hight, is the source of my quotations in this essay. Iceland today is often called the most literate nation on earth. Ben Myers in ”The Icelandic Sagas: Europe's most important book?” in the Guardian (Oct 3, 2008) notes that the average Icelander reads four books a year and that one in ten has written a book.

2. In Icelandic sometimes called Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar. Translations into English have been titled Grettla, Grettir's Saga, and The Saga of Grettir the Strong. William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon published a translation called The Tale of Grettir the Strong.

3. See Simone Weil’s “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force” which brilliantly analyzes Homeric violence.

4. See the AP story for Apr 18, 2013 appearing in numerous newspapers.

5. Wyrd is the Old English goddess of fate. The Norse cognate is Urðr or Urd, personified as one of the Norns.

7. Note the common use in African American writing and culture generally of “signifying,” the artful use of language, often employed for boasting or insulting.

Notes on Recent Reading 7 [Nabokov, Austen, Grettis Saga]

Pnin [Nabokov]

     Joseph Conrad became so naturalized in English that the reader cannot tell he is not using his native language, whereas Vladimir Nabokov, for all his stylistic sophistication, retained the tourist’s sense of wonder and amusement, writing a singularly exotic prose studded with rare words, unconventional usages, and luxuriantly burgeoning sentences.
     In Pnin both the author and Cornell University are reduced ironically to low mimetic mode, and the book is often highly comic without sacrificing plausibility or subtlety. Satire of American culture, without history or formality, is balanced by satire of the backward-looking world of the Russian émigrés who have little else. Realizing that communication is always imperfect, he focuses on misinterpretation, incorrect usages, mistaken identities, a labored explanation of a cartoon, the absurdity of a basketball net.
     One finds Nabokov jabbing at his bêtes noires: Bolshevism, Freud, and abstract art, and intimately caressing his loves: butterflies, chess, people of all sorts, and, most of all, language. Nabokov is a great writer and Lolita is his masterpiece, but in Pnin as well the reader encounters such marvelous gifts as this: “Technically speaking, the narrator’s art of integrating telephone conversations still lags far behind that of rendering dialogues conducted from room to room, or from window to window across some narrow blue alley in an ancient town with water so precious, and the misery of donkeys, and rugs for sale, and minarets, and foreigners and melons, and the vibrant morning echoes.”


Mansfield Park [Austen]

     Timid and sensitive nearly to the point of neurasthenia, priggish in her deep opposition to amateur theatricals, a persecuted damsel of the sort that has always been popular (apart from Samuel Richardson, one might think of Yuan drama or the covers of thirties pulp magazine), Fanny Price distresses even many confirmed Austen fans. By introducing a family from a lower social milieu, Austen added little but a tinge of the sordid from which not only Fanny and William, but Susan as well, need fortuitous assistance to escape. The real tensions in the books are between the amoral, eighteenth-century wit valued in sophisticated circles and the earnest uprightness of Edmund and Fanny. We can only miss the impertinent cleverness of the author who is herself evidence that nature can combine a good character and an epigrammatic skill.
     The leading couple come together only in the very last pages as they discover their common taste for discussing the faults of others. Edmund’s infatuation with Mary Crawford, durable through many months, vanishes entirely and suddenly. It takes no longer for his elder brother Tom, through, sympathetic magic perhaps, to turn from a thoughtless self-centered wastrel to a man of integrity. For Sir Thomas, tasked with an indolent wife, disagreeable relatives, and the pesky problems of managing his distant West Indian slaves, propriety had been a trusty foundation, but he resolves his personal deficiencies through his proximity to the newlyweds.
     We don’t see the deus ex machina, but it is surely there. Is all her piety, her superiority to society’s judgments consistent with her stress on “breeding”? In the story how one is brought up seems to all but determine one’s fate. Surely, I am not the only modern reader to wonder about Fanny’s word-choice when, concerned about Mary’s corrupting Edmund, she says, “God grant that her influence do not make him cease to be respectable.” Can one read those words without feeling a bit of a chill?


Grettis Saga

     Last of the great Icelandic sagas, that extraordinary efflorescence, dozens of prose narrations, based in history but not shy of legend and folk-tale motifs, produced in a small and poor country. The stoical understated northern sensibility, reflecting a world of privation and casual violence, shaped a number of works of tragic depth, including Njal’s Saga and Grettir’s.
     Virtually any line from these works provides a microcosm of their society. Grettir the Strong is respected for his physical prowess, just as if he had been a similarly powerful baboon or a forest stag. Even apart from war and raiding, these Northmen are never far from a brawl as they can be extremely sensitive on points of honor, and the traditions of feuding mandate danger points among family and loyalty groupings that extend for generations. Some elements of law and even democracy did mitigate the bloodshed, but it was often prudent, it seems, to bring a well-armed party even when attending the Althing.
     Grettir, himself, is ill-starred, and his fortunes fall particularly after his struggle with the revenant Glam (who had been weird even before his killing by a monster). Just as his opponent is stronger than most men, Glam’s animated corpse “possessed more malignant power than most fiends,” and it curses Grettir with terrible words. From childhood he had been a trial to his father, lazy, unproductive, and bad-tempered. His earlier scrapes had been the result of an impulsive nature, easily offended, old feuds, and a strain of reckless cruelty. After this critical struggle, however, not only is his might limited, but bad luck will govern his fate, condemning him to outlawry, exile, and solitude. Worse, the spectre tells him, “These eyes of mine shall be ever before your vision. You will find it hard to live alone, and at last it will drag you to death.” After this, the fierce warrior is afraid of the dark.
     Part of the reader’s immersion in early Icelandic society is the result of the saga’s inclusion of many proverbs and verses of skaldic poetry (our hero, for all his rough-and-ready fighting, has been an accomplished poet since childhood). If, as the author had it “One man’s tale is but half a tale,” Grettir, though lacking spirituality or the lighter strains of music, is a moving and fully-fleshed hero, the more rather than the less for his substantial faults.