Grettislaug at Reykir

Text:

Chapters 74 and 75 of Grettissaga concern Grettir's famous swim across the four miles of frigid water between Drangey Isle and Reykir Farm, due to Glaum's incompetence in keeping the fire lit. Grettir dragged himself from the freezing fjord to revive in the hot springs, then collapsed in the farmhouse and slept for the rest of the night. Finding him naked and recognizing him in the morning, a foolish maid mocked the seeming disparity between Grettir's upper and lower body, a lack, the waking Grettir assured her, that a young man such as himself would soon outgrow, a boast he seems to have taken pains to seen realized. Thorvald the farmer then ferried Grettir back to Drangey Isle, carrying, we are left to surmise, a spark of fire.

Grettislaug

Written in the first third of the 14th century, Grettissaga is widely considered to be the last of the great Icelandic sagas, and its composition closed the century or so which was the most fecund saga-writing period. In its appropriation of the theme of the rugged individual constrained by the growing authority of society, the saga develops in Grettir a character not unlike Egil Skallagrimsson, but without Egil's ability to adapt to and to overcome the obstacles provided by the changes going on in his world. We learn in the beginning chapters of the saga of Onund Tree-Foot, Grettir's great-grandfather, that he was an uncompromising individualist who traded a fertile farm under an oppressive Norwegian Crown for the frosty freedom of "Kaldbak" ("Cold Ridge") in Iceland; Grettir is Onund writ large, but he is a figure doomed to be behind his times: he is an archetypal hero out of the pagan heroic mold thrust into a rapidly civilizing Christian society unwilling to embrace him. Grettir swims uncompromisingly against the tide, and he is successful time after time; eventually he most lose, however, and though he loses but once, once, of course, is enough. Moreover, as in Njalssaga, Grettissaga develops in the historical background of its early chapters a trope of Christianization in which both the pagan powers of sorcery and the heroic ethos of the Germanic warrior past serve as counterpoints to the new values and mores of a Christian Iceland.

Grettissaga is a perennial favorite of modern readers for many reasons, not least of which include the many folkloric and mythic elements and the clear parallels with Beowulf, the great Old English epic. Indeed, the incidents including the supernatural, the monstrous, and the fantastic are legion and legendary: Note especially Grettir's battle with the "draugr" ("undead revenant", "corporeal ghost", or "zombie") Kar in the grave mound in Chapter 18; note with equal care Grettir's battle with the draugr Glamr at Thorhallsstead (commonly mentioned as an analogue to Beowulf's fight with Grendel at Heorot) in Chapter 35; take a look as well at Grettir's relationship with Hallmund the friendly half-ogre (who lives in a cave in Ball Glacier, and has a large and striking daughter) in Chapters 54, 57, and 62; see also Grettir's battle with the she-troll, complete with climactic ending in the secret cave behind the waterfall (often compared with Beowulf's battle with Grendel's Mother in the depths of her mere) in Chapters 65-66; see also the many, many references to sorcery, witchcraft, and magic, not least the curse and related black magic performed by Thorbjorn Ongul's foster-mother Thurid, detailed in Chapters 78, 79, and 80, which finally helps to bring about Grettir's death in Chapter 82. All this in the midst of "normal" saga action, complete with clever legal proceedings, battles with opponents from bears to berserkirs, and the like.

The trappings of folklore, however, like the magical cape of Germanic lore, cloak a highly sophisticated structure and a deceptively focused narrative style; indeed, the fact that this is a text wrought in the midst of pan-European medieval literary themes and techniques is borne out strikingly in the closing sections concerning Thorstein and Spes. The narrative shifts tone radically after Thorstein takes vengeance for Grettir upon the head of Thorbjorn Ongul in the ranks of the Varangian Guard of the Byzantine emperor in Chapter 86; from the end of that chapter to the final lines of the saga, Thorstein and Spes seem to have been drawn far more directly from the world of medieval romance or even the lais of Marie de France than from the Germanic heroic tradition: In this vein, note especially the equivocal vow Spes offers in Chapter 89, and the joint retirement of the lovers from secular life and into a hermitage in Chapters 91 and 92.

Our immediate interest is most especially with the passages which take place on Drangey Isle, at the farm at Reykir across four miles of barely sub arctic water from Drangey, at the local Hegraness Assembly at the southern end of Skagafjord in which Drang is situated, and at Thingvellir itself, where aspects of Grettir's fate are worked out at the Althing.