Gisli Sursson's Saga and The Saga of the People of Eyri

by Martin Regal

  GISLI SURSSON’S SAGA and THE SAGA OF THE PEOPLE OF EYRI

  VÉSTEINN ÓLASON has been Head of the Árni Magnússon Institute in Reykjavík since 1999. Previous positions in Icelandic literature include teaching at the Universities of Copenhagen, Oslo and Reykjavík and a visiting professorship to the University of California, Berkeley. He has published a number of books of literary history and criticism, and is the editor and co-author of The Literary History of Iceland 1–11(1992–3).

  JUDY QUINN teaches Old Norse literature in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. When she translated The Saga of the People of Eyri she was teaching in the English Department at the University of Sydney. She has published on eddic poetry, on prophecy in Old Norse poetry and prose, and on orality and literacy in medieval Iceland. She is currently editing the verses of Eyrbyggja saga as part of the international project to re-edit the corpus of skaldic poetry.

  MARTIN S. REGAL teaches in the English Department at the University of Iceland. He has published mostly in the field of theatre and drama and is currently engaged in writing a volume for the New Critical Idiom series on tragedy. He also translated The Saga of the Sworn Brothers for a Penguin anthology that appeared in 1999.

  WORLD OF THE SAGAS

  Editor Örnólfur Thorsson

  Assistant Editor Bernard Scudder

  Advisory Editorial Board

  Theodore M. Andersson Stanford University

  Robert Cook University of Iceland

  Terry Gunnell University of Iceland

  Frederik J. Heinemann University of Essen

  Viðar Hreinsson Reykjavík Academy

  Robert Kellogg University of Virginia

  Jónas Kristjánsson University of Iceland

  Keneva Kunz Reykjavik

  Vésteinn Ólason University of Iceland

  Gísli Sigurðsson University of Iceland

  Andrew Wawn University of Leeds

  Diana Whaley University of Newcastle

  Translators

  Judy Quinn

  Martin S. Regal

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga

  and

  The Saga of the People of Eyri

  With an Introduction and Notes by

  VÉSTEINN ÓLASON

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Translations first published in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders (Including 49 Tales), I and V, edited by Viðar Hreinsson (General Editor), Robert Cook, Terry Gunnell, Keneva Kunz and Bernard Scudder. Leifur Eiríksson Publishing Ltd, Iceland 1997

  First published by Penguin Classics 2003

  3

  Translation copyright © Leifur Eiríksson, 1997

  Editorial matter copyright © Vésteinn Ólason, 2003

  All rights reserved

  The moral rights of the translators and editor have been asserted

  Leifur Eiríksson Publishing Ltd gratefully acknowledges the support of the Nordic Cultural Fund, Ariane Programme of the European Union, UNESCO, Icelandair and others.

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 9781101493977

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Further Reading

  A Note on the Translations

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga

  (trans. MARTIN S. REGAL)

  The Saga of the People of Eyri

  (trans. JUDY QUINN)

  Notes

  Reference Section

  Family Ties in The Saga of the People of Eyri

  Structure and Feuds in The Saga of the People of Eyri

  Maps

  Historical Events linked to the Sagas

  Chronology of Gisli Sursson’s Saga

  Social, Political and Legal Structures

  The Farm

  Early Icelandic Literature

  Glossary

  Index of Characters

  Acknowledgements

  The translations of the two sagas printed here were originally published in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders by Leifur Eiríksson Publishing, Reykjavík, which contributed to the production of this volume. Gisli Sigurðsson read the Introduction and produced the genealogy and plot summary for The Saga of the People of Eyri, and notes to both sagas. Bernard Scudder read and coordinated the entire material, Jean-Pierre Biard drew the maps and Jón Torfason compiled the Index of Characters. Thanks are also due to Viðar Hreinsson and Örnólfur Thorsson, who were instrumental at early stages of the project and in compiling the Reference Section. Diana Whaley wrote the survey of Early Icelandic Literature.

  Martin Regal would like to thank Eysteinn Björnsson for his assistance with the kennings and Ivor Regal for his many useful suggestions concerning the prose text.

  Jóhann Sigurðsson, publisher of the Complete Sagas, and Alastair Rolfe, Hilary Laurie, Lindeth Vasey, Margaret Bartley, Laura Barber and others at Penguin are also kindly thanked for their advice, encouragement and patience.

  Vésteinn Ólason

  Introduction

  The two sagas in this volume recount feuds that are supposed to have taken place in Iceland in the last decades of the tenth century AD, although the narrative as a whole covers a much wider time-span. The sagas are to some extent based on oral traditions but in the form that they have come down to us they are literature. It is assumed that Gisli Sursson’s Saga was originally composed just before or around the middle of the thirteenth century, while The Saga of the People of Eyri was originally composed around 1270. The oldest manuscripts, on the other hand, are from the fourteenth century or later.

  On the surface the lives described in these sagas are radically different from anything experienced in modern society. Families totally dependent on themselves and their kin for safety and survival guard their honour jealously, and even peaceful men get involved in feuds where lives are at stake. Seemingly unimportant events release uncontrollable passions and violence, and a prosperous family can be destroyed in a short time in a chain of events driven forward by envy and hate, jealousy and pride. There is no clear line between the natural and the supernatural, between evil other-worldly forces and human passion. The need to maintain peace and keep the balance is also strong, however, and the tension between these forces keeps the reader in suspense.

  The main characters in the respective sagas are uncle and nephew, although of almost opposite characters. The uncle Gisli is a Viking Age hero, clever and resourceful, a formidable fighter stubbornly sticking to the archaic ethics of revenge he has inhe
rited. His story is tragic, and in the end he is killed after a glorious defence against all the odds, as befits a true hero. Gisli’s sister and her two children survive the calamities that strike the family. Gisli’s nephew Snorri, who is the most important character of The Saga of the People of Eyri, is shrewd and resourceful, but in addition he is a politician and survivor whose intelligence and single-mindedness enable him to acquire successively more authority. This concentration and consolidation of power in the hands of a strong chieftain can be seen as part of the civilization of society. While Gisli represents the individualistic heroic morality of the Viking Age, Snorri embodies secular order in the new medieval society. When read together the two sagas – through their connections and their differences – are an excellent introduction to the salient themes of saga literature, where the Viking Age and the unique type of society that developed in Iceland from the settlement beginning in the late ninth century to Christianization in AD 1000 are viewed through the eyes of an era that was more civilized, or at least believed and hoped itself to be.

  I. BACKGROUND TO THE SAGA TRADITION – THE GOLDEN AGE

  The Sagas of Icelanders can be seen as an attempt by Icelandic writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to make sense of their past and their present by telling entertaining and engaging stories. Iceland was settled in the Viking Age, and the first Icelandic historians tell us that most of the inhabitable parts of the country were settled and the rule of law established in a few decades around AD 900. None the less, to talk about the ‘rule’ of law may be considered an exaggeration by modern standards. A certain code of law was commonly accepted, a legal assembly that discussed new laws for the country was held each year, and a system of local and centralized courts was established, but there was no public executive power.

  The fundamental principle driving this society was a code of honour that demanded loyalty to kin and other allied parties (see Social, Political and Legal Structures, p. 219). This included the duty to take revenge by killing if honour demanded. The social system depended on the maintenance of a delicate balance of power between the farmer-chieftains, or ‘godis’; if one became too powerful, others formed an alliance against him. In the thirteenth century internal contradictions and external political pressure caused the breakdown of this vulnerable social contract; the balance of power was disrupted, and the leaders of a handful of influential families waged brutal war with each other, until the Icelanders agreed in 1262 to pay tax to the Norwegian king in return for his promise to bring about peace. By around 1300 Iceland was gradually adapting to a new regime in which power emanated from the king and official punishment replaced personal revenge.

  Iceland had been Christianized around AD 1000, and from around 1100 a literary culture began to develop. Initially, literature in the vernacular was a tool for both the missionary activities of the church and attempts to civilize society through the codification of law. The interest shown by the ruling class of chieftains in their own Viking Age past and roots soon found expression in historical and pseudo-historical narratives about the settlement of Iceland, the kings and legendary heroes of Scandinavia, and in sagas about Icelanders. At the time the sagas were written, from around AD 1200, the Icelanders seem to have been engaged in a process of creating a semi-legendary and heroic past from their collective memories of the first hundred and fifty years of their country’s history. In creating the sagas, oral tradition was absorbed, refashioned and expanded using the resources of literary culture. Two significant events were seen as turning points: the settlement from roughly AD 870–930 and the conversion to Christianity. Most sagas are introduced by the story of how the most prominent family or families emigrated from Norway and settled in Iceland. The reasons for the settlement are usually presented as either conflict with or insurrection against the newly unified kingdom of Norway that had been established by Harald Fair-hair, or feuds between individuals or clans in the old country. This strong sense of individualism and defiance would live on in and pervade the new world that the pioneering settlers built for themselves at the westernmost limits of Europe. The Saga of the People of Eyri also describes the foundation and consolidation of social structures in Iceland, which are of crucial importance for the plot because all conflicts threaten stability and must be resolved within the social framework.1 The conversion, often described or mentioned in the final section of a saga, marks the end, or the beginning of the end, of the old heroic age and heralds a fundamental if gradual change in world view and social structure.2

  Around the middle of the thirteenth century the Icelanders still looked upon themselves as descendants of Vikings and heroes, whom they were supposed to emulate in guarding an honour that was considered to be the highest of values, superior to the life of an individual. The political realities of the time and the intellectual horizon of the most forward-looking sections of the chieftain class, however, were gradually changing. The new chieftains valued property and power higher than heroics – and according to their ideology power had to be centralized. They were well aware that Icelandic society was an anomaly among the countries under the spiritual hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church. All other countries in Europe had a king, and in the 1260s Iceland came under the rule of a monarch too, not someone from the ranks of the Icelandic chieftains who coveted such a position, but the king of Norway. This led to profound changes in society during the last decades of the thirteenth century. It was in this period that the sagas were created, depicting the old society from an increasing distance and acknowledging the limitations of its heroic ideals at the same time as they nostalgically portrayed the downfall of heroes.

  During the thirteenth century the Sagas of Icelanders thus demonstrated an increasing awareness of the essential characteristics of the old society, its shortcomings as well as its glory. Grim Viking Age heroes such as Egil Skallagrimsson and Gisli Sursson, or more romantic ones such as Kjartan Olafsson of The Saga of the People of Laxardal, whom we meet in works from around or before 1250, still figured in the sagas from the last decades of that century, but by then a new kind of ‘hero’ had emerged, a man preoccupied not only with his own honour but also with more impersonal and social aims. Such a man is the wise Njal of Njal’s Saga, and Snorri the Godi is cast in the same mould, although his personality is different – and the texture of their respective sagas even more so. The author of Njal’s Saga has forged his new world view into a seamlessly integrated whole, while the author of The Saga of the People of Eyri either could not or did not want to achieve the same degree of artistic unity. Such diverse approaches to composition show the fertility and variety that are one of the hallmarks of Iceland’s literary culture in the Middle Ages.

  Just like mainstream classicism and romanticism in their respective periods, the sagas of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries created a golden age in the past. They express an underlying feeling that the old society was doomed, but they look back on it with a fond nostalgia. Their age of ‘freedom’ was not one of affluence but of heroic dignity and self-respect. It is this sense of the inherent nobility of man that gives the sagas much of their appeal, and the championing of this quality in a highly developed form of narrative art has earned them a status among the great masterpieces of world literature.

  With its strong human perspective, this is clearly a far different conceptual world from that found in the bulk of other medieval European literature, which tends to build upon either timeless, escapist fantasy or a divinely decreed order. Important distinguishing features are also seen in the sagas’ style and their devotion to historical and local detail – their world is tangible and earthy, not an ersatz transit lounge en route to blissful oblivion in the afterlife.

  The generic saga style is renowned for its economy and clarity of expression. While much European narrative literature of the Middle Ages makes lavish use of exaggeration and often tries to achieve effects through the sheer weight of clustered synonyms, the sagas are characterized by a careful choice of wor
ds and subtle understatement. In direct speech, strong emotions are usually kept in check and utterances even have the appearance of bleak objectivity. Given the context of violent action in which it is set, dialogue of this kind can be used to exceptionally powerful effect, and the reader should stay alert to the spectrum of ironies that it can invite. The syntactical structure of the prose narrative is simple and mainly paratactic, but by contrast the verse adorning many of the sagas is intricate almost to the point of obscurity. Syntax and word order are subjugated to metrical rules bearing little relation to the prose, while the vocabulary draws on an almost completely separate poetic diction that is yoked together into complex and cryptic imagery. The action usually comes to a temporary halt when a verse is quoted, but this lyric element can provide insights into the state of mind of its composer – a subjective device not admitted by the prose conventions – thereby creating additional layers of narrative subtlety.

  One of the features that give the sagas a strong historic and realistic flavour – borne out by the palpable facts of Icelandic geography to this day – is the precise location of events to particular places and regions. Both sagas in this volume are set in the western quarter of Iceland, in the West Fjords and the Breidafjord area (see maps, pp. 214–17). This would have resonated with the original audiences, and there is no doubt that these sagas are based on oral traditions that had developed in this part of the country. Many of the main characters belonged to well-known settlers’ families, and their descendants by the time the sagas were written included people of importance in this area.3

  Despite their clear local focus, however, both the sagas in this volume – like many others, in fact – begin with a prelude in Norway, and in The Saga of the People of Eyri also in the Hebrides. There is no conflict between close attention to local detail and history and the broader sweep of the entire Viking cultural area in northern Europe, where palpable facts tend to merge into generalization and received tradition. The Norwegian prelude of Gisli Sursson’s Saga is more important for the narrative structure because it not only gives reasons for the emigration to Iceland but also introduces the central themes of the main part of the story: a love triangle, defence of family honour at all costs, and divided loyalties and conflicts among couples and siblings. Both sagas also reveal their historical provenance by the fact that cases are taken to local assemblies but no further. Society itself, in effect, is taking shape at the same time as the plot; we learn how a local assembly is established when people have settled in Iceland and see how it functions in the escalation of the feuds that form the backbone of the plot. In other works, such as Njal’s Saga, important issues are decided at the national assembly, the Althing at Thingvellir, but the litigation that arises in our two is never taken that far. None the less, the respective feuds develop differently, driven by the interplay of character and circumstance in each. In The Saga of the People of Eyri, dramatic events involving a great number of individuals are viewed with a certain detachment, and the contours of the many individual destinies may seem to be of less importance than the mechanics of power-brokerage revealed by the story. Gisli Sursson’s Saga focuses narrowly on the tragic fate of one individual and his family and through its scrutiny illuminates important contradictions in the ethics of the old society. Bearing in mind both their collective background and broad distinguishing features, we can now look at each in turn more closely.