by E R Eddison
4 GIVE MY WIFE (gefa konu mína). Cf. Egil’s taking to wife his brother’s widow, ch. LVI.
5 LYKE-HELP (umbúnaðr). Lit. an ‘arranging about’ or ‘putting in order’, sc. in a decent manner of the corpse for burial.
6 TILTED. TO ‘tilt’ (tjalda) is to pitch a tent; primarily, as here and passim in our saga, in the sense of rigging the awning of a ship, for Icel. is the language of vikings and seamen.
7 HAD BECOME FATHER AND SON-IN-LAW (mægð hafði tekiz með þeim S. ok B.). Lit. ‘kinsman-in-lawship had come about between them’. A.S. has, but English has not, the equivalent of this general term mágr, which includes father-, brother-, and son-in-law.
8 BASTARD-BORN (frilluson). Lit.’ sons of a paramour or wish-wife’. Frilla is connected with friðr, ‘peace or tranquillity’, and in poetry has the meaning of ‘mistress’ (Lat. amica); but in prose with a slightly disdainful connotation, ‘concubine’.
CHAPTER X
1 THE FELL (fjall). I.e. the highlands of Finnmark. Fjall (mountain) is generally used of a bigger thing than fell (hill).
2 SCAT (skattr). The general term for tribute; see our saga and Hkr-passim.
3 KYLFINGS (Kylfingar). Query, from some part of Garthrealm (Garðaríki = Russia).
4 COD-FISHERIES (skreið-fiski). Skreið = ‘a shoal of fish’, particularly a shoal of spring cod. It has also come to mean ‘dried fish’ (cod, codling, haddock, etc.).
5 A HUNDRED (hundrað). Here, as always, the old ‘long’ hundred, 120; still used in Iceland for counting sheep in a flock or a fisherman’s share in a catch.
At this point we stand at the highwater-mark of Thorolf’s fortunes:
“Prosperity doth bewitch men seeming cleere,
But seas doe laugh, shew white, when Rocks are neere”.
CHAPTER XII
1 Harek is a past master in the art of making the better appear the worse, of slanderous innuendo.
2 THERE SHOT TERROR INTO THE BREASTS OF THESE BONDER-LADS (búandkörlum skaut shelk í bringu). Skelkr (cf. Engl, ‘skulk’) is etymologically connected with the idea of slavery, and has a contemptuous connotation: ‘funk’.
3 BIDDEN AND BOUN (búnir ok boðnir). One of those alliterative formulas not uncommon in Icel.: cf. ‘’twixt fell and foreshore’. Harek plainly overreaches himself here, and a less jealous mind than King Harald’s might have observed it.
CHAPTER XIII
1 SHIP OF BURDEN (byrðingr). A merchant-ship as opposed to a war-ship.
2 GREY-WARES (grávara). “Calabar skins, skins of the squirrel as distinct from beaver and sable” (Hkr. IV, 344).
3 BEAVER-SKINS (bjórskinn). Beavers, common enough in Europe, and even in England, at one time, are so far exterminated that the name naturally suggests to-day the American species.
CHAPTER XIV
1 KVENS (Kvenir). These dwelt on either side of the Gulf of Bothnia; held by some to have been of Swedish stock, but F. J. points out that the king’s name, Faravið, does not sound Norse.
2 KIRIALS (Kirjálar). Kirialaland is mod. Karelia, in east Finland.
3 THE KEEL (Kilir). Mod. Kjölen; the massif that forms the watershed between Norway and Sweden. There is a riddle, “Why is it that Norway cannot sail and Sweden cannot swim?” “Because Norway turns the Keel upward, and Russia took the Finns away from Sweden”.
CHAPTER XVI
1 GIFTS OF REMEMBRANCE (minningar). ‘Keepsakes.’ Cf. Skarp-hedinn’s words to Gunnar Lambison at Njal’s burning, “Here now is a keepsake (minjagripr) for thee”, as he took out of his purse the jaw-tooth which he had hewn out of Thrain (G.’s uncle), and threw it at G. and struck him in the eye so that it started out and lay on his cheek (Nj. 129).
2 THAT THEY SHALL GET THAT THEY CAME TO MARKET FOR (at þeir komiz þar at keyptu). I.e. they will get the bargain they deserve, and little to their liking.
CHAPTER XVII
1 VAGAR (Vágar). In the Lofoten Islands, mod. East and West Vaagö; still a great place for cod-fishing (F.J.).
2 THEN CAME THOROLF THERE WITH A HUNDRED MEN. A plain lie, for Thorolf was in Kirialaland (see here). But the King is ready to swallow all their slander now.
CHAPTER XVIII
1 SIGTRYGG SHARP-FARER. Snarfari means lit.’ swift-farer’; ‘sharp’ in the sense of ‘brisk’: cf. our colloquial ‘look sharp’. I have rendered it ‘sharp-farer’ to preserve the assonance of the brothers’ by-names snarfari—harðfari.
2 WESTFOLD (Vestfold). Harald’s ancestral kingdom, W. of the Oslofirth.
3 THE KING’S ERRANDS (sendiferðir konungs). F.J. says that these brethren were so-called gestahöfðingjar, captains of the ‘guests’. As to these ‘guests’ he quotes Konungsskuggsjá, which shows that they were housecarles, members of the King’s bodyguard, and so called because they “take guesting at many men’s houses, and not altogether as a matter of friendship”. Their duty was “to hold espial through all the King’s realm and be ware if he have any unfriends in his realm …. And if the King appoint guests to any of his unfriends, and it so betide that they are slain to whom the guests were appointed, then have the guests for their trouble a share of their fee”: in brief, these ‘guests’ were an organized service for committing murder and robbery in the King’s name. Olaf the Holy had 30 guests “and assessed them wages and gave them laws” (O.H. 55).
4 THE KING SAW…THAT THAT WAS NO LIE. Very delicate irony.
5 SET TO WED (veðsetti). The O.E. term for ‘mortgage’, an exact counterpart of the Icel.
CHAPTER XIX
1 SO AS ONLY THE HILL-TOPS SHOWED OVER THE SEA’S BOURNE (svá at sjór var í miðjum hlíðum). Lit. ‘so that the sea was in the mid slopes’; with the result, of course, that he was hull-down and probably out of sight altogether to people spying from the shore.
2 EASTAWAY (í Austrveg). All the lands east of Sweden were Austrvegr: generally, the eastern shores of the Baltic.
3 THE ERE-FLEET (Eyrarfloti). The great gathering of merchant-ships that came together at an appointed time every year at Eyrr (Skanör) in Denmark (F.J.).
4 BAILIFF (ármaðr). Lit. ‘year’s-man’. His duty was to get in everything which must be collected for the sustenance of the King and his court when travelling about the country. In time they came to be more and more powerful as their tax-gathering duties grew (F.J.). Their unpopularity as ‘King’s thralls’ with inconvenient powers is well shown by the story of Seal-Thorir and Asbiorn Seal’s-bane (O.H. 122–8); cf. the saying of the great Erling Skialgson: “I bow the neck of a good will to thee, King Olaf; but this shall I deem a troublous matter, to lout before Seal-Thorir, who is thrall-born through all his kin, although he be now your steward, or to bow to other such as are his peers of kindred, although you lay honour on them” (ibid. 122).
CHAPTER XX
1 His ONLY CHILD. This is a slip. Thordis, another child of Yngvar’s, is mentioned at the beginning of ch. LVIII, and also in Landn.
2 BALD-HEADED (sköllóttr). Skallagrímr = ‘Bald Grim’. Egil, too, was early bald (pp. 111, 116), an inconvenience which he shares with other famous men, e.g. Scipio Africanus and Julius Caesar.
CHAPTER XXII
1 BY SKARNSOUND …. ELDA-EID. Skarnsound is the waterway that connects this firth with the more northerly Beitsjór (mod. Beitstadfjord); Eldueið, the isthmus that parts the Trondhjemsfjord from the Namsen-fjord. King Harald took the way that goes to-day from Fosnaes over Elden to Rödhammer (F.J.).
2 BADE GO OUT WOMEN, ETC. This was the gentlemanly procedure when the terrible expedient of ‘burning in’ was adopted; cf. Njal’s burning (Nj. 128), where Flosi was ready to let the women and children and housecarles, and Njal himself, go out; and even in the bitter wars of the Sturlung age a like mercy was shown, e.g. at the burning of Flugumyri. It was not so, however, when a low fellow like Hen-Thorir was in charge of the business: “Blundketil and his folk awoke not before the house was ablaze over them. Blundketil asked who had lighted that hot fire, and Thorir told who they were. Blundketil aske
d if aught might get him peace; but Thorir said: ‘There is nought for it but to burn’. And they departed not before every man’s child therein was burnt up” (Hen-Th. 9).
3 SHIELD-BURG (skjaldborg). Formed by men of his bodyguard standing about the King with shields interlocking; commonly used by kings in battle, e.g. by King Hakon Athelstane’s-fosterling and Eric’s sons at Fitiar in Stord (Hákonarmál, Hak. 32, p. 190); by Earl Eric in the great sea-fight at Svold (O.T. 116); by King Olaf the Holy at Sticklestead (O.H. 218). See also the breaking of King Brian’s shield-burg by Brodir the Viking (Nj. 156). Cf. the Roman testudo.
4 EYVIND SKALDSPILLER. Great-grandson on the distaff side of King Harald Hairfair. His Haloga-Tale (Háleygjatal) and Hakon’s-Song (Hákonarmál) are extant, the one in praise of the family of the Earls of Hladir composed for Earl Hakon the Great, the other in memory of thelast battle, victory and death of King Hakon Athelstane’s-fosterling. His by-name of Skáldaspillir doubtless meant that he stole from the older skalds; like some other nicknames (e.g. Audun Ill-skald—‘Poetaster’), given originally in spite, it stuck without any sense of dishonour. That it was justified is demonstrated by the poems just mentioned, so far at least as form is concerned.
CHAPTER XXIII
1 THERE FELL HILDIRID’S SONS. A perfunctory, but perhaps adequate, dismissal of these schemers.
2 INGOLF AND HIORLEIF. Ingolf Arnarson was the first settler (landnámamaðr) in Iceland; both Landn. and Ari’s Islendingabók say that he dwelt at Reykjarvík (mod. Reykjavík, now the capital of Iceland). The reason for his journey (see Earl Atli the Slender) was more respectable than that of another famous discoverer, Eric the Red, whose discovery of Greenland followed upon manslayings which had made first Norway and then Iceland too hot to hold him. A statue of Ingolf by Einarr Jónsson, as of Cortés staring from his peak in Darien, stands on the little green hill at the foot of the Hverfisgata in Reykjavík, looking north over the ships and the harbour and the waters of Faxa Flow. For Hiorleif’s fate, see note ‘Irish Thrall’.
3 This is the country of Njal’s Saga.
4 LITHEND (Hlíðarendi). The seat of Gunnar of Lithend, the hero of the earlier part of Njal’s Saga. Baug was Gunnar’s great-grandfather.
5 LAND-TAKE MEN (landnámamenn). Hence the title of the Land-námabók, the great book of settlements and generations, which has been called the foundation of all exact history, political or social, of the North.
6 WEATHERLID (Vetrliði). When King Olaf Tryggvison’s militant missionaries, Thangbrand and Gudleif, were preaching Christianity in Iceland in 999,” they fared to Fleetlithe … There Weatherlid the Skald, and Ari his son, spoke most against the faith, and for that they slew Weatherlid” (Nj. 98).
7 SPEAKER OF THE LAW (lögsögumaðr). The highest office-bearing person in the Icelandic commonwealth; for his duties and powers see Nj. vol. I, p. lvii, and other references given s.v. in the index to that book.
CHAPTER XXIV
1 STAVE. ‘Thunder-Lord’—Odin. ‘Thing of Odin’s shield-mays’, assembly of the Valkyries—i.e. battle. (For general note on the verse-form of these ‘staves’, see note.)
2 PAY BOOT (bæta). Atonement, weregild. For a general discussion of the ways open to free men under the old law to obtain redress, see Dasent’s Introduction, Nj. vol. I, pp. cxl-cxlii. Friendly atonement by way of ‘paying boot’, when accepted and carried out, had the effect of complete reconciliation, and in theory at least put an end to the blood-feud. Overbearing men sometimes made it a point of pride to do as they pleased and make atonement to no man; e.g. Slaying Stir, the father-in-law of Snorri the Priest, who “was a masterful man in the countryside, and had a many folk about him; he was held guilty at many men’s hands, for that he wrought many slayings and booted none” (Eb. 18); Thorbiorn the Priest: “It is well known, Howard, that I have slain many men, and though folk called them sackless, yet have I paid weregild for none” (Howard’s Saga, ch. 5); and Hrafnkel Frey’s-priest, who “stood much in single combats and paid no man fee, so that none gat of him no boot, whatsoever he might do” (Hrafnkel’s Saga, ch. I).
CHAPTER XXV
1 LEARNED IN WIZARDRY (fjölkunnigr). ‘Full knowing’; the word used passim of those reputed to know all there is to be known, both what they ought and what they ought not to know, i.e. art magic.
2 SIT-BY-THE-FIRE (kolbítr). Lit. ‘a coal-biter’. An idle lout that sits all day in the kitchen; but sometimes turns into a hero in later life.
3 GARTH (garðr). (1) The primary meaning is a ‘yard’, an enclosed space; generally when used alone garðr means a ‘hay-garth or stackyard’; (2) a court and premises; (3) esp. in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, a ‘house or building’ in a town or village (cf. mod: use of gaard in Norse); (4) a very common use in Icel., a ‘fence’: túngarðr, the ‘fence or wall round the home-mead’.
4 THORIR HROALDSON. See note.
5 ROUND-SHIP (knörr). A big ocean-going ship, used for warfare over the high seas, where long-ships could not go; also used as cheaping-ships (Hkr. IV, 427–8).
6 SOLUNDS (Solundir). Mod. Indre and Ytre Sulen, at the mouth of the Sogn Firth.
CHAPTER XXVI
1 DUKE GUTTHORM (Gutthormr). Pronounced ‘Gutt-horm’. For more of him see Hkr., Hfdn. 5; also Har. Hfr. 1, 2, 4, 18, 21, 28, 29.
2 TUNSBERG (Túnsberg). Mod. Tönsberg, an ancient cheaping-stead in Westfold.
CHAPTER XXVII
1 GANGWAY HEAD (bryggjusporðr). I.e. where the gangway touched the land or the jetty.
2 BYRNY-TROLL (bryntröll). Probably a double-edged axe (cf. F.J., note ad loc): a fanciful name, like the Fr. ‘miséricorde’ and Engl. ‘morning-star’ or ‘holy water sprinkler’.
3 STAVE. Whether or not this is in fact Skallagrim’s composition, it is a masterpiece of condensation. ‘Hersir’—Kveldulf. ‘Yngling’s bairns’—Gutthorm was of royal descent both by his father’s and mother’s side.
4 REEKNESS (Reykjanes). The extreme S.W. peninsula of Iceland, forming the southern horn of the great bay of Faxa Flow. Looking N. from Reykjavík in ordinary weather you can see in the clear Icelandic air the two-eared white dome of the Snæfells Jökull, the culminating point of the northern horn of the bay, eighty miles away across the sea. Reekness still ‘reeks’ with the smoke of hot springs, and it is a rough point to round if the weather is at all stormy.
5 THAT NESS THAT WAS THERE. I.e. Digraness; mod. Borgarnes.
CHAPTER XXVIII
1 WIDE WOODS. There are none now. But there is no reason to doubt that this treelessness is of comparatively tecent date. Cf. the references in the sagas to charcoal-burning which implies woods, e.g. by Vigfus at Drapalithe (Eb. 26); and the constant references to ‘woods’ where the context clearly requires substantial trees. Snorri the Priest and Arnkel would not have quarrelled about Crowness “and the wood thereon, which is the best possession in the countryside” (ibid. 31) if it had been, as it now is, mere scrub not reaching to your heel as you ride through it; and there is detailed reference to the cutting, piling, seasoning, and loading of timber in that wood (ibid. 35). Either the farm-stock has eaten down the young growths so that the woods have perished, or (as is not unlikely) there has been a definite climatic change since the saga time. The rowan-trees in the parson’s garden at þingvellir, some 15 ft. high, are to-day quite a feature in the countryside.
2 A GREAT FIRTH. I.e. Burgfirth.
3 HVANNEYRI. On the S.E. shore over against Burg, with a panorama of firth and fell, including, close at hand, the grand mountain wall of Skarðsheiði. Here is to-day the agricultural college of Iceland, with fine buildings and a big model farm.
4 ANDAKIL. Önd, ‘a duck’ (gen. pl. anda), and kill, ‘a creek or inlet’.
5 SKALLAGRIM GAVE LAND, etc. This, the usual procedure, determined the fundamental character of the Icelandic commonwealth: a republic of aristocrats surrounded by their’ thing-men’, towards whom they stood in the double relation of chief and temple-priest. Cf. the account of Thorolf Mostbeard’
s settlement of the Thorsness country, in the opening chapters of Eb., and remarks in Int. p. xx–xxi on ‘Priest’.
6 ONUND SJONI. A shipmate of Egil’s in later years. For the dealings of him and his son Steinar with Egil’s son Thorstein, see chs. LXXX–LXXXIV.
7 WHITEWATER. The Hvítá is extraordinarily white; but the statement that Skallagrim and his men had never seen glacier-water is very strange: possibly a gloss by a copyist who thought the land of Jotunheim and the Jostedalsbrae possessed no glacier streams. Or it may be true. For while the saga is curiously vague about the locality of Kveldulf’s family seat, merely placing it in the Firdafylke, there are certain indications (including this passage) that it was in the Dalsfjord, a neighbourhood which is in fact without glacier rivers.
CHAPTER XXIX
1 THORD THE YELLER. A great lord in the western dales, who dwelt at Hvamm. For his by-name ‘Gellir’, cf. Hen-Th. 13: “He was come from Broadfirth out of the west country who alone was able to answer Odd-a-Tongue, and whose voice and speech were as the roaring of a bull”. He is a frequent figure in the sagas, and was responsible for the constitutional reforms which in 964–5 led to the dividing of the land into Quarters and the setting up of Quarter-Courts at the Althing.
