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

by Martin Regal

  II. GISLI SURSSON’S SAGA

  Forbidden love leading to violence and death is a central theme of this saga. From the very beginning we are given a foreboding of this theme with the story of how Gisli’s two uncles are killed, one by a berserk and the other by a slave whose excellent sword Grey-blade he has borrowed and been reluctant to return.4 The fighting starts with a stock motif when the berserk challenges the elder brother, Ari, to a duel for his wife and kills him. The widow advises the second brother, also named Gisli, to borrow the sword, adding meaningfully that she would rather have been married to him in the first place. It is tacitly implied that she has betrayed her husband by not giving him the same advice. Indeed, Gisli and Ingibjorg are wed after he has killed the berserk, although a slave puts a prompt end to that marriage by killing him in turn. Grey-blade remains in the possession of the family and, while enshrining the heroic values passed down from one generation to the next, also becomes a symbol of the bad luck that haunts it.

  In the second generation a schism arises between Gisli Sursson and his older brother Thorkel. Encouraged by his father, Gisli kills a certain Bard whom they suspect of seducing his sister Thordis, while Thorkel, who has been friendly with the suitor, greatly resents his brother’s violent reaction. He even goes to the lengths of urging Bard’s kinsman to avenge the killing. When a second suitor has also been killed the family become embroiled in a feud and have no choice but to emigrate to Iceland.

  Honour and vengeance

  Honour is central to any individual’s self-respect in the Sagas of Icelanders, and it can be worth more than life itself. Inextricably linked to this concept is the obligation to take revenge when there is no other way of satisfying wounded honour; at the same time, people are expected to take such action only as a last resort. But this balance is difficult to strike, and external factors – the actions of others and an individual’s own moral bent – can lead a man who is not normally aggressive to act in ways certain to result in misfortune. Gisli Sursson is such a man. His saga is a tragedy because conflicts flare up between individuals so closely linked that all options seem equally unappealing. Vengeance is bound to hurt the avenger himself.

  A code of conduct with ancient roots, which demands that a man should guard the honour of himself and his family at all costs and always demand life in revenge for life, is obviously a categorical imperative for the main hero of our saga, Gisli, just as it was for his Norwegian father and forefathers; in his last stanza (verse 39) Gisli actually traces his courage and toughness to his father’s influence. Other characters, including Gisli’s brother Thorkel, do not adhere to this code with his degree of conviction. Should the saga then be interpreted as being critical of this severe code of conduct, or only as showing an awareness of the moral dilemmas it creates? When Gisli, as a young man in Norway, is forced by his father and by his own sense of honour to kill another young man, the reader may feel that he is impetuous about taking revenge. Once incited, he kills without warning. In another manuscript version, Gisli is strongly urged on by his father but nevertheless gives the offender two warnings and entreats him to mend his ways before finally killing him. Such behaviour would be more typical of the moderation that is the mark of a real hero. Whichever version is closer to the original at this point, the disagreement between the brothers about the killing shows that Gisli’s reaction to his father’s incitement is not the only possible recourse, yet at the same time conventional concepts of honour clearly demand that he should take action. His father is a spokesman for the honour and vengeance culture, and, viewing the saga as a whole, it is natural to conclude that Gisli behaves quite properly and does what family honour demands, although his reactions may be excessive or over-zealous. As subsequent events confirm, his brother Thorkel is definitely the lesser man.

  Later in the saga Gisli is twice confronted by even more taxing demands imposed by the ideals of honour. These subsequent events highlight the essentially contradictory nature of the revenge ethic and the tragic consequences that can be triggered when ill fortune comes into play. On the first occasion, when his ‘sworn brother’ and brother-in-law Vestein has been murdered in secret, Gisli is certain that the deed was engineered by his own brother Thorkel, and that another brother-in-law, his sister’s husband Thorgrim, must be the killer. Driven by the obligation to avenge his sworn brother, Gisli responds with another secret killing, stabbing Thorgrim while he is lying in the darkness of night in the arms of his wife Thordis. Later in the saga she exposes her brother, after he confesses to the killing in a verse which she overhears and interprets. Fateful events ensue: Gisli is condemned to outlawry, lives like a hunted animal for years, and is eventually killed in retribution. There is no indication in the text that he ever regrets having killed Thorgrim or that he is considered to have behaved improperly. His pursuers during his long years of outlawry are shown to be thoroughly disreputable people. In exposing Gisli, Thordis commands sympathy for being in no less a dilemma than he is: she naturally resents not only his killing of her husband, but also the implicit suggestion that his ties to Vestein were stronger than his ties to her husband. Moreover, she is carrying Thorgrim’s baby, a son as it turns out – who will emerge as Snorri, the hero of The Saga of the People of Eyri – and does not want to leave their child with the terrible burden of being obliged to take revenge on his own uncle, a formidable champion to boot. When Thordis exposes her brother she is choosing the lesser of two evils. However, at the end of the saga she attempts to avenge Gisli’s death and demonstrates her belief that by his outlawry her brother has atoned in full for killing her husband.

  Though the saga never condemns Gisli for killing Thorgrim, there is a sense that the demands of vengeance can become so outrageous that it would be wrong to accede to them. To Vestein’s sons, the killing of Thorgrim seems insufficient recompense and, while still boys, they kill Thorkel Sursson. They escape and seek out Aud, their paternal aunt, and her husband Gisli, who are both hiding at a remote location. Ch. 30 describes how Aud welcomes the boys warmly, but prevents them from meeting Gisli and sends them away. When she tells him about the killing, his immediate reaction is that he cannot live under the same roof as his brother’s killers and must take vengeance, but he is easily convinced to let them get away. This episode shows that the saga’s acceptance of the vengeance culture is not unconditional; there is no glorification of vendetta as such, but rather an awareness of its potentially terrible consequences. Accordingly the saga provides Gisli with the opportunity to take a further step along the road of vengeful extremism, and although good sense prevails and he is happy to let the matter rest, the listener or reader is left in no doubt that he would have thought nothing of pursuing and killing Vestein’s sons had he really wanted to. By doing so, however, he would have killed the sons of the very man for whom he had sacrificed everything in his pursuit of vengeance. Such is the wretched fate stalking these families that, at the end of the saga, another of Gisli’s brothers kills one of Vestein’s two sons.

  Some present-day readers have found Gisli’s inflexible adherence to the demands of vengeance unsympathetic, but they have rarely given him credit for his own recognition that revenge has its limits. The killing of Vestein is a shameful act, and Gisli views it as completely without justification. Accordingly he cannot tolerate the idea of allowing such a deed to stand un-avenged, and in fact he does try to divert attention from his brother Thorkel by killing Thorgrim. It seems unnecessary to believe, as some scholars have suggested, that Gisli derived any perverse pleasure from killing his brother-in-law in his marital bed, yet the description of this killing is so powerful, its atmosphere so emotionally charged, that it is hardly surprising that such thoughts have been entertained.

  Fate and other supernatural forces

  ‘Thus Gisli’s life came to an end, and although he was deemed a man of great prowess, fortune was not always with him.’ As explicit a comment as this is rare in the sagas. With its typical understatement, it refers to ideas abou
t good or bad luck, which in this saga are closely connected to the idea of fate. It is emphasized time and again that the future course of events is predetermined and nothing can change what lies ahead. This can be seen from Gest’s prophecy in Ch. 6, which earns symbolic confirmation when the plan to avert it misfires, and from Gisli’s words towards the end of the same chapter: ‘I suspect fate will take its course now.’ The event which sets in motion the subsequent grim chain of events – the conversation between Gisli’s wife Aud and Thorkel’s wife Asgerd about the latter’s love for Vestein – causes Gisli again to reflect on the forces ruling his life: ‘Fate must find someone to speak through. Whatever is meant to happen will happen’ (Ch. 9). The same idea is expressed symbolically in Vestein’s words in Ch. 12: ‘now all waters flow towards Dyrafjord and that is where I will ride.’ The plot is thus very much subject to fate and governed by forces beyond the power of individuals.

  Supernatural forces impact on the saga again when the sorcerer Thorgrim Nef (Nose) casts a spell to render ineffective any help that may be given to Thorgrim’s killer. All events conspire against Gisli: powerful opponents, fate and sorcery. The saga hinges on how individuals confront the burden of fate, living in accordance with their conscience and fighting for their lives until the bitter end, no matter how powerful the forces they have to face, nor how awful their lot must be. Compared to the laws inscribed in the consciousness of the individual, the laws and judgements of society count for little, and no attempts are ever made to pay material compensation for the various killings in this saga. Gisli is sentenced to outlawry in his absence, and the court case is only briefly described. As an outlaw his thoughts are with the judgements of fate rather than of society. In this sense Gisli Sursson’s Saga is more individualistic and less socially aware than The Saga of the People of Eyri, and its preoccupations with fate and heroic ethics reflect a more archaic mindset.

  If our only sources of information about Gisli’s feelings were his own statements (in prose) and his actions, then the modern reader could be excused for regarding him as some kind of automaton, lacking all warmth of human feeling; but a careful reading of the saga hardly supports such an interpretation, and Gisli’s poetry says more about his thoughts and feelings than the narrative reveals. Gisli is in fact deeply moved by the blood-stained life he has led, and anxious about the fate which awaits him. He never complains, but he expresses his feelings when he describes his dreams and makes verses about them, thus stepping into the area occupied by fate and other supernatural forces. As with the poetry of other saga heroes, it is disputed whether Gisli’s verse was a part of oral traditions about him or composed for the written saga. Much of it has a Christian colouring and could not have been composed in the tenth century, but it could have been created later in either oral or written tradition. Be that as it may, it was included in the written text and stands there as an integral part of the saga we know.5

  Gisli’s dreams begin when he has been outlawed, and so does the poetry that accompanies them. Two dream-women visit him alternately while he sleeps: one is benevolent and brings him a Christian message, the other is malevolent and speaks the words of fate, the judgement from which no man may escape – she predicts evil fortune, washes him in blood and dresses him in bloodstained clothes. These women symbolize the conflicting forces of his fate and can be seen as projections of the roles his wife and his sister play in his life. Through the dreams and the verses the reader is offered a poignant insight into the hero’s thoughts and feelings that cannot be presented in any other way. Gisli shows no remorse, but he seems conscious of his terrible fate in living a life dedicated to bloodshed – first the blood of others and, eventually, his own.

  Fate and sexuality

  By no stretch of the imagination could Gisli Sursson’s Saga be described as a love story, yet the relationship between men and women lies behind all the ill-fated events it narrates. Two women are all-important: Gisli’s sister Thordis, the agent of fate, and his loyal wife Aud. When introduced, Thordis is described as ‘good-looking and intelligent’. Yet the saga says so little about her that there is no way of knowing for certain whether she may be held responsible for her brother having to kill her suitors in defence of the family honour, nor do we know whether she was Thorgrim and Thorkel’s accomplice in arranging the killing of Vestein. None the less, we can hardly avoid sympathizing with her when her husband is suddenly killed while she is carrying their first child. Twice more she contributes fatefully and memorably to the course of events. First, she interprets a verse spoken by Gisli as signalling his confession of guilt for Thorgrim’s murder, and informs her husband Bork, Thorgrim’s brother – albeit some time after she first realized the meaning of the verse, suggesting that her decision had not been an easy one. Second, it is clear that she endorses the archaic revenge ethic by which her brother lives when, after Gisli’s death, she tries to kill Eyjolf the Grey and then divorces Bork. In one of his verses, Gisli contrasts his sister with the great heroine of eddic poetry, Gudrun Gjukadottir, feeling that she lacks Gudrun’s steely strength.6 These two figures certainly have much in common. In the ancient Germanic legends about the Volsungs and Nibelungs the great hero Sigurd is killed by his brother-in-law in the arms of his wife Gudrun. According to the eddic poem Atlakviða, which was recorded from oral tradition about the time Gisli Sursson’s Saga was written, Gudrun later takes the most terrible revenge on her second husband Atli when he has deceived and killed her brothers; she kills Atli’s and her two sons and serves their flesh and blood to him, and having told him what she has done she sets fire to his hall and burns him to death. Gisli expects his sister to behave like Gudrun and put the duties to her kin above those she owes her husband, but in fact her mind is torn. Thordis is the most purely tragic figure in the saga, and yet she brings forth the representative of more peaceful times to come in her son Snorri.

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga focuses more closely on Aud’s words and actions than those of Thordis, even though she does not play the same key role in the plot. Aud is the ideal of the loyal and worthy wife, wholly supportive of her husband right up to his dying day. There are opportunities for her to demonstrate this loyalty, as when she refuses bribes from Eyjolf the Grey, strikes him on the nose with the money bag, and says, famously: ‘remember, you wretch, for as long as you live, that a woman has struck you’ (Ch. 32). Her support for Gisli during his last stand, however, is to no avail, and even does him harm as it turns out. Her actions are severely limited by the ideas of a male-dominated society; but within those constraints and by its standards she behaves blamelessly.

  Comic relief

  For all its deeply tragic framework and core, Gisli Sursson’s Saga has its comic episodes too. When Gisli has been outlawed, he repeatedly just manages to escape with his life, sometimes by valiant fighting and at other times by trickery, and indeed he takes on the shape of a trickster figure in several scenes. There is nothing heroic about the way he hoodwinks his slave Thord into exchanging cloaks with him with the result that he gets away while Thord is killed (Ch. 20). This is the first of the ‘shape-shifting’ ruses that Gisli employs to escape from his enemies; in Ch. 26 he dons another disguise and plays a fool or ‘village idiot’. Another comic scene is acted out when he hides in the hay in the bed of a poor but foul-mouthed woman (Ch. 27). While we may see such interludes as ‘playing to the groundlings’, they serve as in Shakespeare not only as relief but also ultimately to heighten the tragic element still further.

  A more discreet way of mixing comedy into the tragedy is the description of characters who do not measure up to the standard of heroism. Thordis’s second husband Bork acts unheroically when he initially hesitates to take action after learning the identity of his brother’s killer, and then relies exclusively on hired men for the revenge. He is contrasted with his brother Thorgrim, who is a man of immediate action, as he demonstrates in Ch. 7. The opposition between the brothers Gisli and Thorkel is striking, and it plays a part in the tragic fate of the
family, but the saga repeatedly portrays Thorkel as a comic character. The fateful episode when Thorkel overhears his wife Asgerd and Aud talking about the former’s love for Vestein itself ends as comedy, although it initiates a tragic course of events. The same evening that Thorkel overhears the women’s conversation there is a confrontation between him and Asgerd (Ch. 9). Thorkel is here portrayed as a wavering and cowardly man who, besides being disloyal to his kinsmen, as he has already demonstrated, makes empty threats. Asgerd is more like a traditional heroine, determined and passionate. Obviously, she does not have the fierce pride of an eddic Brynhild, who wants no one but the best of men. But Asgerd is not prepared to accept any kind of humiliation from her husband, and she has no scruples about using her sexual power over him to ensure this. There are fine psychological nuances here. Thorkel’s lack of character is never directly mentioned, let alone condemned, but is revealed through the contrast between his brave words and his action. Both spouses act according to practical, unheroic considerations, but it is the woman who shows strength and determination, and the man who lets himself be dominated by his wife. A description of a conversation between Gisli and Aud in the same circumstances follows immediately, and the contrast is striking: Aud confides in her husband and there is mutual trust and affection between them.