by E R Eddison
CHAPTER XXX
1 WHEN OTHER MEN WENT TO SLEEP. See here and note 3 to ch. XL.
2 STAVE. ‘Wind’s weeds’—bellows. ‘Viddi’s brother’—the wind (but it is not known who Viddi is). ‘Gold of Beam-enjoyer’, gold of the fire—i.e. the glowing metal. ‘Stirring cots that swallow the storm-blast’—bellows.
CHAPTER XXXI
1 SPRINKLED WITH WATER. The old pagan custom.
2 STAVE. Not Egil’s, but a later fabrication. ‘Glittering ling-thong’—the snake or worm (draco); the worm’s bed (cf. the Volsung story of Fafnir) is gold. ‘ Light-encircled worm-lands’ is another kenning for gold.
3 STAVE. ‘Herdsman of the wound-fowl’—a warrior (who, by plying his trade, gathers together ravens, etc. to feast on the carrion). Surf-dogs’—the sea-snail shells; query, so called from some children’s game on the sea-shore. ‘Sea-steed’—ship. ‘Beck-partridge’—duck; the ‘bed’ of it—its egg. This stave, too, is not genuine, but belongs to the twelfth or thirteenth century.
CHAPTER XXXII
1 BIORN AND THORA JEWEL-HAND. This little idyll (chs. XXXII–XXXV) is no adventitious ornament. The importance, in Egil’s career, of Biorn’s wedding with Thora will appear later.
CHAPTER XXXIII
1 EARL SIGURD. Son of Eystein Glumra, and brother of Rognvald the Mere-Earl. King Harald Hairfair, when he had cleared out the vikings “West-over-sea”, gave Earl Rognvald the Orkneys and Shetland. “But Rognvald straightway gave both the lands to Sigurd his brother, who abode behind in the West. And the king or ever he fared back east gave the earldom to Sigurd. Then there joined him to Sigurd, Thorstein the Red, son of Olaf the White and Aud the Deeply-wealthy, and they harried in Scotland, and won to them Caithness and Sutherland all down to the Oikel-Bank. Now Earl Sigurd slew Tusk-Melbrigda, a Scottish earl, and bound his head to his crupper; but he smote the thick of his leg against the tooth as it stuck out from the head, and the hurt festered so that he gat his bane therefrom, and he was laid in howe in Oikel-Bank” (Har. Hfr. 22).
2 MOSEYBURG. Presumably the Broch of Mousa, for a description and photograph of which see here of Dr Brøgger’s Ancient Emigrants (Clarendon Press, 1929). These brochs are probably Pictish and date from remote antiquity.
3 A FIRTH WONDROUS GREAT. I.e. Faxa Flow.
4 A FIRTH WAS BEFORE THEM. I.e. Burgfirth.
5 A CERTAIN NESS. The Ness is Digraness (mod. Borgarnes), and the isle Brakarey, and the sound Brak’s Sound, see ch. XL. Biorn seems to have anchored where the little steamer Suðurland anchors to-day that plies between Reykjavík and Borgarnes.
CHAPTER XXXVI
1 ERIC BLOODAXE (Eiríkr Blóðöx). This best loved son of King Harald Hairfair succeeded him, as will be seen later (ch. LVII), as King of Norway, but after a stormy year or two was forced to flee the land, yielding the throne to his half-brother Hakon. Eric’s mother was a Danish princess, Ragnhild, daughter of the King of Jutland (Har. Hfr. 21). His career after he was turned out of Norway, and the date of his death (and indeed that of his turning out), are not exactly known. This much is certain, that he was a great sea-king in his youth, and also in later life: that he was sometime king in York (this is confirmed from English sources): that he was finally driven out of Northumberland, and fell (probably in 954) in a great battle in an attempt to win back that kingdom: see Hak. 3 and 4, where it is said that there fell in that battle King Eric and five kings with him and two sons of Earl Turf-Einar of the Orkneys. He was “a big man and a fair; strong and most stout of heart; a mighty warrior and victorious, fierce of mind, grim, unkind, and of few words” (Har. Hfr. 46). A great soldier but a poor statesman, he was steered, like Ahab and Macbeth, by the masculine will of his wife. The rich inheritance, painfully created by his father’s genius during so many years, of an undivided realm of Norway, survived for Eric but a few months, and then fell to pieces in his rude and unskilful hands. See also note, on Gunnhild.
2 CARAVEL (karfi). See note on ‘Long-ship’.
3 MANY SUMMERS. Circ. from 905 to 918 (F. J.).
CHAPTER XXXVII
1 BIARMALAND (Bjarmaland). The land of the Perms, round the basin of the White Sea (Hkr. IV, 241).
2 GUNNHILD. For the full story of Eric’s finding her in Biarmaland, dwelling with two Finnish wizards of hellish powers, under whose tuition she was studying art magic, see Har. Hfr. 34. She is described (ibid. 46) as “the fairest of women, wise and cunning in witchcraft; glad of speech and guileful of heart, and the grimmest of all folk”. In our saga she is the most implacable of Egil’s enemies; partly, it would seem, on the principle of odi quem Iœseris, for her first act is an attempt, on small provocation, to poison him (ch. XLIV). This great Queen appears in the sagas in a baleful light, an instance of those many glorious women who, being “fam’d for masculine vertue, have bin vitious”. In her widowhood she appears as insatiable as the great Catharine in her taste for personable young men (see Nj. and Ld. for her relations with Hrut and Olaf the Peacock): a taste that is hinted at in our own saga (Thorolf Skallagrimson, Bergonund), but with no suggestion that it was indulged to an inconvenient extreme during Eric’s lifetime. Pride is her great spring of action: she cannot away with the old Norse conception of a king as but primus inter pares, and is for ever driving on her lord towards greater show of autocratic power and formality. Thus in her hatred of ‘this great Egil’ is incarnate the theme (fundamental in this saga) of the strife for power between the king and the great houses; and an impartial reader can hardly help feeling throughout the scene in York (chs. LIX, LX) that there is a very great deal to be said in principle for the Queen’s point of view.
There are reasons (not, I think, conclusive) for thinking that Gunnhild was not, as the sagas make her, the daughter of Ozur Toti, but a Danish princess, daughter of King Gorm the Old of Denmark. Two of her sons are named Gorm and Gamli (i.e. Old), and there are many instances of Danish support lent to her interests and those of her sons. Still, since Ragnhild, Eric Bloodaxe’s mother, was a Dane, it is not necessary to make Gunnhild a Dane to supply the connexion. Professor Nordal pointed out to me that, even supposing her to have been King Gorm’s daughter and the sagas therefore wrong in point of fact, it is interesting to note that they are still right in their broad historical view of the Queen, expressed by making her a foreigner brought up among Finns with magic powers. For the essential matter is that, whether she came from the cot of her Finnish tutors or from the highly developed court of Denmark, the Norse ways were strange and jarring to her, with their informal ideas about kings: “Who ever heard tell of such-like doings to a King-man?” Dasent has an admirable note on Gunnhild, Nj. vol. II, pp. 377–96;
3 BERGONUND. A personage of some importance to Egil’s career: see ch. LVI ff.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
1 A NEEDFUL ERRAND. Presumably to get leave from Asgerd’s kinsfolk for his wedding with her; see ch. XLII.
2 WE SHALL NOT MEET. AS usual, this foreboding is fulfilled. Cf. Kveldulf’s foreboding of the fall of the elder Thorolf, ch. XIX; Egil’s in ch. LIV; Bergthora’s saying (Nj. 126): “Now shall ye choose your meat to-night, so that each may have what he likes best; for this evening is the last that I shall set meat before my household”, and many similar passages in the sagas, which well illustrate Keyserling’s profound saying (Int., p. xxvii) that the belief in predestination is always grandiose in effect where its disciples possess proud souls.
3 STAVE. ‘Switch’s care-bed’ (sveigar kör)—axe, which chops down the brushwood (switch) and so is its ‘death-bed’. ‘Wound-wolf—axe again, from another point of view. ‘Muck-horn’ (arghyrna): arg is a term of the foulest opprobrium, see Lokasenna and notes thereon, C.P.B. vol. I.
CHAPTER XXXIX
1 REEKDALE (Reykjadalr). Mod. Reykholtsdalur. Reykholt was the seat of the great Snorri Sturlason. Riding from Burgfirth past Whitewater-meads you can see to-day, at ten miles’ distance, the ‘reek’ of the hot springs as if the land was burning. At Deildartunga (and I believe at other
farmsteads in the neighbourhood) they bake their bread by the heat of the springs. Snorri’s bath is still shown to visitors, a circular well rimmed round with stones. In the river some miles below Reykholt is a ‘water volcano’, a small rock islet in midstream which, from several holes in its surface, continually throws out boiling water into the cold river that surrounds it.
2 BLUND-KETIL. Burnt in his house by Hen-Thorir, according to Hen-Th. and Landn.; but Ari in Íslendingabók says it was Thorkel that was burnt, the son of Blund-Ketil.
CHAPTER XL
1 BALL-PLAYS (knattleikar). A game of bat and hall, often mentioned in the sagas. Antiquarians have not succeeded in reconstructing its rules with any certainty (see F.J.’s note ad loc.). It was played by sides, and with a bat and ball: apparently one player hit the ball with the bat, and the opponent tried to catch it: if he missed it there seems to have been a general scrimmage for the ball.
The one clear thing about the game is that it was very rough. Cf. Gisl. 8: “Those brothers-in-law, Thorgrim and Gisli, were very often matched against each other, and men could not make up their minds which was the stronger, but most thought Gisli had most strength. They were playing at the ball on the tarn called Sedgetarn. On it there was ever a crowd. It fell one day when there was a great gathering that Gisli bade them share the sides as evenly as they could for a game.
“‘That we will with all our hearts,’ said Thorkel, ‘but we also wish thee not to spare thy strength against Thorgrim, for the story runs that thou sparest him; but as for me I love thee well enough to wish that thou shouldst get all the more honour if thou art the stronger.’
“‘We have not put that yet to the proof,’ says Gisli, ‘may be the time may come for us to try our strength.’
“Now they began the game, and Thorgrim could not hold his own. Gisli threw him and bore away the ball. Again Gisli wished to catch the ball, but Thorgrim runs and holds him and will not let him get near it. Then Gisli turned and threw Thorgrim such a fall on the slippery ice that he could scarce rise. The skin came off his knuckles, and the flesh off his knees, and blood gushed from his nostrils. Thorgrim was very slow in rising.…Gisli caught the ball on the bound, and hurled it between Thorgrim’s shoulders so that he tumbled forwards, and threw his heels up in the air.…Thorkel jumps up and says: ‘Now we can see who is the strongest or is the best player. Let us break off the game’.”
2 STAVE. Almost certainly genuine Egil.
3 AFTER SUNSET. Skallagrim’s ‘shape-strength’, like his father’s, affects him in the evening. Cf. his feat of strength by night related in ch. XXX.
4 KING OLAF. Olaf the Quiet, reigned 1067–93; son of King Harald Hardrada who fell at Stamford Bridge, 1066.
CHAPTER XLI
1 FRANKLIN (Höldr). An untitled person who takes rank in the social scale above the bóndi, and is a freeholder by birth (óðalsmaðr, óðalborinn), Hkr. IV, 338. The word is not derived from halda to hold, but is identical with A.S. hœleð, Germ, held (hero). For Biorn’s attitude, cf. the story in the Fornmannasögur version of King Harald Hardrada’s Saga, ch. 62, where the king offers one Hogni the title of landed man but Hogni begs to be excused from taking the honour, “Because I know that that will be said (as true it is), then when landed men be come together, ‘There shall Hogni sit outermost; he is the least among landed men, for that he is of bonder’s kin’; then will the name of landed man be in no wise to mine honour, rather a thing to laugh at. Now will I rather be named bonder, that I have the birth for. There will be rather somewhat of honour for me in that talk, that then it will be said (though it amount to little), wheresoever bonders be come together, that Hogni is of them the foremost”.
2 TAKEN IN THANKFUL WISE. See here. Thorolf was plainly a man of tact.
3 ARINBIORN. This is the beginning of a deep and lifelong friendship. Arinbiorn is mentioned also in Landn. and in Hkr.
CHAPTER XLIII
1 CURDS (skyr). Doubtless the lac concretum of Tacitus (Germania, ch. 23). Skyr is astaple article of food in Iceland to-day; many foreigners find it unattractive at first, but the taste for it grows with use. It is thick and pasty, with a clean, sour flavour. Served (as it is) with cream and sugar, it is a dish for kings.
CHAPTER XLIV
1 BLOOD-OFFERING UNTO THE GODDESSES (Dísablót). Dame Bertha Phillpotts (Cambridge Medieval History, vol. II, p. 486) thinks that the Disir—‘(supernatural) female beings’—probably covered both the Valkyries and the Norns. There was a great ‘Hall of the Goddesses’ at Upsala through which, when he ‘happed to be at a sacrifice to the Goddesses’ King Adils rode his horse; “and the horse tripped his feet under him… and the king fell forward from off him, so that his head smote on a stone, and he brake his skull, and the brains lay on the stones, whereby he gat his bane” (Yngl. 33). Earl Hakon the Great had a private Goddess, Thorgerd Shrine-bride,* to whom he is said in the Jómsvíkinga Saga to have offered up his son in order to escape defeat in his battle against the Jomsburg vikings in Hiorung-wick; the Jomsburgers were overborne by foul weather and a great hail-storm, and thought they saw a woman on Earl Hakon’s ship, “and it seemed to them as if arrows flew thick and fast from every finger of her, but every arrow was the bane of a man” (Fornmannasögur, 1, 176). Dame Bertha Phillpotts (op. cit.) observes that the Dísir are “too capricious to be called guardian spirits. Those of one family, provoked at the coming change of faith, are credited with having killed one of its representatives. We see the reasonableness of the attitude taken up by a would-be convert, who stipulates that the missionary shall guarantee him the mighty archangel Michael as his ‘attendant angel’ (fylgju-engill)”. The sad case referred to is that of a son of Hall of the Side, mentioned (Nj. 95) as þiðrandi, sá er Dísir drápu—‘whom the Goddesses slew’. Thidrandi’s death is related at length in the so-called Olaf Tryggvison Saga Major, a work much diluted and marred with monkish additions: Dasent summarises the curious story in his introduction (Nj. vol. I, p. xx).
2 This episode in Atley should be compared with the Rabelaisian scene in the house of Armod Beard, pp. 170–3.
3 STAVE. ‘Shatterer of helm-bane ogress’ (brjótr herkumla sverre-flagþa)—shatterer of the axe, e.g. by using it too violently, as Skallagrim did with King Eric’s gift, ch. XXXVII; so warrior. ‘Sword-saplings’—men.
4 CUP-MAID (ölselja). F.J. recalls that in Valhalla the Valkyries pour out the ale for the heroes of bliss (Einherjar).
5 RUNES (rúnar). The ancient runic alphabet of 24 letters is found in inscriptions, generally on stones, all over the North. Sophus Bugge, and Prof. von Friesen of Upsala, have shown that it is derived from the Greek (not, as formerly supposed, the Latin) alphabet. “Once on a time the self-same speech was spoken by every ‘Gothic’ tribe from Roumania to Norway. As separate tribes were isolated, this language split of course into different tongues”, C.P.B. vol. I, p. 573. The language of the runes is thus the oldest ‘Northern Tongue’, going back to about 300 A.D.
Runes were held to be magic mysteries of Odin’s invention. In Hávamál He says: “Runes shalt thou find and staves to read, most great staves, most steadfast staves, which Fimbul-þulr drew, and the High Gods made, and Hroptr of the Powers scored: Odin among Æsir, but for Elves Dainn, and Dvalinn for Dwarves, Alsviðr for Giants. I Myself scored some” (C.P.B. vol. I, p. 25).
For Egil’s powers with runes, cf. also ch. LXXII.
6 STAVE. ‘Root of the fierce beast’s ear-tree’ (óþs dýrs viþar róta)—the root (i.e. part nearest the head) of the horn (ear-tree) of the aurochs: in short, the upper part of the drinking-horn. ‘Ale that Bard did sign’ (ǫl þats Bárøþr signde); the cups were ‘signed to the Æsix’ (i.e. the Gods) after ancient wont, O.H. 113.
7 STAVE. ‘Wild-ox’s bill-drops’ (atgeira úra ýring), lit. ‘the raindrops of the bill or halberd of the aurochs’; the aurochs’s ‘bill’ is its horn—a drinking horn: the’ rain-drops’ of that—beer. The last couplet is
rigna getr at regne
reg
nbjóþr Hǫars þegna.
The ‘rain of Hoar’s thanes’ (Odin’s thanes; i.e. the Gods) is poetry. Egil thus says, Ί am making a poem’ (F.J.): a somewhat gratuitous and pointless piece of information. Personally, I do not doubt (in view of the immediate sequel) that a double meaning is intended, and the suggestion called up by oddský (spear-sky) in the previous line is carried into this last couplet: the Gods can rain not poems only, but swords of vengeance on poison-mixing ale-begrudgers such as Bard.
8 RANSACK. ‘Rannsaka’ is the regular legal term for a domiciliary search, whether for a criminal or for stolen goods. Cf. the ransacking at Mewlithe (Eb. 18, pp. 33–4), and Arnkel’s ransacking for Odd Katlason (ibid. 20, pp. 44–7).
CHAPTER XLV
1 WHEN THE SEARCH-PARTIES … SHIP (er leiti bar í milli þeira ok skipsins). Lit. ‘When a slope or rising brow was brought or came between them and the ship’; i.e. the ship lay in what was ‘dead ground’ for them. Cf. p. 121, where a similar phrase is used.
2 STAVE. ‘Listland’, mod. Lister, a district in West Agdir: here it stands, as pars pro toto, for Norway. ‘Hlokk’s rowan’—King Eric (Hlökk being a Valkyrie).
3 THE KING’S DOOM (dóm konungs). Thorir offered the King ‘self-doom’ or the right of laying down his own award, the most honourable terms that could be offered to the other side in a blood-suit.
CHAPTER XLVI
1 A HALF-MONTH’S PEACE. The matter-of-course way in which this arrangement (first do your trading, then make war—apparently on your customers) is recorded, is illuminating.
2 TORTURING. The collocation of ideas, skemtan (amusement, entertainment) and kvelja (to torment; cf. Engl, ‘quell’) is to be noted. The amusement was (or was believed by the Norsemen to be) popular among barbarians such as the Kurlanders and the Wends; cf. O.T. 38, where Earl Sigvaldi, then captain of the Jomsburgers, kidnapped King Svein Twi-beard (later the conqueror of England) and forced him to make peace with the Wend-king, “‘Either else would the earl’, said he, ‘deliver King Svein to the Wends’. Now King Svein knew full well that then would the Wends torment him to death” (kvelja hann til bana).