Ref answered, “I want to command your ships and men for half a month, and send them wherever I want.”
The king said, “That’s a strange choice, but the ships shall be at your disposal.”
At once they sailed to Gautland to meet Jarl Neri. They arrived late in the day. Ref secretly informed Jarl Neri’s men that he wanted to meet him. The jarl went to meet Ref, and Ref told him all about his travels.
“Now things have come to the point, foster-son,” said the jarl, “that it’s time to find out whether you’re a lucky man, because now I want to marry you into King Gautrek’s family. You should marry his daughter.”
Ref asked him to oversee this matter by himself. The jarl said, “The next time we meet, you must not show surprise at anything I might say, and respond according to what I hand you.”
Then the jarl rode off and didn’t break his journey until he had come to meet King Gautrek. The jarl arrived around midnight and told him that an overwhelming force had entered his kingdom—“these men intend to take your life and conquer the kingdom.”
The king asked, “Who is the leader of these hosts?”
The jarl answered, “Someone we’d hardly suspect, but he won’t listen to my advice at all: it’s Ref, my foster-son.”
The king said, “You must reason with him even more—but wouldn’t it be best to summon forces to oppose him?”
The jarl said, “If you don’t reach a settlement with them, I think it’s very likely that they’ll pillage the land before you can assemble your forces. I would rather go with a suitable message and find out if a settlement between you might succeed, because I believe my realm will be the first to be ruined when they come near.”
The king answered, “We’ve heeded your counsel for a long time.”
“I want you to listen in on our conversation, king,” said the jarl.
The king said that that was up to him.
They traveled with some men until they approached the ships. The king saw that they had a vast host of warriors, and it would be difficult to withstand them. The jarl spoke, calling out from land to the men on the ships. “Is my foster-son in command of this host?”
“It’s true,” Ref said.
“Foster-son, I never thought that you would raid my kingdom, or King Gautrek’s kingdom. Shouldn’t we reach some sort of settlement, so that peace may come about? I want to arrange everything so that your honor may be greater than ever, and I believe that the king will want the same thing for his own heir. I want you to accept honors from the king and then leave his kingdom in peace. I know you’ll be quite agreeable, and that’s not surprising, because your mother’s father was a powerful jarl, and your father a trusty champion.”
Ref answered, “I shall accept good proposals, if they’re offered to me.”
“I know you won’t trust a paltry offer,” said the jarl. “I know what you’re thinking. You must want to have the jarldom that I have held in King Gautrek’s name, and you must want the king to give you his daughter into the bargain.”
Ref answered, “You go and see to it, jarl. I will say yes, if the king will agree.”
The jarl said to the king, “I believe it would be wiser to accept this solution than for us to risk our lives at the hands of these men from Hel. I see that they’ll probably take your kingdom first, and then take your daughter as spoils of war. But it’s the most suitable thing to do, to betroth your daughter to a man descended from jarls. I will give Ref my counsel. Let him be the overseer of your kingdom. May our wishes be done in this matter.”
King Gautrek answered, “Your counsel has always been a help to us, jarl, and I want to have your foresight. And I believe that it would be far beyond our strength to engage this host.”
The jarl said, “Now I will advise you to let Ref strengthen your kingdom and take him into your confidence.” This was confirmed with oaths, and the jarl decided on all their arrangements, and King Gautrek went home.
Ref said, “You’ve granted me much help, King Olaf. You shall now go on your way, wherever you like.”
King Olaf answered, “Wiser men than you have taken part in this.” Then King Olaf sailed away.
And when the fleet had left, King Gautrek said, “I’ve had to deal with tricky men here, but I won’t break my oath now.”
The jarl said to Ref, “Now only your men are left, and you can see all the help I have brought you. This is the right thing for you to do. Maybe you’ve been repaid for the ox in full, but I haven’t rewarded you as much as I might have, because you gave me all you had, while I have plenty of possessions left.”
Now King Gautrek had a feast laid on, and Ref went to marry Helga, King Gautrek’s daughter. Along with that, King Gautrek gave him the title of jarl. He was the most renowned of men for all his valor; his family was descended from noble men, and his father was the greatest warrior and champion. Ref ruled this jarl’s realm, but he didn’t live to be old.
Jarl Neri died suddenly, and nothing further is said about him in this saga. King Gautrek held the funeral feast for him. The king was becoming quite bowed down by old age. He was more famous for his generosity and valor, but it’s not said that he was a deep thinker. Yet he was well-liked and quite generous, and the most mannerly of men.
And here ends the story of Gift-Ref.
[1] As discussed in the Introduction, the motif of an uncanny beast leading a hunter to an otherworldly encounter is widespread in medieval romances, and there are many avenues by which it could have entered the Norse sagas. Whatever the source, the episode in Gautreks saga is clearly a burlesque.
[2] Skafnortungr is related to skafa, “to shave; to scrape.” Ranisch states that skaf refers to bark scraped from trees, while nortungr comes from narta, “to pinch” (Die Gautrekssaga, p. lxxx). The point is that bark shaved from trees was fed to cattle in times of scarcity; to be frugal with such starvation rations implies extreme stinginess. Pálsson and Edwards render the name as “Skinflint.”
[3] Tötra means “tatters.”
[4] Fjölmóðr is the name of the purple sandpiper (Calidris maritima). In Icelandic folklore it is considered the most insignificant of all birds; the word fjölmóðarvíl, “sandpiper’s misery,” refers to making a big fuss over nothing. (Ranisch, Die Gautrekssaga, p. lxxx; Jón Árnarson, Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri, vol. 1, p. xi)
[5] Imsigull is hard to interpret. The name might mean something like “various gold items”, if divided as “Imsi-Gull”, from ýmiss or ímiss, “various; alternating” and gull, “gold”. Ranisch, however, divides the name as Íms-igull, “dirty hedgehog”, from ím, “dust; ashes” and igull, “hedgehog” (or possibly “sea urchin”).
[6] Gillingr might mean “valued at full worth.” Note that in the older redaction, Gilling is the name of the father.
[7] Snotra means “wise”; the name appears in the Prose Edda as one of the handmaidens of the goddess Frigg. (Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 35, ed. Faulkes, Edda, vol. 1, p. 30)
[8] Fjötra is related to a Norwegian dialect verb fjatra, “to falter, stumble; to speak foolishly,” and Hjötra may be related to another Norwegian verb hotta, “to bounce around”. (Ranisch, Die Gautrekssaga, p. lxxx-lxxxi)
[9] In the shorter redaction of this saga, Gilling is the father of the family and Skafnaurtung is one of Snotra’s brothers. This was presumably the original arrangement; Gilling’s Crag was named for the head of the family.
[10] Valhalla (Norse Valhöll, “Hall of the Slain”) is Odin’s home and the home of slain warriors, who fight each other all day and feast together all night. In the recorded myths, the only way to reach it was by a heroic death in battle. (Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 38-41, ed. Faulkes, Edda, vol. 1, pp. 32-34) The family’s attempt to reach it by committing suici
de out of an outrageous sense of violated greed would have been ridiculous to an audience who knew the myths.
[11] There has been some controversy over whether this description of suicide by leaping from a cliff has any basis in authentic pagan practice. There are a few historical references to old and helpless people being thrown from cliffs during famines in Iceland (Viðrauki Skarðsarbókar, published in Islendinga sögur, vol. 1, p. 323); claims that pagans sacrificed “the worst men” to the gods by pushing them over cliffs (Kristni saga ch. 12, ed. Kahle, p. 40); and recent Swedish folk traditions of ättestupor, “family cliffs,” over which old people were once thrown. However, the references to starvation and old age, and to meeting Odin, are not found in the older and shorter redaction of this saga, and were probably added to give antiquarian “pagan flavor”. While people may indeed have gone over cliffs, willingly or not, as punishment or in times of famine, Gautreks saga probably does not preserve a genuine memory of pre-Christian religious practices. (Millroy, “The Story of Ætternisstapi”, pp. 206-223)
[12] Saxo tells the same story about the stingy King Huglek, who gave away a pair of shoes but kept the laces (History of the Danes VI.185-186; transl. Davidson and Fisher, pp. 172-173).
[13] The Norse text puns on Gauti’s name combined with rekstri, “chase”—i.e. the stag hunt that brought Gauti to Snotra’s home. I had to deviate slightly from the literal meaning to convey the pun.
[14] In the older version of this tale, the father explicitly tells his children to marry each other to keep the family’s wealth intact, while also warning them against having children at all (which of course undermines his purpose, because it will lead the family to extinction; this might be an oversight by the saga composer, but is probably a deliberate sign of how stupid the family is). The younger version deletes the father’s command of incestuous marriage, while retaining the children’s odd method of birth control, which now seems rather pointless. (Kalinke, “Endogamy as the Crux of the Dalafífla þáttr,” pp. 113-117)
[15] A number of sagas deal with human male heroes who travel to the realm of giants and impregnate female giants; the half-giant sons that they sire may come to live with their fathers and become mighty heroes (e.g. Jokul in Kjálnesinga saga; Vignir in Örvar-Odds saga). Although Snotra is not actually a giantess, the first part of Gautreks saga is a humanized parody of an encounter with the Otherworld, and Gautrek fits the narrative pattern.
[16] Their story is told in Friðþjófs saga en frækna. The main plot of Friðþjófs saga seems to be derived from an Arabian tale, which means that it is not a fornaldarsaga according to Mitchell’s definition (Heroic Sagas and Ballads, pp. 27-29), but the names and family history of Fridthjof and Ingibjorg might come from native Scandinavian tradition, even if their famous romance does not.
[17] Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka (ch. 1) tells of Vikar’s birth and the way in which Odin fated him to be sacrificed. Note, however, that Vikar in Hálfs saga has a different father (Alrek, king of Hordaland), and the details of his life do not correspond to Gautreks saga.
[18] In other sagas, Alfheim is more or less equal to the modern Swedish province of Bohuslän, between the rivers Gautelfr and Raumelfr, the Göta älv and the Glomma River. (Ynglinga saga ch. 48; Heimskringla, transl. Hollander, p. 48; Hversu Nóregr byggðist ch. 1; Sögubrot ch. 6). However, a few sagas seem to conflate the “mundane” Alfheim with the mythological realm of the álfar or elves, mentioning that its inhabitants are more beautiful than other men (Sögubrot ch. 10, see Waggoner, Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok, pp. 106-107 n20; Hervarar saga U-redaction, transl. Tolkien, Saga of Heidrek the Wise, p. 67; Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar ch. 1), and it may be that this episode derives from a myth of a giant carrying off a goddess.
[19] Much the same tale of Starkad Ala-Warrior (Áludreng) and his kidnapping of Alfhild appears in the U-redaction of Hervarar saga (ed. transl. Tolkien, p. 67), although in Hervarar saga Storvirk is the father of Starkad Ala-Warrior, whose only child with Alfhild is a daughter, Bauggerd.
[20] This is the present-day island of Tromøy, a large island just across from the city of Arendal.
[21] Possibly present-day Stadlandet, in the Nordfjord district of Norway, although this seems a little too far north to be reached in two days’ sailing.
[22] Now the settlement of Ask on the island Askøy, off the present-day city of Bergen. In Egils saga (ch. 37), a man named Thorgeir Thornfoot is said to live at Ask on Fenhring; he is described as a devout pagan worshipper and a sorceror.
[23] “Coal-biter” (kolbítr) is the usual epithet for an unpromising young man who does nothing but sit idly by the fire, but who may be revealed as a great hero when the right challenge comes along (like Ref in chapter VI of this saga). The kolbítr is similar to the askeladden (“ash-lad”) or askefisen (“ash-fart”) of Norwegian folktales.
[24] The traditional province of Närke in south-central Sweden.
[25] The svínfylking, literally “swine-formation”, is the wedge formation, named from its supposed resemblance to a pig’s head. Odin teaches it to kings whom he favors (Saxo, History of the Danes I.32, ed. Davidson and Fisher, p. 31; VII.248-249, Davidson and Fisher, pp. 226-227; Sögubrot ch. 8; Reginsmál 23, trans. Orchard, Elder Edda, p. 159). Although this is not explicitly stated, the fact that Vikar is using the wedge is probably meant to suggest his close relationship with Odin.
[26] Now Rennesøy, north of Stavanger.
[27] “To cast wood-chips” (falla spán) refers to a rite of divination. In other texts the expression is falla blótspán, “to cast sacrificial wood-chips,” suggesting that the rite was associated with religious sacrifices.
[28] Skáldatal, a list of ancient poets preserved in some manuscripts of the Prose Edda, lists Starkad first, and calls his poems “the most ancient of those which people now know”. (Clunies-Ross, “Poet into Myth”, p. 31).
[29] Agni was a legendary Swedish king of the Yngling dynasty. He married the “Finn” (Saami) woman Skjalf (“shiver”) after killing her father King Frosti. Skjalf took revenge by hanging Agni by surprise, hauling him up by the neck into a tree while he was asleep (Ynglinga saga ch. 19; transl. Hollander, Heimskringla, p. 22). Thus Eirek and Alrek’s father’s death mirrors Vikar’s death.
[30] A thul is an official of the king, whose role included giving advice, remembering and reciting old lore, and mediating between gods and men. Russel Poole has pointed out that Starkad’s poem Víkarsbálkr, along with other poems and acts of Starkad preserved in Saxo’s History of the Danes, contain very much the sort of knowledge and counsel that a thul would be expected to provide (cited in Clunies-Ross, “Poet into Myth”, pp. 34-36). It’s ironic that Starkad calls himself a “silent thul”, since the word seems to be related to Old Norse þylja, “to utter”.
[31] Eirek and Alrek’s fight over their horses is also told in Ynglinga saga ch. 20 (Heimskringla, transl. Hollander, p. 23), although here the two brothers kill each other. Hel is the land of the dead, and also the name of the goddess who rules the land of the dead and its inhabitants.
[32] See ch. 20 of Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar for the bizarre consequences of this gift.
[33] Ankle-length breeches (ökulbrokar) may have been lower-class garments. A few other sagas mention them specifically as being worn by bumpkins or coal-biters, and artistic depictions of upper-class men often show them wearing short, wide, full breeches, rather than long trousers. (Ewing, Viking Clothing, pp. 98-99)
[34] This is a more significant gift than it appears. In the sagas and other sources, including archaeological finds, whetstones are associated with rulership—both with a ruler’s literal ability to grant his followers good sharp swords, and with his metaphorical ability to “whet” his men—to inc
ite and encourage them. The jarl’s gift of a whetstone thus foreshadows Ref’s earning the right of rulership. (Mitchell, “The Whetstone as Symbol of Authority,” pp. 1-22).
[35] Hrolf Kraki (“Hrolf Pole”) is a legendary ruler of Denmark; versions of his legend are told in Hrólfs saga kraka and in a number of other texts, including a brief appearance in Beowulf.
[36] Refr’s name means “fox”; Refnef means “fox nose.”
THE SAGA OF HROLF GAUTREKSSON
Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar
CHAPTER I
We begin this saga with King Gautrek, son of King Gauti who ruled Gautland. He was an excellent king in many respects, well-liked and so very generous that his generosity is always praised when ancient kings are mentioned. He had one daughter, and he betrothed her to Gift-Ref, Rennir’s son, on the advice of Jarl Neri.
At that time, King Gautrek’s queen had died. He was bowed down by old age, although he was the most valiant of men. The king always sat on the queen’s burial mound, for her death was a terrible blow to him. His kingdom was quite without governance while the king grieved her loss most deeply.
Later on, the king’s friends asked him to take a wife. They said that they would prefer for his descendants to rule over them, and they said that if he would take their worthy advice, it would be likely to do honor to them all and bring peace for a long time. King Gautrek welcomed their advice, and said that they always showed and had shown great good will towards him, both in counsel and in brave service. A little while later, King Gautrek prepared to go on his journey with eighty men, well equipped with weapons and clothes and the finest of ships. He took great care in organizing this expedition down to the last detail, as befitted his rank.
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