Egil’s Saga Read online

  It may seem curious that instances of refined cruelty in the North are characteristic not of the old heathen days but of the time after the introduction of Christianity. The Northman is by nature “a dog that killeth clean rather than a cat that patteth and sporteth with her prey”. But the religion of Love reached Europe, unhappily, from the East, well imbued with the spirit of Anti-Christ, intolerance, and the stake. The admired young missionary king, Olaf Tryggvison, dealt with refractory cases in a way of which neither Torquemada nor Philip II (nor even the Calvinist inventor of the ‘dormouse torture’) need have been ashamed; cf. O.T. 83, “Then let the king bear in a hand-basin full of glowing coals and set it on Eyvind’s belly, and presently his belly burst asunder”; and (ibid. 87), “Raud cried out at him, saying that he would never trow in Christ, and blasphemed much; and the king waxed wroth, and said that Raud should have the worst of deaths. So he let take him and bind him face up to a beam, and let set a gag between his teeth to open the mouth of him; then let the king take a ling-worm and set it to his mouth, but nowise would the worm enter his mouth, but shrank away whenas Raud blew upon him. Then let the king take a hollow stalk of angelica, and set it in the mouth of Raud, or, as some men say, it was his horn that he let set in his mouth; but they laid therein the worm, and laid a glowing iron to the outwards thereof, so that the worm crawled into the mouth of Raud, and then into his throat, and dug out a hole in the side of him, and there came Raud to his ending”. Cf. also the treatment of Brodir the Viking after Brian’s battle (Nj. 156). King Olaf the Holy also “taught men right manners”; and if they were slow to learn, he let “maim them of hand or foot, or sting their eyes out” (O.H. 72). I will add to these instances the account of the vengeance taken upon Sigurd Slembi-deacon, an able adventurer and claimant to the throne of Norway in the chaotic years that followed the death of King Sigurd Jerusalem-farer. “They brake his legs asunder with axe-hammers, and his arms withal. Then they stripped him of his clothes, and were minded to flay him quick, and they ripped the scalp off his head; but they might not do it, because of the blood-rush. Then they took walrus-hide whips and beat him long, so that well nigh was the hide off, as if it were flayed. But sithence they took a stock and shot it at the backbone of him, so that it went asunder. Then they dragged him to a tree and hanged him, and hewed off his head sithence” (Hkr. Saga of Ingi, son of Harald, ch. 12). This gives us a christian standard, some two centuries nearer our own time, by which to measure such roughness as we may find in Egil and elsewhere under the old dispensation.

  3 SHIELD-WAINSCOT (skjaldþili). Probably because of the custom of hanging shields and weapons on the wall; cf. ch. XI.

  4 MADE SLAVES OF (þjáðir). Cf. þýr, ‘a bondwoman’. The same word is used of King Harald’s ‘enslavement’ of Norway, pp. 3 and 6.

  5 THAT SHAME. Egil’s moral scruples had an unfortunate effect so far as his late captors were concerned. He is shocked at the idea of an unavowed theft, but with an easy conscience puts it right by owning up, and at the same time burning the whole houseful, men and all.

  CHAPTER XLVII

  1 HARALD GORMSON. King of Denmark circ. 936–86. The chronology of the saga seems at fault here (F.J.). For his support of Gunnhild and her sons, and later betrayal of King Harald Greycloak: his relations with the great Earl Hakon: his defence of the Danework against Kaiser Otto: his forced christening by the Kaiser: and his death in war against his rebellious son Svein Twi-beard, see Hkr. (Hak., Har. Gr. and O.T.). Jómsvíkinga Saga gives a shocking but perhaps not very reliable account of his end, at the hands of Palnatoki, the famous captain of the Jomsburg vikings.

  2 STAVE. ‘Stainer of the wolf’s teeth’ (úlfs tannlitoþr)—warrior; addressed to Thorolf. ‘Dalefish-bounty’s season’ (dalmiskunn fiska; lit. ‘dale-mercy or bounty of fishes’, by transposition for ‘dale-fishes’ mercy or bounty’), an elaborate ‘double-decked’ kenning for summer, the season that extends mercy or bounty to the snake, which is commonly called poetically ‘fish’ of the dale, etc., cf.

  Fish of the wild-wood,

  Worm smooth-crawling,

  With wolf-meat mingled,

  They minced for Gutthorm. (Vols. 30.)

  3 TREE-BURG (tréborg). A fence or palisade of wooden stakes or logs.

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  1 PEACE-LAND (friðland). Finding that the burglar is not intent on your spoons and forks (because you haven’t got any), you ask him to stay to supper. Normandy was friðland to Norse vikings (O.H. 19).

  2 STAVE. ‘Wound-partridge’ (benþiþorr)—the raven. The last couplet is bloodthirsty enough—

  létom blóþga búka

  í borghliþe sœfask.

  3 GOING ON THE FLOOR AT EVERY HEALTH. I.e. men stood up from their seats on either side of the hall and drank to one another over the long fires that went down the middle. Cf. King Athelstane’s reaching the ring across to Egil on his sword point, ch. LV.

  4 This conversation between Eric and Gunnhild is an instance of the concentrated character-drawing of which the sagas are full.

  5 To DRAG ON (draga framm). The ordinary sense is to ‘breed up, rear’. F.J. says it is here ironical, “to allow Skallagrim’s sons to live until”, etc. Or it may mean to “show favour” to them. I have followed F.J.

  CHAPTER XLIX

  1 EYVIND BRAGGART AND ALF. Cf. the account in Hkr. of the battle of Fitiar in Stord, some 35 years later: “The brethren [Gunnhild’s sons] had there a great host from out of Denmark; and there were in their company their mother’s brethren, Eyvind Braggart and Alf Ashman, both strong men and stout, and the greatest of man-slayers.…King Hakon [Athelstane’s-fosterling] was easy to know above other men, for his helm flashed again when the sun shone on it.…Then took Eyvind Finnson a hat and did it over the king’s helm. But forthright Eyvind Braggart cried out on high: ‘Doth now the king of the Northmen hide? or is he fled away? where is gotten the golden helm?’ Forth then went Eyvind and Alf his brother with him, smiting on either hand, andjnaking as they were mad or raging. But King Hakon cried on high to Eyvind:’ Keep thou the road wherein thou art, if thou wouldst find the king of the Northmen’.…But little was the while to bide ere thither came Eyvind and hove up sword and smote on the king; but Thoralf thrust forth his shield against him, so that Eyvind staggered; and the king took his sword Quern-biter in both hands, and smote down on Eyvind’s helm and clove helm and head down to the shoulders. Therewith Thoralf slew Alf Ashman.…And anon therewith fell terror and fleeing among the folk of Eric’s sons” (Hak. 29, 31). For Alf’s later appearance in our Saga, see ch. LVI. On the question whether he and Eyvind were really the Queen’s brothers, see note on ‘Gunnhild’.

  2 GUNNHILD’S TONGUE…THE KING’S MIGHT. Cf. the somewhat similar phrase used by Arinbiorn, p. 162.

  3 HAD SLAIN IN THE SANCTUARY (hafði vegit í véum). Vargr ί véum, a ‘wolf in the sanctuary’; a law-phrase, metaph. an outlaw, who is to be hunted down as a wolf and is declared accursed for having committed a crime in a holy place (D. s.v. vargr).

  4 STAVE. ‘From back of wave-steed’ (af unnar heste)—off his ship.

  CHAPTER L

  1 PRIME-SIGNED. Prίmsigna is to give the prima signatio or signa-culum crucis.

  CHAPTER LI

  1 OLAF THE RED. See general note on ‘Winaheath’, here.

  2 RAGNAR HAIRYBREEKS (Ragnarr Loðbnók). The history of this great Danish king is clouded with legend. There is a mythical Ragnars Saga, some passages in Saxo’s chronicle, a páttr (or short tale) of Ragnar’s sons, and some poems, notably the Krákumál dating from the twelfth century; these seem all to be connected with the lost Skjöldunga Saga (the lives of the Kings of Denmark). For the viking expeditions of Ragnar and his sons, see Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 111, pp. 318–19, 329–31. His end (first half of the ninth century) was that, being minded to bring England under him, he was shipwrecked on the Northumberland coast, and taken alive by King Ella who “set him in a worm-close”. Here, like Gunnar of old, he died singing,
and the Krákumál purports to be his death-song. His sons, Sigurd Worm-in-Eye, Biorn Ironside, Ivar the Boneless, and Whitesark, made conquests and ruled in many lands. They avenged their father by what seems to have been the approved method, viz. by cutting ‘an erne’ on Ella’s back: cf. Har. Hfr. 31, where Earl Turf-Einar cut an erne on the back of Halfdan High-leg, the slayer of his father Earl Rognvald, “in such wise, that, he thrust his sword into the hollow of the body by the backbone, and sheared apart all the ribs down to the loins, and thereby drew out the lungs”. The names of Ragnar and his sons are frequent in genealogies.

  CHAPTER LII

  1 STAVE. Second couplet, lit. ‘I learn that prince is thing-hard’; i.e. an unpleasant person at a meeting (poetical meiosis for the ‘Thing of weapons’, or battle).

  Third couplet,

  Glapstígo 1ét gnóga

  Goþrekr á mó troþna;

  lit.’ Godrek let tread stray-paths enough on the moor’, i.e. let (himself) tread the path of death. Cf. Völospá, troða halir hel-veg, ‘men tread the way of hell’. ‘Alfgeir’s land’ is, of course, Northumberland.

  2 HAZEL A FIELD (hasla völl). I.e. stake it off with hazel-poles as a field for battle. Cf. Hak. 24; O.T. 18.

  3 WINAHEATH (Vínheiðr). Much has been written in the attempt to identify this place and this battle. There are serious difficulties about the chronology of the English episodes. According to the saga, Egil helped King Athelstane in a great battle against Scots and others at Winaheath. In that battle Thorolf fell, and a year (or two years) later Egil married his widow, and went home to Iceland where he remained several years. He came back to Norway and strove with Bergonund at the Gula-Thing the year before Eric Bloodaxe was driven out of Norway. The year after that event (i.e. in 936) he sailed for England again, fell into Eric’s hands in York, and once more visited Athelstane.

  The description of the battle of Winaheath agrees with what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other sources tell us of the battle of Brunan-burh (which, it should be noted, is in one place called ‘Wendune’). Except the saga, there is no authority for the battle of Winaheath, nor is there any record of any great battle of Athelstane’s against the Scots except Brunanburh.

  Can we, then, identify Winaheath with Brunanburh? The objection is the date. Brunanburh was fought in 937, Eric fled from Norway in 936. We should thus (a) upset the whole order of events, (b) leave room for scarcely any interval between Egil’s two visits to England (Athelstane died in 939), and (c) postpone Egil’s marriage by some ten years to a date that does not fit in with the known ages of his children.

  The better opinion inclines to-day to identify the two battles, correcting the whole chronological system of the saga accordingly. Still, the truth may yet be that Egil and Thorolf took part in a smaller and little-known battle in or about the year 927, to which the saga has mistakenly attributed the setting and importance of Brunanburh. If the Höfuðlausn episode did in fact take place in York in the year of Brunanburh (i.e. a year later than the date given by the saga), Egil might well have been the first to bring news of that battle to London. The saga’s account of Winaheath must in any case be traced ultimately to Egil’s own reminiscences; and he might easily (perhaps not unwillingly) in later years have fallen into a confusion which might persuade himself and others that Winaheath was indeed Brunanburh, and that he had helped Athelstane to victory not in some forgotten fight but on that field of worldwide renown.

  4 WHAT TRICKSTERS THESE ENGLISH BE (at yðr mundu þeir reynaz brögðóttir, enir ensku). A Welsh turncoat as long ago as the tenth century, exclaiming against ‘perfide Albion’.

  CHAPTER LIII

  1 SWORD CALLED ‘LONG’. Egil’s sword (8 lines below) was called Nadder (naðr, ‘an adder’). Egil had another sword given him later by Arinbiorn, called Dragvandil (p. 146). For pet-names of weapons, cf. Skarphedinn’s axe Ogress of war (Rímmu-gýgr, ‘war’s-ogress’), Nj. 45, etc.; King Hakon Athelstane’s-fosterling’s sword Quern-biter (Kvernbítr), Har. Hfr. 43; Gisli’s sword (later reforged as a spear) Graysteel (Grásíða) and Skeggi’s Warflame (Gunnlogi), Gisl. 1, 3, etc.; Steinar’s sword Skrymir (p. 217), also mentioned in Kormak’s Saga, a story which is rich in named weapons, viz. Bersi’s sword Whitting (Hvítingr) ‘with a life-stone to it’ (a precious stone set in the hilt that would heal wounds given by the blade), and Midfirth-Skeggi’s sword Sköfnung: “There is a pouch to it, and that thou shalt let be. Sun must not shine on the pommel of the hilt. Thou shalt not bear it until fighting is forward, and when thou comest to the field, sit all alone and then draw it. Hold the edge toward thee, and blow on it. Then will a little worm creep from under the hilt. Then slope thou the sword over, and make it easy for him to creep back under the hilt”. But Kormak was “hot and hasty” and the sword “cold and slow”; he did not heed his instructions, “and the little worm came, and was not rightly done by”; and the good of the sword was spoilt, and it came groaning and creaking out of its scabbard (Korm. 9; I have followed, in the main, Collingwood’s transl.).

  2 FEATHER (fjöðr). I.e. the blade.

  3 BYRNY-TWISTER (brynþvari). Brynja, a ‘byrny’; þvari (þverr-, ‘across, transverse’), ‘a cross-stick’.

  4 NEITHER HAD A BYRNY. Coats of mail were costly luxuries; even so, it is remarkable that captains like Thorolf and Egil should go without them. Query, is this connected with the ‘bare-sark’ tradition?

  5 WOOD-WROTH (óðr). This seems to be berserks-gang.

  6 LAND-TENTS (landtjaldar). Tjöld to the Northman, who is born a sailor, means naturally a ship’s ‘tent’ (the tilt or awning for use at night, etc.; cf. our saga passim). For landsmen the primary suggestion is just the other way, and we feel the distinctive word ‘land’ unnecessary.

  7 AND ADILS. This, however, was a false report: see below.

  CHAPTER LIV

  1 LET THE KING HAVE HIS WAY. Thorolf is ‘fey’. Cf. Njal’s fata counsel, before the burning of Bergthorsknoll, that men should go into the house and defend it from within instead of meeting the enemy in the open. “‘Let us do’, said Helgi, ‘as our father wills; that will be best for us’. ‘I am not so sure of that,’ says Skarphedinn, ‘for now he is “fey”; but still I may well humour my father in this, by being burnt indoors along with him, for I am not afraid of my death’” (Nj. 127).

  2 AT OPEN SHIELDS (í opna skjöldu). A manœuvre common in ancient warfare: to take your enemy on his right flank, where (because the shield is on the left arm) he is at a disadvantage if thrown on the defensive. Cf. Thucydides, v, x, where the success of Brasidas’s victorious sally from Amphipolis was helped by the incompetence of the Athenian general, τά γυμνά πρòς τούς πολεμίους δούς, “offering his unshielded flank (lit. ‘naked’) to the enemy”; i.e. Kleon allowed his right wing to be taken by Brasidas ‘at open shields’.

  3 THERE FELL KING OLAF. But see general note on ‘Winaheath’, p. 280.

  CHAPTER LV

  1 EGIL CLASPED A GOLD RING, etc. It may be doubted if either the noble stave that follows or the queer dumb antics in King Athelstane’s hall afford such convincing evidence of his grief as does this simple renunciation of solid treasure.

  2 STAVE. ‘Went forth’ (gekk snarla), lit. ‘walked swiftly, keenly’, sc. ‘forward in the battle’. ‘Earth greens’ (jǫrþ grœr), ‘the sod grows again over his howe’. ‘Brother’, the word used is a poetic one, barmi, connected with barmr (breast); a brother nourished at the same breast. The original stave is very fine.

  3 STAVE. Last couplet:

  Helt, né hrafnar sulto,

  Hringr á vápna þinge.

  The ‘weapon-thing’ is, of course, battle.

  4 PERSONAL DESCRIPTION. F.J., in his introduction, well notes the masterly way in which the moment is selected for this vivid portrait: the moment when the sitter is torn with conflicting passions arising from victory and bereavement. If the picture is grotesque, it is also living and unforgettable.

  5 EYEBROWS JOINED IN THE MIDDLE (
skolbrunn). D. says the exact sense of skolbrunn is uncertain. F.J. says it usually means ‘with brown eyebrows’, but prefers the interpretation I have adopted.

  6 STAVE. ‘Byrny’s god’ (brynjoHǫþr)—warrior, i.e. King Athelstane. ‘Gleaming thong of paw-tongs’ (hrynvirgel hrammtangar)—arm-ring. ‘Hawk-trod… Vingi’—arm or hand. ‘Spear-storm fish’—sword; the ‘gallows’ of that—the hand. ‘Snare of red gold’ (rauþmeldrs gelgja), lit. ‘snare of red meal’ (i.e. gold)—gold ring. Last couplet: the King, by his gift, encourages me to praise him again.

  7 GLAD OF HIMSELF. The simplicity of his mind, with its violent contradictions of nobility and graspingness, is most disarming. There are many other instances.

  8 STAVE. ‘With pulling of an arm-string.’ Armsíma (síma is used to-day of telephone wires) is the gold ring. The poet’s mind is playing with the figure of the cord of gold having power to lift the huge crags of his grief-bent brows. For the evident pleasure he derives from the thought of his dark and rugged features, cf. Arinbiorn’s Lay, p. 196, and staves on pp. 114, 145, 146, and 175.

  9 DRAPA (drápa). Derived from drepa, either in the sense of ‘striking’ the chords of an instrument (D. s.v., but this seems very doubtful), or (better, F.J.) in its ordinary sense of ‘slay’: ‘a battle-song’. The drapa is a heroic laudatory poem with a burden or refrain. Egil’s great Höfuðlausn, given in full on pp. 141–5, is a drapa.

  10 STAVE. ‘He that rouseth Our Ladies of the Battle-din’ (faldgnáar hjaldrsnerrande). Gná is a Valkyrie; cf. ‘The Sword-God wakes Our Lady of Sakes’ in the Höfuðlausn. ‘Ella’s scion’ (Ella, king of Northumberland: cf. note, p. 279, on ‘Ragna: Hairybreeks’)—Athelstane. ‘Kings’ head-stem’ (harra hǫfoþbaþmr), i.e. main shoot of the family-tree of kings—Athelstane. ‘Flinger of the billow-fire’ (hyrjar hrann-brjótr), lit. ‘breaker of’, etc.; lavisher of gold—again, Athelstane.