Tales from southern marshes



Traðarholt with Ingólfsfjall behind the settlement, to the north

The Norwegian Jarl Atli inn mjóvi 'the slender' Hundólfsson had three sons: Hallsteinn, who was the eldest and wisest of the brothers, Hersteinn, and Hólmsteinn. After the deaths of Atli, Hersteinn, and Hólmsteinn in battle, Hallsteinn flees Norway and heads for Iceland 'sem þá gerðu margir gildir menn, at þeir flýðu óðul sín fyrir ofríki Haralds konungs' (Flóamanna saga, in Harðar saga, ed. Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, Íslenzk fornrit 13 Reykjavík, 1991), ch. 4, p. 238; 'as did many great men, who left their inheritance because of the aggression of King Haraldr [inn hárfargri, king of Norway 872-930 CE].' On approaching Iceland, Hallsteinn flung the partition-beams from his Norwegian house overboard into the sea as an auspice, following the old custom: the posts drifted to land at the place that since has been called Stokkseyrr (on the south coast of Iceland, to the east of the enormous Ölfusá estuary), and the ship came into Hallsteinssund, to the east of Stokkseyrr, and broke up there ('Þeim sveif á land, þar sem síðan heitir Stokkseyrr, en skipit kom í Hallsteinssund fyrir austan Stokkseyri ok braut þar', Flóamanna saga ch. 4, p. 238).  

Sleet, hail, and rain were driving down alternately from the grey sky when I arrived in the area. In the town of Eyrarbakki,  a few kilometres west of Stokkseyri, I stood on the heavy stone walls built along the sea-front as a defence against the huge Atlantic rollers that come crashing in. I looked south out to sea, saw nothing because of fog. A short distance from the eastern fringe of Eyrarbakki is the site of the old Einarshöfn ('Einarr's harbour'), once one of the most important trading posts in Iceland, now windswept sandbanks and hollows some metres inland. The shore-line has changed greatly over centuries, shaped and reshaped by the elements; inland too, the lie of the marsh-dominated land has been altered physically as the result of 20th-century agricultural drainage programmes. 

The events that took place over 1000 years ago in the Flói district around Eyrarbakki and Stokkseyri are the subject of Flóamanna saga, 'The Saga of the People of Flói (flói, 'a marshy moor')'. The main protagonist of the saga is Þorgils Örrabeinsstjúpr Þórðarson, the great-grandson of the Hallsteinn whose seat-pillars are commemorated in the name Stokkseyri, 'beam-bank' or '-point'. At the age of five, Þorgils is thrown out of his home at Traðarholt, north-east of Stokkseyri, for killing his stepfather's horse, Illingr. Þorgils had previously wanted to join other local boys who were playing at duels, but was not allowed to play because of the boys' rule that only those who had killed something alive could participate.

I drove east out of Stokkseyri and turned north up the track to Traðarholt (later a haunt of the famous 18th-century outlaw Fjalla-Eyvindur). The farm is deserted now and has not been inhabited for several decades; the land around the decaying buildings is used for grazing horses. The farmhouse is on the brow of a hill, a square building with two watchful windows. I left the Embulance in the care of some curious horses and walked up to the building; to the right of the house, a single horse stood silhouetted against the sky, stock still until I was within a few metres of the place. To the side of the house, broken-down concrete steps lead up to a rotting door swinging open; the porch inside still holds old coats and dust-covered wellies.

Þorgils goes abroad to Norway aged 15: he gains royal favour, despatches a couple of draugar/zombies, acquires a precious sword. Further battle-renown (and a wife) is picked up while raiding in Scotland and Ireland, then it's back to Iceland and Traðarholt -- Þorgils's stepfather has been killed in a local squabble by this time. Þorgils becomes an important man in the district; he converts to Christianity and is subsequently targeted by the heathen god Þórr who appears frequently Þorgils's dreams and works hard at turning Þorgils from Christianity. Further narrative colour permeates a section in which Þorgils spends a few winters in an unsuccessful attempt at settling in Greenland: shipwrecks, plague, more zombies, a polar bear, troll-women.

When Þorgils's wife is mysteriously murdered, Þorgils takes up his newborn son and cutting open his nipple, he breastfeeds the child: 'Um nóttina vill Þorgils vaka yfir sveininum ok kvaðst eigi sjá, at hann mætti álengdar lifa, -- "ok þykki mér mikit, ef ek má eigi honum hjálpa; skal þat nú fyrst taka til bragða at skera á geirvörtuna," -- ok svá var gert. Fór fyrst út blóð, síðan blanda, ok lét eigi fyrr af en ór fór mjólk, ok þar fæddist sveinninn upp við þat' (Flóamanna saga ch. 23, pp. 288-89; 'During the night Þorgils wanted to stay awake over the boy and said he could not see how he might live longer, --"and it seems to me a grave thing, if I cannot help him; first I shall now take a step [to get out of this difficulty] by cutting open my nipple," -- and so this was done. First blood came out, then a mixture, and he did not stop before milk came out, and thus the boy was suckled in this way"). 

Flóamanna saga is a strange saga to say the least (all that's missing from the Greenland section is Frank Zappa's Nanook Suite as a soundtrack) -- and it is not a well-known one. Setting the saga's events in the physical landscape context of the Flói district was not such an easy or immediate experience as  I found for Harðar saga (see posts of 3rd March and 24th February). Many of the places named in Flóamanna saga cannot be identified today; those which can be, and whose names are accounted for in the saga, are not clustered together as evocatively as the Harðar saga places with the Helga-element in Hvalfjörður are, for example. 

Nevertheless, the saga is thought to have been composed locally, perhaps by a cleric at Gaulverjabær (east of Stokkseyri) in the early 14th century. Gaulverjabær -- where Þorgils grew up with his foster-father, Loptr Ormsson, after being thrown out of Traðarholt by his stepfather -- was an important farm and church centre, and there was a hospital for old and sick priests there until the mid-16th-century Reformation in Iceland. Local people did have things to say about the saga when I asked them for their opinions...I particularly enjoyed the verdict of one man with whom I talked in the petrol station in Stokkseyri: 'it's a pack of lies' he snorted...to the general laughter of a number of others gathered around, drinking coffee on a rainy morning.

Gaulverjabær today

 

Place-names and a mention of puffins

Place-names, and the study of them (toponymy), is not a subject I have spent much time thinking about in the past -- but it is something that I am becoming increasingly absorbed by with regard to the sagas, as my Sagasteads project progresses. There are numerous instances in the sagas where place-names are elucidated by a saga-author and connected with events described in a saga narrative. It is possible -- and likely in some cases -- that these anecdotes were invented by saga-authors, or by other figures at some point between the date of a saga's action and that of its written composition, in order to explain how places got their names. But whether or not individual anecdotes about events and places that purportedly led to places acquiring their names are historically 'true', I am finding the 'in situ' saga-fieldwork process of mapping written explanations behind place-names onto the  physical topography of local areas to be very engaging and revealing. 

 

Geirshólmr from Þyrilsnes

The photo above is of Geirshólmr (now Geirshólmi), the island in Hvalfjörður on which the outlaw Hörðr Grímkelsson and his band lived for a couple of years until they were tricked into coming ashore with the promise of reconciliation, and met their deaths (a brief summary of the saga narrative is given in my previous post on Harðar saga). The name of the island translates, simply, as 'Geirr's Island'; the saga explains how 'Sá hólmr er nú kallaðr Geirshólmr; tók hann nafn af Geir Grímssyni' (Harðar saga, ed. Þórhallur Vilmundarsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, Íslenzk fornrit 13 (Reykjavík, 1991), ch. 24, p. 65; 'That island is now called Geirshólmr; it took its name from Geirr Grímsson'). Geirr was Hörðr's foster-brother and closest friend; it is rather odd that the island takes its name from Geirr rather than Hörðr and the Íslenzk fornrit editor of the saga comments in his introduction that people have long thought this strange ('hefur mönnum að vonum löngum komið það spánskt fyrir sjónir, að hann skuli ekki fremur vera kenndur við aðalsöguhetjuna', Harðar saga, p. xxxvi).



The island is approximately 100m long and 45m wide now: I heard opposing views in conversations with Hvalfjörður locals regarding the extent to which the island might have decreased in size over the past 1000 years as a result of weathering. Even if the island was somewhat larger when Hörðr and his men were living on it, there cannot have been much room for them all: the saga states they were never fewer than 80 and at their most, 200. Hörðr describes the island as being 'sæbrattr ok víðr sem mikit stöðulgerði' (Harðar saga ch. 24, p. 64; 'rising steeply from the sea and widely like a milk-pail [in shape, I imagine...]'); Collingwood notes how the island's sides 'rise absolutely, vertically sheer from the water-line, all around, with no foreshore except at the north-east, where there are a few yards of broken rock, into the cracks of which the bow of a boat may be thrust' (A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads of Iceland (Ulverston, 1899), p. 34).

It being winter, I didn´t manage to find a boat or a boatman to take me out to the island but looking onto the bare and exposed island from various vantage points around the Hvalfjörður shoreline made a deep impression on me, and my thoughts turned often on what it must have been like for Hörðr -- both in practical and emotional terms -- to have been forced by circumstances to live in such a place. The saga relates how Hörðr and his men build a great hall there with a door in the middle of one side to the west; Geirr's farm at Botn is taken down and the materials conveyed to the island, and water from a nearby river is rowed over to the island and stored in a great cask. When Collingwood explored the island, the ruined remains of the hall were apparently still visible but upon asking whether this is still so, I learnt that it is no longer the case...tunnel-digging nesting puffins might have played a large part in this...  

   

In Harðar saga, Þyrilsnes, the projection of land that comes out from the northern shore of the mainland and curls into the fjord, is called Dögurðarnes ('Breakfast-Ness/Peninsula') -- and it is so-called because it is there, according to the saga, that Torfi Valbrandsson and the others involved in capturing and killing Hörðr and the Holm-dwellers have their breakfast before the Holm-dwellers are ferried over from the island and executed ('Þeir átu dögurð um morgininn eptir á nesi því innanverðu, er þeir kölluðu Dögurðarnes síðan', Harðar saga ch. 32, p. 80; 'They ate [their] day-meal the next morning on the inner side of the ness, which since they [i.e. people generally] call Dögurðarnes'). The outermost point on the ness where Geirr's dead body is washed ashore bears the name Geirstangi ('Geirr's Spit'; 'Þar heitir Geirstangi, er líkit rak á land', Harðar saga ch. 35, p. 85; 'That place is called Geirstangi, where the corpse was driven onto land'); and the place where Hörðr fights his last fight and dies is called Harðarhæð ('Hörðr's summit'), though this place-name is not mentioned in the saga. Nor, specifically, are Helguvík ('Helga's bay') and Helguhóll ('Helga's hill'), though the saga states that the place that Hörðr's heroic wife Helga rests after swimming from the island with her two boys, on the striking mountain Þyrill (see photo above) is now called Helguskarð ('Helga's ridge-pass').

More elaborate anecdotes are presented in conjunction with other place-names in the saga and a good number of these are connected with Hörðr's and the Holm-dwellers' raids on local farmers around Hvalfjörður and over in Svínadalur and Skorradalur, north of Hvalfjörður. The pass down into Skorradalur from Svínadalur, for example, is called Geldingardragi ('Wether-trail'; see photo left, of Dragá/Geldingardragi looking south from Skorradalur): chapter 29 of Harðar saga relates how after Christmas one year, Hörðr, Geirr, and 40 others head over into Skorradalur where they conceal themselves during the day, raid a sheep-shed when night comes, and drive the 80 wethers they find away. The weather (oh dear, no way around the punning here, sorry!) is against them (there is the suggestion that this is because of sorcery, of which there is a good deal in the saga) -- there is a heavy snowfall and the bell-wethers (i.e. the lead sheep) become exhausted. Geirr and the men want to abandon the sheep but Hörðr states this would be unmanly, 'þó at nökkur snæskafa væri eðr lítit mugguveðr í móti' (Harðar saga ch. 29, p. 74; 'although there might be some snow-whirling or a little bit of drizzling weather against us'). He takes hold of the bell-wether and drags it over the mountain: 'varð þat slóð mikil; þeir ráku þar í eptir annat féit; því heitir þar Geldingardragi síðan' (Harðar saga ch. 29, p. 74; 'consequently there was a big trail; they drove the other sheep on afterwards; thus the place has been called Geldingardragi since').

Episodes from Harðar saga are found 'written' into the landscape thus, crystalised as place-names, all over Hvalfjörður. Even people I spoke to who had not read the saga knew the story, or parts of it, and could relate it to the local area and to specific place-names. I suspect that the saga I intend to move on with now, Flóamanna saga, set in a part of the south coast of Iceland (around Eyrarbakki and Stokkseyri)  may not be so rich in this respect...though there is certainly much of interest in it: dreams in which the god Þórr appears, a trip to Greenland, a breast-feeding father...  rather glad I wasn't quizzed by Egill Helgason on his programme Kiljan (watch -- and overlook grammatical howlers -- here, at 23/24 minutes in http://dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4548043/2011/03/02/ ) on this one...

So Flóamanna saga next -- thanks for reading and following! 

And we're rolling!

So -- happy news from Iceland. First, I'm delighted to announce that the Embulance has come out of surgery (the op. involved replacing the clutch plate...) and she has made a very successful recovery, running sweet as a Land-Rover-shaped nut. Outside, further modifications include the installation of four very smart and very grippy tyres courtesy of one of my sponsors, the Icelandic petrol company N1. Inside the back of the van, I´ve been doing some interior decorating: the fold-down table has been plastered over with a large map of Iceland and I have curtains! It's feeling very homely in there, and thanks to the new tyres I feel much more secure on the road and ready to face whatever terrain I encounter.

Secondly and most importantly, the real saga-steads work has begun too. I'm revisiting Víga-Glúms saga ('The Saga of Killer-Glúmr') which is largely set around the part of Eyjafjarðarsveit (south of Iceland´s second town and the capital of the north, Akureyri, population circa 17,000) that I´m staying and working in for the next couple of weeks, while I plot a route for the next few months and organise myself generally. The subject of Víga-Glúms saga is the life of the titular Glúmr Eyjólfsson, who established himself as a powerful chieftain in the 10th century in the Eyjafjörður valley. The narrative describes various local feuds over land, personal honour, and family reputation in which Glúmr is involved over the course of his long life -- he is thought to have been born around 928 C.E., and to have died around 1003-1004 C.E..

Early on in the saga, we hear how the difficult Glúmr (more on him in the next post) -- fresh from rite-of-passage triumphs in Norway, such as overcoming a dangerous berserkr -- has a remarkable dream, in which he is standing outside his farm at Þverá looking north towards the fjord (passage in Old Norse below). He sees a woman walking in through the district: she turns directly to face Þverá and she is so huge that her shoulders touch the mountains on both sides of the valley. Glúmr goes out of the farmyard to meet her with the intention of inviting her to stay but he wakes from the dream before this is achieved. On waking, Glúmr describes the dream to his household and interprets it as foretelling the death of his powerful Norwegian grandfather, Vigfúss. The woman is his grandfather´s hamingja, or guardian spirit. When ships reach Iceland from Norway later on in the summer, the news of Glúmr´s grandfather´s death is announced, and the dream is proved to have been a prophetic one.



Looking south down the Eyjafjörður valley from Akureyri

 Þverá -- now known as Munkaþverá, on account of the Benedictine monastery founded on the site in 1155 and dissolved with the Reformation in 1550 -- is only a few minutes' drive north from the farm I´m staying on, Fellshlíð, halfway down the Eyjafjörður valley on the eastern side. Fellshlíð used to be called Öxnafellskot and was a hjáleiga (a leased smallholding) of the large (and in the past, very wealthy) neighbouring farm to the north, which is called Öxnafell -- hence the literal translation of Öxnafellskot, 'the Öxnafell farm-cottage'. Öxnafell is named in Víga-Glúms saga, along with numerous other farms in the broad valley that I can see from Fellshlíð: Grund and Espihóll, to name but two examples. It has been suggested that Víga-Glúms saga was put together as a written narrative in the 13th century by someone attached to the monastery at Munkaþverá.

Thermos to hand and back up against a hay bale, wrapped up snug in outdoor kit (thank you 66 Norður, Rab, and Les at the Salvation Army shop in Cambridge) and with Fellshlíð horses peering at me curiously in the mane-whipping wind, there I was: sitting and reading about Glúmr's dream-woman and mapping out her path for myself, glancing across the valley, and north and south up and down it. The passage is a striking one wherever one is reading it; the immensity of the dream vision, and the significance of the event are further highlighted when one is actually in the landscape of the dream. This kind of experience is at the heart of what this project is about and the first glimmerings of the idea came to me while I was working on the farm here for the first time in 2008... reading Víga-Glúms saga then, I realised for the first time how remarkable it is to be able to locate this literature so precisely in the landscape as it is today. In the next instalment, more about Killer-Glúmr...and more about some of the specific places named in the saga and the people who live in these places now.

Víga-Glúms saga, ch. 9, ed. Jónas Kristjánsson in Eyfirðinga sǫgur, Íslenzk fornrit vol 9 (Reykjavík, 1956), pp. 30-31; my translation into English



Eyjafjarðarsveit

Þat er sagt, at Glúm dreymði eina nótt: hann þóttisk vera úti staddr á bœ sínum ok sjá út til fjarðarins. Hann þóttisk sjá konu eina ganga útan eptir heraðinu, ok stefndi þangat til Þverár; en hon var svá mikil, at axlarnar tóku út fjǫllin tveggja vegn. Enn hann þóttisk ganga ór garði á mót henni ok bauð henni til sín; ok síðan vaknaði hann. Ǫllum þótti undarligt, en hann segir svá: "Draumr er mikill ok merkiligr, en svá mun ek hann ráða, at Vigfúss, móðurfaðir minn, mun nú vera andaðr, ok myndi kona sjá hans hamingja vera, er fjǫllum hæra gekk. Ok var hann um aðra menn fram um flesta hluti at virðingu, ok hans hamingja mun leita sér þangat staðfestu, sem ek em." En um sumarit, er skip kómú út, spurðisk andlát Vigfúss.

"It is said that Glúmr dreamed one night: he thought he was standing outside on his farm, looking out to the fjord. He seemed to see a certain woman walking from the sea through the district, and she headed thither, to Þverá; and she was so huge that her shoulders touched the mountains on both sides. And he seemed to walk from the yard out towards her and he invited her to his house; and afterwards, he woke. This seemed extraordinary to everyone, and he says then: 'It is a great dream and a significant one, and I interpret it thus, that Vigfúss, my maternal grandfather, is now dead, and that woman must be his guardian spirit, who walked taller than the mountains. And he [Vigfúss] was superior to other men in most matters of honour, and his guardian spirit must have been searching thither where I am for a resting place.' And during the summer, when ships came out [to Iceland], news of the death of Vigfúss became known."