Last saga response

I know we just commented on him in the last class, but I really enjoyed reading about Ref the Sly. I thought he was a really interesting character because he was portrayed so negatively in the beginning, but ended up as the saga's hero in the end. He stands out to me because of his intellectual abilities. Although some of his accomplishments were potentially fabricated by the author, I still found him to be impressive as he built the boat from scratch, sailed all the way to America with his family, and then created this massive and complicated fortress that ended up saving his life. He seemed to always be calculating not only his own moves, but those of others as well and accounting for them in his actions. He also didn't really fool around with poetry, which I found a bit refreshing as a reader and made him seem more straightforward. Perhaps we would have gotten more insight into his character with poetry, however, since his whole personality seemed a little bit undeveloped.
Ultimately, after reading all the sagas, I think perhaps if one could combine the wit of Ref and the brawn of Egil, they would be left with the ultimate saga hero: a smart, cunning character who calculates his moves carefully and is good on the intellectual decisions, as well as one who knows when to fight with a high sense of compensation, loyalty, and honor, and can always win in a physical challenge.

The Saga of Ref the Sly

While the preface to this saga states that there really isn’t an “explicit message” to the saga of Ref the Sly, I disagree a little. I think that in previous sagas we were able to catch up on things that the Vikings found important, like family honor, getting revenge/compensation, being a good warrior but also having an intellectual, poetic side, being handsome, and later on in the sagas we’ve most recently read, the virtue of cunning. I think that this saga’s purpose is to emphasize the importance of intellect and virtue, just as the Cinderella story mentioned as its parallel in the preface also implies. In Cinderella, the girl-made-poor housemaid uses her beauty and virtue to prove herself and get what she wants/deserves. Ref the Sly is dissimilar to Cinderella in that he’s lazy in the beginning and not in a sticky stepmother situation, but he does go on to prove himself through his wit and cunning. He appears to be good at everything, from boat making to sailing to house building to acting in disguise. He also thinks of everything. As I read the saga, I couldn’t help but think, who would think of and spend the time to build such an intricate fortress on the off-chance that someone from back home will try and get their revenge on you? But it works out for him in the end, so I suppose he’s justified in such an intricate creation.

One side note: on page 624, Ref goes on to meet the apostle Peter. This seems like another random interjection of Christian faith. It would be interesting to know if this actually happened, though! There aren’t any letters from Peter to the Vikings in the Bible…but who knows?

Reading Response #11

To start off, I thought these sagas were really cool because they dealt with Viking travel and finding America. It is a nice connection to our everyday lives (since we live in America :) ). The first thing I noticed was that Christianity was more present in these sagas, and there was even a pray uttered on p. 636 with a reference to Christ in a place where before, a pagan god would’ve been mentioned.

One thing that bugged me about The Saga of the Greenlanders was that they didn’t really take time to describe the natives that they met. To me, this was odd because I’m sure the natives looked different than anyone they’d seen before, with different dress and customs. If I were on that same exploration trip, that would’ve definitely been something I’d noted, along with all the different landscape and perhaps animals (aside from the fact that there were grapes and trees). Another thing with the natives—one asked Gudrid her name, and apparently already spoke her language…this makes no sense unless Vikings had already visited before and taught them English, which doesn’t seem likely; or the event never happened. A final observation on the native encounters is that Thorstein and others die of a sickness, p.644. I wonder what this sickness could have been, if it was some sort of scurvy from the voyage or a different sickness the natives had been immune to and transferred to them.

I also noticed that Thorstein wanted to tell Gudrid her fate before she died. It seems awfully specific, which made me wonder if that event actually took place in that amount of detail, or if that was something interjected by the author when the story was finally written down.

Finally, I was astonished by Freydis’ actions. This was total female manipulation to get her own way, threatening her husband for divorce (something not previously mentioned, either)! She even went overboard and killed the women of the party as well. The next page mentions torture to get information out of people, a casually-mentioned but exciting element to the story.