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.

Saga Response #10 --Egil's Saga pt. 2

The second half of Egil’s saga completes this tale of familial conflict, as well as gives us the readers the full insight into Egil’s character. Egil comes off as a brash, ready-for-action fighter, while at the same time composes poetry in praise and admiration, grieves the loss of his son, has a weakness in his heart for his wife, and gives his friends/those he trusts the utmost loyalty. He is extremely long-lived, especially considering the amount of killing in this saga. I don’t know the average life span of a Viking at that time, but I’m sure that living to be 80 was an extraordinary feat.

One thing I did notice, present in prior sagas but I never really gave thought to, was the passage of time. This saga seemed to go on and on, but unlike stories today that would give at least yearly references, the time is only marked by the generations of the family within it and the handing down of kingships.

Women are much more prevalent in this saga and play important roles. Gunnhild, King Harald’s wife, is very much a factor in all Harald’s rulings against Egil.

One thing I was confused about at the end was why Steinar thought he had such a claim on Thorstein’s land. Maybe I missed it (it was a long saga, after all J ), but I didn’t really see any reason why he would have the privilege of grazing his cattle on what both he and Thorstein recognized as Thorstein’s land.

Reading Response #9

This was an interesting saga to read. It sounded more like a story that we would enjoy today, something with action, killing, betrayal, and trickery, all elements to a good story. I was intrigued by the concept of plundering—it was something we talked about in class a little in conjunction with raiding, but the plundering seemed different in this story than in the tales of Vikings I normally think of. The way that it was described, it seemed that raiding was an acceptable form of livelihood, that if one was short on the means to live at the time, one could just rig up their longboat, take a crew, and go for a good raid. The ones mentioned in this story seemed mostly lucrative, especially those of Thorolf. The fact that so much of his wealth was obtained this way makes me think less of his generous deeds. It doesn’t feel to me like he deserved or worked for his wealth. The same goes for King Harald—he came off to me as pouty, someone who needed constant reassurance of his own greatness, whose mood relied on the amount of superficial goods he was getting. I liked Olvir the best, because he seemed to have the best of all worlds: the good graces of King Harald while keeping peace with all those he dealt with. He seemed the most level-headed, giving everyone sound advice. He is not emphasized as much, I think, but I still like him for these qualities.

Another thing I liked about this saga was the mind games that Hildirid’s sons played with King Harald. They were sneaky in the way they manipulated Harald, causing him to question Thorolf and getting them what they wanted. This is sort of like the cunning Ofeig used in Saga of the Confederates.

A final thing I noticed was the difficulty of good communication. Hildirid’s sons were able to be so effective in swaying the King’s opinion because he didn’t come into contact with Thorolf very much due to distance. A way it seemed the King combated this problem was through “tokens” that he gave to whomever he was sending his message through.

My ending thought is that women seemed to be passed around quite a bit between the men. Once one died, his widow was given to another man not with her consent, but with the King’s decree. Sigrid sticks out in my mind most—she went through three husbands! I suppose these women must have been very good at adapting.

Reading Response #8

This reading was an interesting story of the beginning of the world. It’s apparent that Christianity is definitely the main religion at this point, as God is referenced as making the earth now instead of it sprouting from the body Ymir. It sounds like a summary of the Bible, even telling of a turning away from God by the people. This part reminds me of the Israelites’ rejection of God before the 10 Commandments are made, and makes me wonder if anything like this happened during Viking times. I can’t imagine it was a completely smooth transition from paganism to Christianity, and surely some Vikings wanted to turn back to their pagan gods just as the Israelites did.

This creation story also once again shows the importance of agriculture and farming to the Icelanders. The Christian Bible doesn’t really dwell on what the land looked like or what the people did with it, but this prologue really gets into the details of the earth and its special features that make it so significant. And the land not only has qualities that give the Icelanders their food and livelihoods, but also is credited with the re-discovery of God. I think this really shows the importance of earth and nature to the Vikings because it brought them back to their Christian God. It does strike me as odd, though, to have this description of God creating an earth that sounds normal to me in this modern day, with the same land and countries (like Africa and Europe), and then to have giants and dragons roaming over it.

One part of III kind of confused me. I found it strange that Thor would be fostered by this couple, who raised him to be a child of great stature, and then kill them in return for their good deed. Perhaps there is more to this story that I am not grasping.

Reading Response #7

This is kind of long…bear with me :)

Not being a huge history buff, I found these introductory passages helpful in giving the mythology some background. I like being able to place things in history and to know some of the context under which the stories were written and changed.

Here I’ll highlight a couple things I found interesting from the reading. First, I really liked the passage on p. 12 describing the way in which the mythology came to be as a final written product. We’ve talked about how oral tradition was very important in the Icelandic culture, and I think that it sums up the difficulty one might encounter when reading the stories. “Some speech acts were formal, others were not. But like speeches that politicians adapt for different audiences, much ancient knowledge must have been prone to change in oral transmission….we therefore cannot assume that a text recorded in a thirteenth-century source passed unchanged through centuries of oral transmission.” I think the reason I like this so much is that it explains the more fluid nature of these writings in modern terms (ie, politicians). This characteristic of the stories made them good to listen to back in the day, and an entertaining read, but at the same time, I’ll take them with a grain of salt knowing that they’ve been altered some throughout history.

Another thing that really caught my attention were the passages about Christianity. Although today, conversion to and practice of Christianity is voluntary, this has not always been the case throughout history, even with the Icelanders. Conversion to the Icelanders was more for political or social reasons instead of personal. This is an example of how good they were at adapting to different situations. We talked in class about how easily they conformed to other cultures when they traveled, and it is apparent that they were able to do the same in the switch from paganism to Christianity. While it’s impressive that they could do such a thing, in a culture today that allows for free practice of religion, it’s hard for me to imagine just “switching religions” that easily. I’d like to think that religion is an individual choice on a set of beliefs that governs how you live your life, not how your leader dictates how you live your life.

On another note, I thought it made sense that they should have a lot of gods of nature (in the pagan times), because their culture was so centered on farming and agriculture. I was recently reading about the Mayans, who sacrificed to the sun gods because the rising and setting of the sun was symbolic of the astrological calendar and of time that they found so important. Similarly, the Icelanders sacrificed at specific times of the year important to the crop yield because it was such an important aspect of their lives.

Out of all the entries, I liked the one of Midgard the best. To me, the story of the creation of Midgard seemed to vaguely parallel the creation story of the earth in Christianity. God made a place for men to live, just as the sons of Bur do—a safe place for all humans. I may be stretching for things, but I found it interesting that God created Adam in his image in the Bible and Ymir’s body is used to create Midgard…sort of a way that the gods are entwined with humans.