Reading Respose #2

To begin, I found the preface given by the translator to be helpful for me as a beginner reader of the sagas. I liked knowing the general gist of the saga before I started reading it. It helped to orient me to the general plotline, as well as to the focus and purpose of the saga (i.e., fate).

For the most part, I enjoyed the plotline of this saga. It kind of reminded me of the old princess tales I read/watched as a kid in which the noble princes fight for the hand of the beautiful princess. When Helga was sent away into hiding from her father as a baby, I was reminded of Princess Aura in Sleeping Beauty (sent to live in hiding from the queen as an infant). However, this saga had a more serious tone and ending than those tales. As the preface indicates, this was a tragic story—no one could obtain happiness: Gunnlaug never obtained his rightful wife; Hrafn got the girl but lived in a loveless relationship in which he was both emotionally and physically reminded he wasn’t wanted; Thorkel also suffered from living in a loveless relationship with Helga, and lived very unhappily after her death; Helga loved a man she could never have, had no say in her future, and mourned the loss of her true love; and all their relatives had to live with their tragic (and somewhat unnecessary) deaths.

I noticed that there was a lot of emphasis put on features in this story. The men that were the best were “manly,” “handsome,” “athletic,” “wise,” etc. Men who did not have all these features pretty much didn’t make it into the sagas because they weren’t worth talking about. Gunnlaug himself was “manly” and very good at poetry. On the female side, Helga was praised only because she was the most beautiful in Iceland. Her purpose seemed more as a pawn in the wedding than the celebrated bride, for she was given no say in her future husband. Her beauty was quite useful to bring about the fated deaths of the two men, though, so perhaps that is why this is her only stressed trait.

While the style of writing is different than what I am used to, I find myself kind of liking the fact that once a character had served their purpose in the saga, they simply were “now out of this saga” (p.564). The Icelanders didn’t mess around with characters or events that they felt didn’t add to the story’s meaning/purpose. I also enjoyed the concept of fate in this saga. The dream’s straightforward foreshadowing of later events gave me as a reader something to look forward to. I felt it also let me focus more on the characters because I didn’t have to focus as much on the already-outlined plot.