No one in Scandinavia has swagger like us

I just finished reading The Saga of Gunnlaug the Worm-tongue for Icelandic Culture, and enjoyed it immensely. This is the first saga I’ve read to the end—last year I started reading Egil’s Saga, but I had to abandon it about half-way through on account of homework. One thing I learned from the Egil’s Saga experience was that making family trees is key to keeping track of what’s going on. Sagas will sometimes span multiple generations, and Icelanders are big on geneaology, so a large part of the sagas is devoted to describing the lineage of various characters.


What follows is a summary of Gunnlaug’s Saga.

Gunnlaug is a young fellow who sets off on a journey to see the world and prove himself a worthy man so he can marry Helga the Fair. Helga’s father tells Gunnlaug that if he returns within three years, having done proper manly things, then Helga will be his wife. “Nice,” thinks Gunnlaug to himself, and embarks on Gunnlaug’s Northern Europe Tour ’06. (That’s 1006.) Gunnlaug, like many Icelandic heroes, is a poet as well as a warrior, and he spends quite a lot of his time freestylin’. Wherever he goes, he wows heads of state with his sick rap skillz, and in return gets all manner of bling. At one court he shows up with a boil on his foot. It’s oozing, you know, as boils do, and everyone wants to know why he’s still walking. “It’s because I’m a bamf,” says Gunnlaug. One courtier remarks, in my #1 favorite sentence of the saga, “He swaggereth hugely, this Icelander!” Yeah he does.

At the Swedish court, Gunnlaug meets Raven, another young Icelandic poet, and the two of them have a rap battle in front of the Swedish king. Raven disses Gunnlaug (“It is a song full of big words and little beauty; a somewhat rugged song, as is Gunnlaug’s own mood.” Hiyo!) Gunnlaug replies that the length of Raven’s song compares unfavorably with his own. Raven swears vengeance against Gunnlaug for mocking him in front of foreign royalty, and goes back to Iceland in a huff.

Gunnlaug, meanwhile, visits his buddy King Ethelred in England, who, for the record, is my pick for bim of the saga. Ethelred is paranoid that Denmark is going to attack England ANY MINUTE NOW, so he makes Gunnlaug stay and protect them from the Danes. (With his rhymes? Like one guy’s going to make a difference if the Danes actually bring the full force of their Viking might against little old England. Ethelred, YOU ARE SO UNREASONABLE.) This makes Gunnlaug late to marry Helga, and the Danes never show up anyway.

Gunnlaug gets himself back to Iceland as quickly as possible, twists his ankle in a wrestling match right after he lands (What’s up with this guy and random foot injuries?), and then finds out that, while he was protecting England from the non-existent Danish threat, Raven married his woman. The three of them meet again at a wedding, and Gunnlaug and Helga instantly reconnect. Gunnlaug and Raven throw down some more rhymes, Gunnlaug makes some vague threats, and “Raven had nought of Helga’s fellowship” from then on. Ouch.

The next time they see each other, bleep gets real because Gunnlaug challenges Raven to a duel at the Althing. “This Thing,” we are informed, in my second-favorite sentence of the saga, “was the third most thronged Thing that has been held in Iceland.” [Historical Context: The Althing, as I mentioned before, is Iceland’s parliament, and in the old days, this is something like how it worked. Once a year, the leaders of the country would gather at Thingvellir, and all citizens (read: free men) could come attend the assembly and present ideas, complaints, etc. Disputes would be settled, the law would be revised, probably there was a lot of partying, and then folk would go back home.] This duel is so intense, that the Althing makes a law that year forbidding these duels from taking place anymore. Of course, they’re too late to stop Gunnlaug and Raven, who, after some preliminary rapping, start going at it with actual swords. The duel ends in a draw, because the men’s fathers are so upset to see them fighting that they break it up.

But if there’s one thing Gunnlaug and Raven agree on, it’s that one of them has to die, and they run off to Norway so they can hack each other to bits where it's still legal. And hack they do! Gunnlaug whacks off one of Raven’s legs, and you’d think that would be the end of it, but you’d be wrong, because Raven, I kid you not, goes all Black Knight on us. Gunnlaug tells Raven to give up, because he’s not about to fight a man who only has one leg. Raven steadies his stump against a tree, and says, “Tis but a scratch! I’m pretty sure I could keep going if maybe someone brought me some water.” Gunnlaug, because he’s a hero, brings Raven some water, and says, “Wait. You’re not gonna, you know, run me through with your sword when I give you this water, are you?” “Who, me?” says Raven. Gunnlaug gives him the water, and Raven, because he’s a tool, stabs Gunnlaug in the head. And you’d think THAT would be the end of it, but YOU’D BE WRONG AGAIN, because the guy with one leg and the guy who just took a sword through the skull start going at it all over again. Gunnlaug wins, to the extent that Raven dies first.

After that, there’s a feud, more senseless revenge killings, and Helga marries a nice man but spends the rest of her life pining for Gunnlaug anyway. It’s all very tragic.