Occupying the
transitional state between literature and history, the íslendingasögur, sagas of Icelanders or family sagas, tell the
tales of Iceland’s early settlers. In-text evidence suggests that they were
understood as both history and entertainment both in their oral and textual
transmission. The family sagas are of special interest to scholars because of
their subject matter, covering the period from the ninth century until
approximately the eleventh or twelfth. The Icelandic society of the family
sagas is ruled by both honour and the seasons. Personal and family honour makes
personal vengeance a matter of course among the Icelandic farmers. A killing
begets a killing, resulting in full family feuds. To stem the violence and
assure both justice and honour have been given their due, plaintiffs could
bring their complaints to local assemblies, or to the island wide assembly
called the Althing. At the Althing men, or the Lawspeaker, could make a judgment,
and ask the offending party or family to pay a wergild, a payment, for the
crime or the death, to compensate the family for the loss of that individual
and satisfy honour without more death. Or, at the assembly, the offending party
could be outlawed. To be outlawed meant that no one should offer you help, and
that people were free to kill you without incurring further penalties
themselves. Once you were outlawed, it was up to the plaintiff family to
enforce it. There are many instances of outlawry throughout the family sagas,
however, according to Anthony Faulkes, Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar,
Gísli saga Súrsson and Harðar saga og
Hólmverja are the only three where
outlawry remains a major theme. Grettir, Gísli and Hörðr are three men who “lived and died as outlaws in the Icelandic countryside.” [i]
For the peace of the Icelandic society, these men had
to be removed. However, as Grettir so aptly says when asked why he happened to
be out in the woods, “I cannot avoid everything; I had
to be somewhere” (169).[ii]
In their lives as outlaws who still reside in Iceland, they carve for
themselves societal, physical and mental liminal spaces to inhabit. The outlaw represents the waste of Icelandic society, and
occupies the strange liminal space between the civilized and the uncivilized, the
settlement and the wild and the human and the monstrous. In these spaces the
outlaw is both powerful and dangerous and is subjected to power and danger.
Mary Douglas, in her book Purity
and Danger, studied the purification rituals of so-called ‘primitive’
societies, determining that what is considered waste, or dirt, is that which is
out of place, that defies our categorization.[iii]
Purification is achieved through the removal of that which is considered
dangerous. In the Icelandic society of the early Middle Ages, the outlaw was a
threat to the stability of the society, and so must be removed. They become
what Douglas identifies as an anomaly, which can be ignored, perceived and
condemned, or can create a new pattern of reality into which they might fit.[iv]
If the outlaw manages to stay outside of the society, he could be safely
ignored. However, since “no individual lives in isolation and his scheme will
have been partly received from others,” those who have made the individual into
an outlaw may seek him out to destroy him, to permanently push him out of the
bounds of society through death.[v]
The outlaws in Iceland also cannot permanently remove themselves, and so cannot
be wholly ignored. The third option is that they create their own reality. The
outlaw attempts to create a new reality for himself, but it has destabilizing
repercussions on the existing reality, and so is not successful. This
unsuccessful existence between an old reality and a new one puts the outlaw
into a transitional state. According to Douglas, “danger lies in transitional
states, simply because transition is neither one state not the next, it is
undefinable. The person who must pass from one to another is himself in danger
and emanates danger to others.”[vi]
Outlaws, in their status on the outskirts of society, are obviously in danger,
outside of the protection of the group and subjected to the elements, but they
are dangerous, since they are deprived of the societally sanctioned ways of
sustaining themselves. With a sentence of outlawry Iceland has tried to
minimize the danger to itself, but while the outlaw persists on the fringes, it
is in more danger.
An outlaw who continues to interact with the Icelandic Commonwealth
mimics the draugar who pepper their
stories, in that they are versions of the living dead. They are waste that has
not yet been completely purged from society. The outlaw is, according to the
theories of Julia Kristeva, abject. Abjection is that which disturbs “identity,
system, order.”[vii]
That which is of me, but not me, that I wish to be distinct from me, is the
abject. According to Kristeva, “if dung signifies the other side of the border,
the place where I am not and which permits me to be, the corpse, the most
sickening of wastes, is a border that has encroached upon everything.”[viii]
On the border of the society and of the living, the outlaw represents the
ultimate abjection, because their status is ambiguous. Only powerful people can
survive on the fringe. For Icelandic society, people who survive on the fringe
must possess some worthy qualities, and yet they are also monstrous. They are
not players in society’s decisions and yet they are; because of their continued
liminal existence, decisions must be made that take them into account. The
outlaw is the object, an Other, which the men of Iceland can use as a benchmark
to give themselves identity. However, their existence threatens the identity of
the others in the sagas, not just because they are a physical and economic
threat, but because they too could so readily be subjugated to the fringes. In
the outskirts the outlaw proves himself powerful, but is confronted with the
whole power of both the solitary wilderness and the Icelandic society he is
encroaching.
The texts for Grettis saga
Ásmundarsonar, Gísli saga Súrsson
and Harðar saga og Hólmverja are found several
places, though manuscript AM 556 a 4to has a compilation of all three.[ix]
Gísli saga was composed first,
sometime in the first half of the thirteenth century, during the ‘classical’
period of the composition of family sagas. Both Grettis saga and Harðar saga were most likely
written in the fourteenth century, a long time after Iceland was ceded to the
Norwegian Crown in 1262-3.[x]
They were also composed after the
fornaldarsögur (legendary sagas), and riddarsögur
(continental romances) were taking over as a prime means of expression in
Iceland.[xi]
Therefore, there is even less verisimilitude in Harðar saga and particularly Grettis
saga than Gísli saga. The
elements that modern readers would consider more supernatural help highlight
the exclusion and abjection of Grettir, although this also occurs because it is
the longest of the sagas, as Grettir supposedly lived longer than any other man
in outlawry, so the themes are more fully developed.
In all three sagas the narrator decidedly admires these career
outlaws: Grettir is described as “the most valiant man there has been in
Iceland” (262) [xii];
likewise, “everyone agreed that [Gísli] was the most valiant of men, and yet he
was not in all things a lucky man” (98)[xiii];
Hörðr’s life brought him
honour, except for the time he was in outlawry, and he was “in the first rank
of outlawed men because of his wisdom and skill with weapons and all kinds of
abilities” (97).[xiv]
The violence of the society is the source of the contradiction. The society
portrayed in these texts both praises justified acts of violence and wanton
strength coupled with intelligence, but must also stem the violence so the
society does not destroy itself. This contradiction
between the amorality of the outlaws, and the crime that must be punished is
explained in Kristeva:
Any crime, because it draws attention to the fragility of the law,
is abject, but premeditated crime, cunning murder, hypocritical revenge are
even more so because they heighten the display of such fragility. He who denies
morality is not abject; there can be grandeur in amorality and even in crime
that flaunts its disrespect for the law – rebellious, liberating, and suicidal
crime. Abjection, on the other hand, is immoral, sinister, scheming, and shady:
a terror that dissembles a hatred that smiles, a passion that uses the body for
barter instead of inflaming it, a debtor who sells you up, a friend who stabs
you.[xv]
Hörðr’s outlawry is in part caused by feud, and
in part caused by having poor stand-ins at the assembly to plead his case. The
text makes it clear that Hörðr would not have been outlawed if he could have come to the assembly
to speak for himself. Gísli’s outlawry stems the violence that has resulted
from a family feud. The violence is foreshadowed at an earlier assembly, where
Gestr predicts there will be falling out amongst four men who are kinsmen
through a series of marriages. Gísli, trying to counteract bad luck says “I can think of a good thing to do, and that is to bind our
friendship with stronger ties, and swear blood-brotherhood between the four of
us” (13).[xvi]
However, they do not swear the oath, denying themselves the solidity of a
compact, or society, to keep them all safe, and all four suffer for it. Grettir’s first crime worthy of outlawry is the death of Skeggi,
whom he fought with over a food-bag. For this he is outlawed for three years.
The second time he is it is because he, accidentally but because of his
monstrous nature, burned a building down with all of its inhabitants inside.
All three outlaws have committed crimes worthy of outlawry, though the degrees
of their crime reflects the amount of time they ultimately spend in outlawry;
three years, fifteen years and very nearly twenty years respectively.
The pronouncement of outlawry is
when they gain their marginal status. Douglas points out that people all over
the world are willing to tolerate marginal beings, until they are labeled as
marginal.[xvii]
Once these men have become outlaws they contaminate all the people that they
come in contact with. Thorstein, who has been complicit in the killings Gísli
was outlawed for, tells Gísli “warning, if men are
trying to kill you, but I will not give you protection that may bring a case
against me” (49).[xviii] Grímr offers help to Grettir but wants to avoid sheltering him because
“I want to avoid the legal penalty of becoming guilty of harbouring you’” (152).[xix]
Eleanor Barraclough, studying the liminal status of Grettir and Gísli, notes
that “the description of outlawry found in the Icelandic law code Grágás, which states, … ‘he shall be
known as a wolf, as widely as the world is inhabited, and be rejected
everywhere and be driven away throughout all the world’” [xx]
is different from the more nuanced ‘social exclusion’ in the outlaw sagas,
since the men cannot successfully totally exclude themselves from the world.[xxi]
There is danger for anyone who helps the three outlaws, just as the outlaws are
in danger from them. Therefore people are hesitant to help, but at the same
time the outlaws would not survive unless they received support from within the
society. As marginal beings they are in danger from within and from without.
That exclusion from the group,
and from the limited amount of safety that comes from associations like kinship
ties or worn brotherhood, such as Gísli tries to form, is a severe form of
punishment is evidenced by statements in the texts about how difficult it is to
be alone. Glámr, the draugr, curses him before his outlawry, foreshadowing his
exclusion from society: “you will find it hard to be alone” (121).[xxii]
Grettir tries to create a new reality for himself on the margins as part of a
new group, with other outlaws, however he finds outlaws as hard to trust as
himself, and the text states that “after this Grettir would never take in
outlaws, and yet he could hardly bear being alone” (183).[xxiii]
Because of his marriage, and because his kinship ties are so integral to his
status as an outlaw, Gísli does not try to create a new reality for himself,
but is intimately tied to the old one through connections such as his wife Aud.
Trying to get Aud to tell them where Gísli is hidden, she is assaulted with her
own solitary status: “you can see for yourself,’ he
says, ‘how miserable it becomes for you, living in this deserted fiord, and
having this happen to you because of Gisli’s bad luck, and never seeing your
kinsfolk or their families” (83).[xxiv]
The group conveys identity and stability. Not only is it physically difficult
to be on the margins, but it is mentally and emotionally dangerous as well.
Hörðr is different because
he is both more and less successful at creating a new, marginal reality. Once
he is declared an outlaw Hörðr retreats to Holm, an island. There are:
A hundred and eighty people were on Holm when they were at
their maximum and never fewer than in the seventies when they were at their
minimum… Nearly all the doubtful characters found their way there and swore
oaths to Hörðr and Geir to be loyal and true to them and to each other (65).[xxv]
Hörðr minimizes the abject state of isolation by creating a marginal
society. However, this is the reason that he can subsist in outlawry for only
three years. In Gísli saga “it is
agreed among all wise men that Gisli went longer as an outlaw than any other man,
except Grettir son of Asmund” (56).[xxvi]
The reason that they can be outlaws for such long periods of time is because
they realize the danger that outlaws, people outside the law, pose to them as
men. It is the same danger they pose to others. Hörðr is ultimately betrayed by
an outlaw, Bollu, who integrates himself into the group, and then leads the men
into an ambush in order to reduce his own marginal status, and have his
sentence of outlawry commuted. Grettir understands the impulse to reintegrate,
and Barraclough notes that “Grettir still has human
needs, and his life on the island is punctuated by short-lived attempts to
reintegrate himself into society.”[xxvii]
Not only are the outlaws subject to danger from the environment and from other
outlaws, but even outlaws understand the dangers that outlaws pose.
Clearly outside the law already,
the bonds that they form are not binding like they would be inside the law. The
betrayal by other outlaws represents a particular kind of danger for those with
a marginal existence, which is that the bonds that hold the Icelandic society
together are subject to perversion on the outskirts. As Douglas notes, as
marginal beings the greatest danger to the society comes from them: “it seems
that if a person has no place in the social system and is therefore a marginal
being, all precaution against danger must come from others.”[xxviii]
Since they can already be killed with compunction, there are no deterrents to
physical violence. But the biggest way that they can destabilize society is
economically. Since they have to keep outside the bounds of society, they
cannot undertake any tasks, such as farming, that contribute to it, especially
if they are going to stay in Iceland. As a large marauding host, Hörðr and the Holm-dwellers represent
a considerable threat. Icelandic citizens like Þorsteinn Gullknapp have to give up economic or political status to save
their property. Þorsteinn promises to send vagabonds to them, and is then
exempt from raiding. In the text Grettir appears to represent as much of an economic
drain as all of the Holm-dwellers together. Grettir moves from district to
district, “Grettir took from there whatever he wanted
and Þorkell dared not object or withhold anything” (166).[xxix]
When Grettir and his two companions at last move to Drangey, they eat all of
the sheep on the island and won’t let anyone else access the land. This
represent a major economic set back for the district, since “they say that
there were no fewer than twenty people who had shares in the island and none of
them was willing to sell his share to anyone else” (228).[xxx]
Grettir devalues the land, and allows his opponent Þorbjǫrn ǫngull to buy the
land for cheap, though it will only be of value to him if he can remove
Grettir.
The failure of Hörðr’s alternate reality, of
Grettir’s solitary existence, and of Gísli’s attempts to live on the margins is
that as marginal beings they are powerful forces for the destabilization of
Icelandic society. Hörðr’s
marginal society cannot survive, because it lacks the bonds that make up the
true Icelandic society, both social and economic. And perhaps it could have
subsisted if it did not depend on the existing Icelandic society for the
material for subsistence, because it would not have been such a destabilizing force.
Gísli never tries to remove himself from society entirely. Therefore, the crime
that caused his outlawry continues to be a destabilizing force in Icelandic
society. Grettir continues to commit crimes. And though he is able to physically
remove himself from society, he is not able mentally, so his abject self
continues to destabilize Icelandic society. Grettir nearly survives twenty
years in outlawry, and the text promises that is he had, he would have been
released from his sentence, and re-integrated. According to Laurence De Looze,
it is significant that “Grettir is killed on the eve of being permitted to
return to society. A liminal, antisocial figure, Grettir must die as he has
lived: an outlaw.”[xxxi]
Grettir, Hörðr
and Gísli cannot be reintegrated into Icelandic society, because as abject
marginal beings, they have become monstrous to the society, even if they are
also admired for their ability to live in the liminal spaces.
Barraclough notes the way that
the landscape mirrors Grettir and Gísli’s liminal status. The landscape both
demarcates the outlaws as separate, and also emphasizes their unhuman status:
“while outlaws were no longer members of society, they were still human and
consequently not the natural denizens of the chaotic wilderness.”[xxxii]
William Sayers, notes that outlawry means not only excluding the people, but
moving them to a “natural periphery, where man was marooned in an unknowable
and thus constantly threatening world.”[xxxiii]
In the outlaw sagas the outlaws are denizens not just of the margins, but of a
marginal Other world. Gísli inhabits the spaces in and above the farmhouses, or
in the cliffs and woods around his settlement: “after this he stayed sometimes with Aud in the house in
Geirthiofsfiord, and sometimes in a hiding-place north of the river which he
had made for himself; he had another hiding-place by the cliffs south of the
river, and sometimes he stayed there” (55).[xxxiv]
Holm, the dwelling place of Hörðr and his outlawed companions, “has sheer
cliffs down to the sea and is as wide as a great cattle-pen” (64).[xxxv]
Grettir, the most wide ranging of the outlaws, lives in the marginal spaces of
people’s homes, but is also more versed in the liminal spaces, as he is
exponentially more other-worldly than Hörðr or Gísli: “Grettir
stayed on Fagraskogafiall for a whole winter without any attacks being made on
him, even though many lost their property because of him and could do nothing
about it, for he had a good fortification and was always good friends with
those who lived nearest him” (188).[xxxvi]
Grettir makes cave dwellings his home, and hides them from prying eyes. He is
instructed in the wild, unforgiveable spaces of Iceland by trolls: “then he
went up onto Geitland glacier and made for the south-east along the glacier...
it is thought that he was following directions given by Hallmund, for he knew
about all sorts of places” (199).[xxxvii]
Drangey, the island where Grettir ends his life, is described very much like
Holm. Helen Leslie looks at the demarcation of other worlds in the fornaldarsögur and found that, like
here, the space is separated by “boundaries involving mists, darkness, forest
and frequently cliffs and water.”[xxxviii]
These other spaces are places of power for the outlaws. In these spaces they
survive when no one else cam, and they are embarking from a relatively safe
position to disturb the surrounding Icelandic society. The spaces represent the
Other, monstrous power of the outlaws, because they are spaces that normal men
cannot easily reach or breach. And yet, they are also monstrous to the outlaws,
whose relationship with these spaces is “progressively dysfunctional.”[xxxix]
The spaces represent their monstrous side, and so are grating to their human
sides, who cannot stand the isolation. Even Grettir has to leave Drangey,
disguised as Gestr (stranger, alien, guest), to interact with people that he
has long since left behind.
The weather and the seasons
heighten the presence of the Other in the text. In Gísli’s saga “the snow never stayed on the south-west side of Þorgrim’s
[burial] mound and it did not freeze there” (43).[xl]
In Grettir’s saga the revenants,
supernatural enemies, and even formidable human opponents, appear in the dead
of winter. Glámr, the most famous of the draugar that Grettir faces, appears in
winter to torment the inhabitants of the farm. The landscape adds to the
uncanny effect of the Other in the text.
Kristeva makes the connection
between abjection and the dead; “it is the human corpse that occasions the
greatest concentration of abjection and fascination.”[xli]
They are abject because of our potential to become a corpse; there is an
ambiguous line between the living and the dead in a corpse, and between a
person and not a person. In the outlaw sagas the dead are omnipresent. Not only
do deaths cause the outlawry, but the dead continue to influence the realm of
the living. In Gísli saga, Thorgrim
and Vesteinn’s mounds are part of the immediate landscape. It is in the
presence of these mounds that poetry is recited that reveals to other
characters who are guilty parties in elicit deaths. And in the presence of
these mounds oaths are made of vengeance for personal and family honour. In Harðar saga and Grettis saga the death physically interact with the main
characters:
in the medieval Icelandic culture of the supernatural, one who
recrossed the boundary from death to life was called aptrgangr (revenant) or draugr,
derived from the Indo-European root dhreugh
(harm, deceive). In the draugr,
spirit is not breathed into matter so much as material corporeality is retained
by the restless spirit.[xlii]
Hörðr and his friend Geir
break into Soti’s mound to get treasure and prove their bravery. Soti defends
his hoard. Hörðr is the only man who is strong or brave enough to fight Soti.
His fight gives him honour, because he fulfills another man’s vows, who was too
cowardly to carry them out. Grettir fights so many supernatural creatures he
becomes renowned for his revenant fighting abilities. He first fights Kárr in
his mound, just as Hörðr
does. Later he fights Glámr. The Glámr fight, however, signifies Grettir’s
descent. Glámr curses Grettir:
You have become
renowned up to now for your deeds, but from now on you will become guilty of
crimes and deeds of violence, and nearly everything you do will lead to your
misfortune and failure. You will be made outlaw and be compelled always to live
in the open on your own. I also lay this upon you that these eyes of mine will
be always before your sight, and you will find it hard to be alone and this
will bring you to your death (121).[xliii]
By
interaction with the dead, and by demonstrating their unique suitability for
interacting with the people who have passed the transition to the Other world,
the outlaws confirm that they are in an ambiguous state between living and
dead, human and monster, where they can communicate with both.
All three outlaws have traits that set them
apart from the rest of men to begin with. One trait they all share is their
ability to prophesize about the future, and their inability to do anything
about it. Gísli prophesizes the fallout between him, his brother and his
brothers-in-law and sees his own death in a dream: “now the dreams become so
much for Gisli, and he becomes so frightened of the dark, that he is afraid to
be alone” (88).[xliv]
Hörðr is able also to see the future, though his counsels are often ignored:
“that will have to come to pass which is fated” (76).[xlv]
Grettir also foreshadows his own death. Not surprisingly, this is a trait that
they share with draugar: “as in many
traditional societies, the Norse dead are thought privy to knowledge not accessible
to the living.”[xlvi]
The major fault of all three is that they do not possess luck. Faulkes says
that gœfueysi can sometimes be
translated as lack of good luck or misfortune.[xlvii]
Beyond their status as liminal members of society, or being men who are just
about to be killed, their status as outlaws compounds an already monstrous
person, who could have been good had they had a healthier dose of good luck.
Gísli sacrifices his servant by
giving him his cloak in order that he can get away himself. Even if this is not
morally reprehensible, it is a waste of resources. Hörðr kills Helgi Sigurdson at the end of the
text so that no one will kill him before his eyes. Grettir’s monstrosity is
well noted in the text, as during his two crimes which cause his outlawry, his
killing of Skeggi and the burning of Thorir’s sons, Grettir either compares
himself to a troll, or is mistaken for one. According to Barraclough, “the
ambiguous and often liminal position that the [outlaws] occupy within society
is established long before their outlawry, and they are marked out early on
both by their prodigious abilities and socially disruptive tendencies.”[xlviii]
Even their admirable qualities, such as their prodigious strength or wisdom,
put them outside the bounds of regular society and makes them marginal beings.
Therefore, the outlaws of the outlaw sagas are Other. According to Straubhaar,
within the Icelandic sagas the presence of the Other is to be met with
hostility, even though it was not that long ago that they formed, through
settlement, what the boundaries of the society were. The Other “deserve
whatever they get at our hands.”[xlix]
It was not that long ago that Iceland
was settled by men and families that were successfully removed from Norway as
waste, who no longer fit into the social structure due to political upheaval or
outlawry, and were able to create a new reality because they were able to
completely remove themselves from the old Norwegian reality. The Icelandic
society of the ninth to the eleventh century as displayed in the family sagas
is perhaps more conscious of their boundaries because they are so relatively
new, and because the law is so tenuously enforced, through a system of social
bonds. If the outlaws were able to completely remove themselves from the
Icelandic society, by relocating, at least temporarily to other places or other
occupations, the outlaws stand a chance of reintegration into the society,
because they have not lived as monstrous others, destabilizing the community.
However, the outlaw sagas depict people who chose, or had to, stay in Iceland
for the duration of their outlawry. They can never be reintegrated, and so live
on the margins between fully functioning Icelandic humans and the dead Other.
In those liminal spaces there is danger, and they are dangerous. But the
liminal spaces are also places of power, as by transcending the spaces and
abilities of ordinary men, outlaws are more than human – they are powerful. Family
sagas are themselves abject to the literary critic and the historian, because
of their ambiguous status as neither literature nor history. It is up to the medievalist
to re-order the categories, create a new reality that Douglas would be proud of,
that takes into account the ambiguous status of the characters of the íslendingasögur.
Notes
[i] Anthony
Faulkes, ed.. Three Icelandic Outlaw Sagas: The Saga of Gisli, the Saga of
Grettir, the Saga of Hord, trans. George Johnston and Anthony Faulkes
(London: Everyman, 2001) xv.
[ii] “Eigi má nú við ǫllu sjá; vera varðek nǫkkur” Guðni Jónsson, “Grettis
Saga Ásmundarsonar,” Íslenzk Fornrit,
volume 7 (ReykjavikL Hið Íslenzja Fornritafélag, 1936) 169. Translations in
this text are based on the Anthony Faulkes and George Johnston edition, though
some alterations are my own.
[iii] Mary
Douglas, Purity and Danger (New York: Routledge Classics, 2002) 2.
[iv] Douglas 48.
[v] Douglas 48.
[vi] Douglas 119-20.
[vii] Julia
Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S.
Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982) 4.
[viii] Kristeva 3.
[ix] Faulkes xvii.
[xii] “inn vaskasti maðr, er verit hefir á Íslandi”
[xiii] “er þat alsagt, at hann hefir enn mesti hreystimaðr verit, þóat
hann væri eigi í ǫllum hlutum gæfumaðr” Gustaf Cederschiöld, “Gísli saga
súrssonar,”Altnordische Saga-Bibliothek
(Halles: Verlag von Max Niemeyer, 1903) 98.
[xiv] “hann hafa verit í meira lagi af sekum mönnum sakir vizku ok
vápnfimi ok allrar atgervi” Þórhallur Vilmundarson ed., “Harðar saga,” Íslenzk Fornrit, volume 13 (Rekyavik:
Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag, 1991) 98.
[xv] Kristeva 4.
[xvi] “enda sé ek got ráð til þessa, at vér bindum várt vinfengi með
meirum fast mæm en áðr, ok sverjumz í fóstbroeðralag fjórir”
[xvii] Douglas 121.
[xviii] “at gera þik varan við, ef men vilja drepa þik; en bjargir veiti ek
þér engar, þær er mér megi sakir á gefa”
[xix] “en forðask mun ek lǫg, at verða sekr um brargir við þik”
[xx] This text is recorded in Barraclough: “hann skal svá víða vargr
heita, sem víðast er veröld byggð, ok vera hvarvetna rækr ok rekinn um allan
heim.”
[xxi] Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough,
"Inside Outlawry in Grettis saga Asmundarson and Gisla saga Surssonar:
Landscape in the Outlaw Sagas", Scandinavian Studies 82.4 (2010): 366-70.
[xxii] “mun þér þá erfitt þykkja einum at vera”
[xxiii] “eptir þat vildi Grettir aldri við skógarmǫnnum taka, en þó mátti
hann varla einn sama vera”
[xxiv] “máttu ok á þat líta, segir hann, hversu óhallkvæmt þé verðr at
liggja í eyðiferði þessum, ok hljóta þat af óhǫppum Gísla, ok sjá aldri frændr
ok nauðleytamenn”
[xxv] “átta tiger manna annars hundraðs váru íHólmi, þá er flestir váru,
en aldri færi en á inum átta tigi, þá er fæstir váru … þangat drifu nær allir
óskilamenn ok svörðu eiða þeim Herði ok Geir at vera þeim hollit ok trúir ok
hverr þeira öðrum”
[xxvi] “þat komr saman með ǫllum virum mǫnnum, at Gísli hafi lengst allra
manna, í sekð gengit, annar en Grettir Asmundarson”
[xxvii] Barraclough 377.
[xxviii] Douglas 121.
[xxix] “hafðu Grettir þaðan slíkt, sem hann vildi, ok þorði Þorkell ekki
at at finna eða á at halda”
[xxx] “svá segja men, at eigi ætti færi men í eyjunni en tuttugu, ok
vildi engi sinn part ǫðrum selja”
[xxxi] Laurence De
Looze, "The outlaw poet, the poetic outlaw; self-consciousness in Grettis
saga Asmundarsonar" Arkiv for nordisk filologi 106 (1991): 86.
[xxxii] Barraclough 368.
[xxxiii] William
Sayers, "The Alien and the Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the
Icelanders." Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome
Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996) 253.
[xxxiv] “eptir þetta er hann stundum í Geirþjófsfirði á boe Auðar, en
stundum í fylgsnum fyrir norðan ána, er hann harði gǫrt sér; annat fygsni átti
hann við kleifarnar suðr frá garði, ok var hann ýmist”
[xxxv] “er sæbrattr ok viðr sem mikit stöðulgerði”
[xxxvi] “sat Grettir í Fagraskógafjalli svá einn vetr, at honum váru engar
atfarar gǫrvarar, en þó misstu þá margir sins fyrir honum ok fengu ekki at
gǫrt, því at hann hafð got vígi, en átti jafnan vingott við þá, sem næstir
honum váru”
[xxxvii] “þá gekk hann upp á Geitlandsjǫkul ok stefndi á landsuðr eptir
jǫklinum … þat ætla men, at hann hafi farit at tilvisan Hallmundar, því at
honum hefir verit viða kunnigt”
[xxxviii] Helen
Leslie, "Border Crossings: Landscape and the Other World in the
Fornaldarsogur", Scripta Islandica 60 (2009) 131.
[xxxix] Barraclough 378.
[xl] “at aldri festi snæ útan sunnan á haugi Þorgrims ok ekki fraus”
[xli] Kristeva 149.
[xlii] Sayers 242.
[xliii] “Þú hefir frægr orðit hér til af verkum þínum, en heðan af munu
falla til þin sekðir ok vígaferli, en flest ǫll verk þín snúask þér til ógæu ok
hamingjuleysis. Þú munt verða útlægr gǫrr ok hljóta jafnan úti at búa einn
samt. Þá legg ek þat á við þik, at þessi augu sé þér jafnan fyrir sjónum, sem
ek ber eptir, ok mun þér þá erfitt þykkja einum at vera, ok þat mun þér til
dauða draga.”
[xliv] “nú gerðiz svá mikit un drauma Gísla, at hann gerir svá
myrkhræddan, at hann þorir hvergi einn saman at vera”
[xlv] “þat mun verða fram at koma, sem ætlat er”
[xlvi] Sayers 242-3.
[xlvii] Faulkes xix.
[xlviii] Barraclough 369.
[xlix] Sandra
Ballif Straubhaar, "Nasty, brutish, and large: Cultural difference and
otherness in the Figuration of the Trollwomen of the Fornaldar sogur," Scandinavian
Studies 73.2 (2001): 118.
