Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.12.2015, Side 30

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2015TV ON THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT
If you’re in the market for Sagas about
non-Icelandic things, like Troy, Char-
lemagne, or Alexander the Great, the
Romance Sagas have you covered. For
dragons and potions and shield-maidens,
there are some sweet Legendary Sagas
to enchant the shit out of you.
If you want hundreds of pages of the
medieval equivalent of John Grisham
novels with marginally more killing but
way less suspense, there are the ever-
touted, nation-defining, world-famous
SAGAS OF THE ICELANDERS. (I would
smother those words in sparkle emojis
if I were allowed.) Having already in-
troduced one of the “good ones” from
this category, I now have the pleasure
of turning to one of the “less good
ones.” Even though it’s named after
characters so minor they won’t even
be mentioned here (they don’t even get
haunted), you’ll see it’s actually one of
the best. Because ghosts.
Shit or get off the Dritsker
This one starts with a guy called
Þórólfur Most-Beard, as in “wow so
hair much manly most beard” like the
meme-doge. The god Þór is totally his
fav and when he comes from Norway
to start a farm in Iceland, he throws a
piece of wood with “Þór” carved into
it overboard from his ship and decides
to start his farm wherever it washes
ashore. This turns out to be a place on
the Snæfellsnes peninsula, which he
then calls Þórnes. Meanwhile, Björn the
Easterner, the son of a Norwegian earl
named Kjallakur, starts a farm nearby.
Þórólfur Most-Beard also dedicates
a mountain to Þór (Helgafell, or “holy
mountain”), insisting that no one is
even allowed to look at it without wash-
ing themselves first. He decides to hold
all his courts at Þórsnes, except that it’s
so holy to him that he won’t let anyone
shit there. So he designates a special
rock in the sea, which they call Dritsker
(basically “poop-skerry”), where they
must shit instead. The family feud that
runs through the whole story begins
when the Kjalleklings (Björn’s family)
decide to take a literal and figurative
dump on the pride of the Þórnesings.
A witch! More witches!
Then things get violent, yet remain
mostly boring. There is a battle and
some people die and whatever. Snorri
the Priest, a Þórsnesing and the main-
ish character of this Saga, makes a
temporary peace by marrying into the
Kjallekling clan. But more importantly,
he has this younger relative named
Gunnlaugur who starts studying witch-
craft with Geirríður, a nice old witch
over at another farm.
Gunnlaugur often takes his weird
friend, appropriately named Oddur,
with him. Oddur’s mother Katla is also a
witch and totally wants to bone Gunn-
laugur. Everytime he drops Oddur off
after their witchery lessons, Katla tries
to seduce him but he’s just not into
cougars. She makes some snide re-
mark about Geirríður, asking if he goes
over there to “stroke the old hag up the
belly” (actual line from the translation).
He’s like, “Pot and kettle, hunty, cuz ur
old as fuck yourself” (my translation).
Then one morning he turns up on his
dad’s doorstep with all his flesh appar-
ently ripped to the bone and no memo-
ries of what happened. Magic, duh.
Burn the witch!
Later, a bunch of dudes led by a guy
named Arnkell barge into Katla’s house
while she’s spinning yarn, intending to
apprehend Oddur for cutting off some
lady’s hand. They have no luck: Katla
has hidden him with magic. They leave
and immediately try to barge in on her
again. Now she’s trimming the beard
of a goat (Oddur/magic/fucking duh)
but apparently this is normal enough
for them to be stumped and leave.
They immediately surprise her again
and now she’s just sitting at home with
her pet pig. The dumbasses are fooled
again.
As they leave the third time, they
run into Geirríður and she takes a no-
nonsense approach to this witch hunt-
ing business. She barges in, throws a
bag over Katla’s head, and they find
Oddur hidden under the floor. After
they hang him, she admits to cursing
Gunnlaugur because he was not DTF.
Disappointingly, they stone rather than
burn the witch, but not before she puts
a curse on Arnkell and his father.
The ghost of Christmas pastry
This comes to fruition pretty quickly
when Arnkell’s dad, named Þórólfur
Twist-Foot, dies and comes back as a
draugur or afturganga (literally “again-
walker”). This is usually translated as
ghost but he has a very physical re-
animated corpse body that he uses to
haunt his wife shitless, then witless,
then she dies from insanity. Shortly
after, Arnkell is brutally murdered by
Snorri’s gang because they thought
Snorri the Priest was a better farmer.
(Um, okay.) This is all some dank fore-
shadowing for the much more unique
hauntings later.
As is common in the Sagas, Iceland
suddenly converts to Christianity and
Snorri is all born again or something
creepy like that. Immediately follow-
ing, some lady named Þórgunna is out
in the fields when it suddenly starts to
rain blood on her. She knows it’s an
omen, saying something like, “I bet
some chump around here is gonna kick
the bucket.” Then she dies.
As the pall-bearers are transporting
her corpse to be buried, they get rained
out and shack up in a random house to
sleep. They awake find her draugur in
the kitchen, ass-naked, cooking fuck-
ing food. (Probably not pastries, sorry.
That was misleading.) They are all so
afraid that they don’t know what to do
except sit down and eat the meal she
served, but only after sprinkling this new
awesome drug called “holy water” on it.
Moar ghosts n stuff
Around Christmastime, shit gets re-
ally weird. People start getting ill, dying
promptly, or disappearing at sea. Then
they come back in draugur form every
single night of the Christmas season,
ignoring the living folks very rudely,
and sitting around the fire to warm up.
They get an extra special haunting on
Christmas Eve, though, in the form of a
ghost-seal bursting its head up through
the living room floor. It would be fine if
it was that good-news-bearing meme-
seal, but it’s presumably more sinister.
When they try to “club” him back down
(actual translation), he only rises higher
until his flippers pop out, at which point
even the manly men faint (not the flip-
pers! the horror!) and they have to get
the manliest man named Kjartan to
sledge-hammer it back down and cover
the floor.
Nobody panic, though. Now that
Snorri is a Christian, he knows exactly
what to do: follow the law. So they lit-
erally summon the ghosts to court, ap-
point a jury, take witness testimony, find
them guilty of trespassing, and then the
ghosts politely peace out and Christ-
mas is saved. Then everyone has con-
fession because Catholicism. The story
goes on to describe how organized,
peaceful, and demonic-apparition-less
society is now that Snorri the Priest
has brought Christianity to these poor,
violent, anarchist pagans. I’ll spare you
that. Merry fucking Christmas.
Moral of the story: never trust Christian
propaganda. Also, more pertinent to
Iceland ca. 2015: don’t shit where you
shouldn’t.
Words Grayson Del Faro Illustration Inga María Brynjarsdóttir
Firstly, there are some things you need to know about the Sagas. There are fuck-
loads of them. There are so many that they are classified into groups based on
their characters and storylines. If you want medieval Icelanders suckling the teat of
Mother Norway, there are a bajillion King’s Sagas. If it’s the Catholic church’s teat
in need of a suckle, there are the Bishop’s Sagas.
Eyrbyggja
Saga Recap:
Episode two:
The one with the
seal-ghost of
Christmas present
After they hang
him, she admits
|||||||||||||||||| to cursing
Gunnlaugur |||||||||||
||||||||||||| because he
was not DTF |||||||||