Gripla - 20.12.2014, Side 114

GRIPLA114
smiuga j huora. og þar nidr ur sꜳ hun liggia eina stora listu miog
osyniliga allt nidur ꜳ bringu. þuij eigi olict sem þat uære frodan vr
honum. munnur hans er suo sem iokla sprunga. edur giꜳr þær er
uotn fallꜳ ur. og uar hann bade skackur og skialgur. augun uoru sem
skallhettir suartir og lodnir. og uotnn .ij. flyte j midiu. enn hans haus
uar harlaus og glittade sem suell. enn hy suart og sijtt med uỏngum.
Hann war clæddr geitskinnzolpu. hun uar suo stor at akrkarl einn
munde eigi lypt fꜳ af iỏrdu.94
[then she sees a big giant, dark and scary-looking, big-nosed and
hooked-nosed, and so crooked that the curve on the nose went on
one side far out on his wrinkly cheek that it reached the ugly ear
that he had on his disgraceful cheek. But the nostrils went down to
the other cheek far away from the ears and were so widely flared
that small men would be able to slip into either one. And from it she
saw hanging a great and revolting chunk of snot all the way down
to the breast, not unlike if foam fell from him. His mouth is as large
as a glacial crevasse or ravines from which rivers flow, and he was
both lopsided and squinting. His eyes were like black and hairy
skull-hoods with water floating in the middle, but his head was bald
and shone like a sheet of ice, and black and long fuzz on his cheeks.
He wore a goat-skin parka so big that a field-worker would not be
able to lift it from the ground.]
this troll’s enormous size, grotesque facial features, and goat-skin garment
all link him unmistakably to giants and giantesses in the fornaldarsögur,
and the snot evokes Clári saga’s Perus, disguised as an ogre, who violently
mistreats the maiden-king protagonist on behalf of his protegé, Clárus;
in these instances, male fantasies of sexual violence are not far under the
surface.95 sigurðr is able to assume such disguises because he has been
given a magic mirror by the giantess sisters Fála and Flegða, and he entices
Sedentiana out of her castle into the wilderness, where she is unprotected
and vulnerable, by means of a magic ring. these figures, functioning as
the hero’s helpers here and later in the saga, can perhaps be regarded as
94 Sigurðar saga, 207–208.
95 jóhanna katrín Friðriksdóttir, Women in Old Norse Literature, chs. 3 and 5.