Gripla - 20.12.2014, Blaðsíða 115

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complicit in sigurðr’s crime, his violation of the maiden-king’s sexual au-
tonomy, showing that there is no female sisterhood, at least not between
classes.96
We find less monstrous rapists in Grettis saga: the notorious norwegian
berserks, outlaws and thieves Þórir þǫmb and Ǫgmundr illi are said to
abduct married women and keep them as concubines for a week or two
before bringing them back to their husbands, exactly like the evil, racially
Other and heathen king Príams in Mágus saga.97 Grettir deceives the ber-
serks and their hangers-on and is able to kill them all before they do any
harm to his benefactor Þorfinnr’s wife. Late in his life, grettir joins these
ranks when he rapes a servant woman who makes fun of the size of his pe-
nis; again the rape seems to be distanced by framing it in a comic light.98
the behaviour of these othered men, whether they are giants, trolls,
berserks or saracens, is thus sometimes remarkably similar to that of hu-
man men, and clearly their violence is not just something that happens in
faraway places: when grettir is in norway, he defends a farmer and his
daughter against the berserker snækollr, and the narrator remarks that
þath war þꜳ wijda J noregi ath marka menn ok illuirkiar hlupu ofann
ur mörkum ok skorudu ꜳ menn til kuenna eda toku med of riki af
monnum þar er eigi war lidsfiolde fyrer.99
[it happened in many places in norway that forest-dwellers [i.e.
outlaws] and criminals ran down from the forest and challenged
men for their women or plundered from men with tyrrany where
there was no military troop in place.]
Incidentally, the berserk rapists from Grettis saga originate from Háloga-
land, the same area of norway as the protagonists of Þorsteins saga
Víkingssonar, and the question arises whether they, like Þorsteinn and
96 for discussion about giantesses who function as the hero’s helpers and align themselves
with him against their own kin, see Schulz, Riesen, 211–13, 295–302; John McKinnell,
Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), 184–185,
jóhanna katrín Friðriksdóttir, Women in Old Norse Literature, 73–76; cf. ‘girl as Helper in
the Hero’s Flight’ folktale type (At 313c).
97 f. 10v; Grettis saga, 61; Mágus saga, 161–162.
98 f. 41r; Grettis saga, 240–241.
99 f. 23v; Grettis saga, 135.
IDEoLogY AnD IDEntItY In LAtE MEDIEVAL WESt ICELAnD