Gripla - 01.01.1998, Page 158

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GRIPLA
cessful Scandinavian king — generosity and good luck — are reinterpreted in
the Christian terms of charity and grace, thus investing the institution of the
monarchy with a spiritual authority independent of that of Rome. Gautreks
saga anachronistically projects this reinterpretation onto the pre-Christian
past, but it is more usually found in narratives such as Auðunar þáttr
vestfirzka and Oláfs saga hins helga, which deal with good Christian kings
such as Sveinn Úlfsson of Denmark and St Oláfr of Norway.
If we disassemble Gautreks saga, we find that it is composed of three
interlaced narrative strands. The first is the folktale-like account of Gautrekr’s
begetting, the second is the ancient legend of Starkaðr, and the third is the
Islendinga-þáttr-like story of Refr. These three narratives, which seem so
disparate, are in fact linked by the repetition of the following motifs: misers,
fools, and sacrifices to Oðinn. In the first story, the miser is King Gauti’s
unwilling host Skafnörtungr (the name means „Skinflint”), the fools are the
members of Skafnörtungr’s family, and the sacrifices to Oðinn take the form
of their throwing themselves over Ætternisstapi (their „Family Cliff‘) to
ensure their going straight to Valhalla. In the second story, the miser is the
Norwegian Earl Neri, who serves to connect all three parts of the saga, since
he makes his first appearance in the legend of Starkaðr, then becomes
Gautrekr’s earl, and finally Refr’s foster-father.4 The fool is Starkaðr himself,
who as a youth is a good-for-nothing kolbítr or layabout, and the sacrifice to
Óðinn is the hanging of Starkaðr’s foster-brother, King Víkarr. In the third
story, the miser Neri appears once again, and Refr is a hero who begins as a
kolbítr and a fool both.5 The lack of a sacrifice to Óðinn is a deliberate omis-
sion, as I will show, but a further connection between Starkaðr’s story and
Refr’s is provided by Refr’s father Rennir, who fought for and was a friend of
King Víkarr. And when Refr gives his father’s prized ox to Neri, his story is
4 For convenience, quotations from Gautreks saga are taken from volume 4 of Guðni Jóns-
son’s 1950 edition. Starkaðr is described as a kolbítr on p. 15, and Neri as a miser on p. 23: „Neri
jarl var hermaðr mikill, en svá sínkr, at til hans hefir jafnat verit öllum þeim, er sínkastir hafa verit
ok sízt hafa öðrum veitt“ („Earl Neri was a great warrior, but such a miser that all those who
have been the most miserly and have aided others the most reluctantly have been compared to
him“).
5 Gautreks saga (1950:27) describes Refr as a kolbítr and fool: „Þá er hann var ungr, lagðist
hann í eldaskála ok beit hrís ok börk af trjám ... Hann gerði sik athlægi annarra sinna hraustra
frænda" („When he was young, he lay about in the kitchen and bit twigs and bark off the wood
... He made himself the laughing-stock of his other famous relatives“). On the same page,
Rennir is implied to be thrifty: „Faðir hans [i.e., Rennir] var fjárorkumaðr mikill, ok líkaði
honum illa óþrifnaðr sonar síns“ („His father was a great man of wealth, and the unthrifty ways
of his son displeased him“).