Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.01.2016, Qupperneq 30

ArtisAn BAkery
& Coffee House
Open everyday 6.30 - 21.00
Laugavegur 36 · 101 reykjavik
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 2016TV ON THE ANCIENT MANUSCRIPT
Now I can’t deny this part is important
but it’s honestly not very interesting. If
you’re a normal human in 2015, you’ve
probably seen ‘Lord of the Rings’ or
‘Game of Thrones’ (both of which were
obviously ripped off from whichever
poor, anonymous Icelander[s] wrote
the poems on which this Saga is based),
so you know how this shit goes. (And if
you’re German, you’re probably think-
ing, “Nuh-uh, those were totally ripped
off the German epic Niebelungenlied.”
But A) No, the Eddic poems probably
came first and B) Seriously just shut up
and keep reading.)
Basically, someone tells Sigurður to
slay the dragon because he has a bunch
of gold, which includes a ring of dubi-
ous magical properties. (Real original,
eh, Tolkien?) Surprise, surprise, he kills
the dragon. When he eats its heart and
drinks its blood, he is magically able to
hear the birds gossiping about how the
guy that asked him to kill the dragon
is going to betray him. So he kills that
dude too.
As he rides triumphantly into the
sunset, rich as fuck and tripping balls
on dragon’s blood, he sees light shining
from a mountain. When he goes there,
he sees this badass warrior maiden
sleeping—so naturally, he rips her sexy
armor off and wakes her up. Instead of
being like, “Hey asshole, I was sleep-
ing,” and murdering him on the spot
like any sensible warrior maiden would
do, Brynhildur is super turned on by
his blood-crusted manliness. He thinks
she’s hella smart and is like, “Teach me
your sexy ways and also about runes.”
She’s like, “Sure,” and they vow to marry.
Then they meet at her dad’s castle.
He’s all in love with her, but she says
never to trust a woman because they
can’t keep promises. (Internalized pa-
triarchy, much?) Like the smooth player
that he is, he says he can’t wait “to
enjoy each other” (actual translation,
not my shitty paraphrase). But she’s
like, “Listen up, dumbass, I’m a shield-
maiden. I’ll never be your wife because
I have battles to fight, plus you’re gon-
na marry that dumb bitch Guðrún.” He
swears he won’t, gives her the magic
ring, and they vow again to get married.
Talk about mixed signals from both
sides. What even just happened?
Gunnar needs to grow a pair
Sigurður shows up at the castle of
some guy named Gjúki, who has three
stupid sons named Gunnar, Högni, and
Guttormur. More importantly, his wife is
a malicious shitbag named Grímhildur
and she ruins everything for everybody.
She also happens to be a witch and she
slips Sigurður a medieval roofie (or “po-
tion of forgetfulness”) so he forgets his
betrothal to Brynhildur. Sigurður enters
into bromance with Gunnar and Högni,
(or “blood brotherhood”) and every-
body successfully bullies him into mar-
rying Guðrún. Then Grímhildur insists
that Gunnar try to woo Brynhildur and
says Sigurður will help because Gun-
nar is too much of a dumbass to do it
himself.
They go to Brynhildur’s dads (father
and foster-father, technically, but it’s
funnier to say “dads” because it makes
them sound gay) to ask their permis-
sion. Both are chill with the marriage
but warn that Brynhildur, like Beyoncé
and Malala Yousafzai and J.K. Rowl-
ing and basically every woman ever,
is a beautiful, powerful, independent
woman capable of making her own
decisions¬—including whom to marry.
Also she has a sky-high wall of flames
encircling her tower to keep men away
and she’ll only marry someone who can
get through that. Just like annoying
men at the bar these days, they’re like,
“Challenge accepted!”
When they get there, Gunnar can’t
get his horse or even Sigurður’s even
fancier horse to jump through the
flames. This is because horses are al-
ways fucking shit up in the Sagas. So
they transform into each other in a
Polyjuice-like fashion as Grímhildur
apparently taught them to do, and Sig-
urður rides through pretending to be
wussy Gunnar to propose to Brynhildur.
She says, “Don’t bother unless you’re
the hottest man in the world and will
murder everyone else who wants to
marry me” (paraphrase), adding that
her “weapons have been stained with
the blood of men and this I still desire”
(literal translation).
She marries him anyway and he lays
his sword between them when they
sleep, saying he swore an oath to avoid
boning his wife in this way. He takes the
magic ring he gave her and gives her
another as “Gunnar.” She then dumps
her daughter she apparently had with
Sigurður (when the fuck that happened
is never explained) with one of her dads
and moves into Gjúki’s hall with every-
one like some weird medieval reality TV.
The Real
Housewives
of the Rhine
This is where shit gets real. And con-
fusing. Real confusing. One day, the
queens are bathing in the Rhine river
(okay, fine, Germans, you get this one).
Brynhildur wades further out, which is
medieval body language for, “Guðrún,
you’re a basic bitch and your husband is
weak and probably gay, unlike my dads.”
Guðrún retorts, “Whatever, slut, you mar-
ried him first,” and shoves the magic ring
in Brynhildur’s face to make her jealous.
It works. Brynhildur realizes she’s
been cheated out of the hottest of hus-
bands and this sends her into a down-
ward spiral of suicidal depression and
homicidal rage. (Both urges will be sat-
isfied.) While it obviously doesn’t pass
the Bechdel Test, this scene is notable
as one of very few Saga scenes with
two main female characters, both in
positions of power, having any kind of
discussion.
Brynhildur locks herself away in
grief and everyone takes turns trying to
chill her out but she’s not having it. This
sequence results in a conversation be-
tween Brynhildur and Sigurður where
they do something that’s unheard of
with lovers in medieval heroic litera-
ture: talk about their feelings. Consid-
ering people can’t even do this today, I
think that’s commendable. But despite
Sigurður’s manly confessions of love,
Brynhildur has been betrayed and she
wants blood. Also they’ve both seen the
future, which you’d think would have
helped them steer clear of this whole
clusterfuck, but nope. Hell nope.
Sigurður Bloody Sigurður
So Brynhildur comes up with the sen-
sible solution of telling Gunnar that she
boned Sigurður when he was pretend-
ing to be Gunnar. I guess this was not
part of the deal between the dudes, but
Gunnar can’t kill Sigurður himself be-
cause of the bonds of bromance. So he
gets his littlest brother Guttormur (who
wasn’t part of the bromance) to stab
Sigurður in his sleep. But as Guttormur
is leaving the room, Sigurður throws
his sword at him, which slices him in
half at the waist so his torso falls into
the hallway and his legs back into the
bedroom.
Guðrún awakens in the blood of her
dying husband to find half a corpse
on her doorstep. (Although someone
must be pretty fucking hungover to
sleep through a murderfest like that,
amirite?) She lets out a horrific scream
that Brynhildur can hear from across
the castle and she laughs. How badass
is that? But then she starts crying and
after much more elegantly written ar-
ticulations of her grief and betrayal, she
stabs herself and requests that she and
Sigurður lay together in a funeral pyre.
This is granted to her, and they are fi-
nally able to lay together in some hella
morbid but still touching conclusion to
their romance.
The Saga drags on to describe how
Guðrún is basically sold off to Brynhil-
dur’s brother, who happens to be At-
tila the Hun (Atli in Icelandic). She’ll
never be Brynhildur, but in her defence,
she does stab Atli to death for killing
her brothers and then burn his whole
castle down. And nobody lived happily
ever after because everyone was dead.
Everyone loves a good love story.
As usual, this story starts with some dude who is the son of some other dude. They have
a bunch of other sons and all of that is boring. I’ll skip to the good stuff shortly, but here
is what you need to know: There is one guy named Völsungur, which is where the story
gets its name, but of course he dies. There is a bunch of a marriage, someone offends
someone, there are a heaps of revenge killings, a dash of incest (or “twincest” if we want
to get technical), some children are killed because they’re too wussy to commit more
revenge killings, a super old, creepy guy marries a super young babe, and then eventually
Sigurður is the son of somebody. There is also a prophecy about how he’s gonna fuck
up everything for everyone resulting in his own bloody murder (which somehow doesn’t
change the course of events). See how easy that was?
Words Grayson Del Faro Illustration Inga María Brynjarsdóttir
Völsungasaga, The
Saga Of The Völsungs
Recap:
Episode three:
The one with the
most badass shield-
maiden
Morals of
the story:
1. Treat women with respect.
2. Let them make their own
decisions.
3. Don’t deceive them into
sleeping with you.
4. If you do, they might crave
your blood and when they
get it, no one will pity you
because you were a sexist
asshole