Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.03.2016, Blaðsíða 24

So let’s get to the love. I’m sorry to
tell that getting to the love means
skipping the first 30 chapters of the
Saga, but that’s okay. You only miss
out on the King of Ireland and his
daughter Melkorka, the Princess-of-
Ireland-turned-sex-slave-turned-
farm-patroness. Her son Olaf is the
father of Kjartan, our main squeeze.
Now we’re caught up.
Kjartan is basically Mr. Iceland,
and his foster-brother Bolli is like
the Mr. Iceland runner-up. Then
there is Miss Iceland. Her name, like
those of several other Saga char-
acters and about half the women
in Iceland in the last hundred years,
is of course Guðrún. Why not name
your child after the legendary Guðrún
Gjúkadóttir, who feeds her own chil-
dren to her evil second husband, and
the Guðrún of this story, who spite-
fully has the love of her life murdered?
It is a pretty name. Honestly, though,
don’t they all just sound perfect for
each other? Or at least perfect to fuck
each over in a long and tragic love
triangle? Well, that can’t happen un-
til Guðrún has ditched her first two
shitty husbands.

She’s a man-eeeeeater
Spoiler alert: some guy prophesies
that she’ll have four husbands and
they’ll all die. No shit, Nostrafuck-
ingdamus. We all do. Knowing this,
Guðrún warms up her marriage
game with a dude named Þórval-
dur, but they get into a fight after
she makes eyes at a guy named Þór-
dur and he hits her. She deservedly
whips out that prenup, dumping his
abusive ass, moving back in with her
dad, and taking half of Þórvaldur’s
shit with her. You go, girl!

Then she goes all homewrecker
on Þórður, convincing him to ditch
his wife and marry her instead,
which gets him stabbed in the arm
by his ex. Every neighbourhood has
“that family,” right, and theirs hap-
pens to be a bunch of bitchy wizards.
Þórður confronts them and they
magically drown him at sea.
Just like in so many modern Ice-
landic love stories, Guðrún next falls
in love with Kjartan in a hot tub. But
he decides to go Norway with his
main bro to win glory or whatever
and tells her, “BRB (in three years)
and we’ll get married.” But he ends
up being held captive by the king
of Norway because Christianity.
Meanwhile, Bolli comes back and
weasels Guðrún’s dad into basically
selling her to him in marriage even
though father and daughter are
both pretty anti-Bolli. Like the sexy,
manly man he is, Kjartan takes this
news with a stoic silence upon his
return. It’s not like men even have
feelings.

Shit always happens
He ends up marrying some rando
named Hrefna. At a feast, Hrefna’s
wedding headdress goes missing
and Kjartan accuses Bolli’s people of
being thieves. So, naturally, he rides
to their house and barricades them
inside, forcing them to literally shit
all over their own home. In revenge,
Guðrún convinces her brothers to
go and help kill Kjartan, but it’s Bolli
who decapitates his best bro in the
end.
When he tells Guðrún, she says
something like, “Well, today I’ve
spun a fuckload of yarn, and you’ve
killed the shit out of the greatest
warrior in all of Iceland. Go us! At
least Hrefna won’t be LOLing her-
self to sleep tonight, amirite?!” He’s
like, “Ur so rite.” But of course he’s
eventually slaughtered in revenge
by a bunch of dudes, one of whom
has the balls to then wipe his bloody
spear on Guðrún’s shawl.

The worst
Eventually, she lives through anoth-
er loveless marriage that ends in a
brief visit from the ghost of her now-
drowned fourth husband. Then
she becomes a nun. If you ask me,
she doesn’t need God—she needs a
good therapist. In her old age, her
son asks which husband she loved
best and she cryptically says, “I was
worst to he whom I loved best.”
There’s your Icelandic love story,
folks. Man loves woman. Man says
nothing. Man dies. Woman says
nothing. Woman is sad forever. Then
woman says something. The end.
SHARE: gpv.is/recap5
If you ask the average native English speaker which of Shake-
speare’s plays is their favorite, most will probably say ‘Romeo
& Juliet’ just because it’s the only one they pretended to read
when they were fifteen years old. I find that Laxdæla is the
lucky Saga that the average Icelander pretended to read.
For all the fraudulent claims, however, some Icelanders even
remember details of the Saga because they actually liked it.
Everyone likes love.

1. Don’t
piss off
wizards.
2. Never love
anyone.

3. If you are
somehow
unable to
avoid loving
someone,
speak the
fuck up.
Morals of
the story:
RECAP:
Laxdæla Saga
Episode Five:
The Allegedly
Romantic One
TV ON THE
ANCIENT
MANUSCRIPT
WORDS: Grayson Del Faro
ILLUSTRATION: Inga María Brynjarsdóttir
"Ég tók hann í bakaríið" literally
means “I took him to the bakery.” At
first glance, it sounds rather lovely—
treating someone to freshly baked
goods—but the meaning behind the
idiom isn’t quite so jovial. It’s actual-
ly used to describe beating or domi-
nating someone, often in the context
of sports.
“Að baka” means “to bake,” but
in this case it’s slang for “to defeat.”
So, if you are taking someone to the
bakery, you can imagine how much
of an ass-whooping they are in for.
According to the University of Ice-
land-run Vísindavefurinn website,
this phrase is a fairly recent linguis-
tic phenomenon, only dating back
to a dictionary of slang published in
1982.
Every Single Word in Icelandic is
a pictographic exploration of the Ice-
landic language. I find an interesting
compound word, then deconstruct
and illustrate it as icons. The goal is to
express how Icelandic can be deadpan
literal and unexpectedly poetic at the
same time.
- everysinglewordinicelandic.com
It was brought to my attention by
walking through Krónan and seeing
an Easter egg on the shelf that the hol-
iday is rapidly approaching. At first, I
didn’t understand why on earth Eas-
ter eggs were being sold in February.
Christmas, Sprengidagur and Bol-
ludagur were just a week ago, weren’t
they? I guess our calendar is littered
with festivals dedicated to excessive
eating (not that I’m complaining).
It was at that moment that I re-
alised I wasn’t even the slightest bit
excited for Easter, which made me a
bit sad because it means I’m finally a
grown-up, which is in no way excit-
ing. I remember when Easter was a
magical time: the sun was shining,
school was out and on the day you’d
wake up to search for your massive
(and hidden) Easter egg.
Did I mention they were huge?
Iceland takes the Easter egg concept
to a whole other level, increasing
them in size and filling them with
candy, as well as with a smart prov-
erb that everyone now shares on so-
cial media. The amount of sugar the
kids get is also absolutely over the
top: an active eight-year-old needs
about 1,500 calories per day, yet in a
size six Easter egg (which is not the
biggest) there are some 3,300! Yet
for kids, the size you get is a mark of
social status!
Come to think of it, isn’t the
world running out of chocolate?
Why do we feed tiny little rug rats
this glorious brown substance when
they just end up rubbing some of it on
their faces and throwing the rest out?
In the best-case scenario, the parents
shamefully try eating the remains
when their children aren’t looking.
Will I buy an Easter egg for my-
self? Of course, but only in order to
celebrate the resurrection of our one
true saviour, Jesus Christ.
WORDS OF
INTEREST
A Trip To
The Bakery
The Resurrection Of Jesus
Christ And Chocolate
BY : Hrefna Björg Gylfadóttir
Book online and get 5% discount at: www.sternatravel.com
- The NorTherN LighTs Bus
- The BeauTifuL souTh CoasT
- The VoLCaNiC PeNiNsuLa-reykjaNes
- goLdeN CirCLe & The seCreT LagooN

-
ExpEriEncE thE bEautiful icElandic wondErs