Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.05.2016, Blaðsíða 66

Although you wouldn’t know from
your fingers, still cold outside in
the daytime, my sources keep tell-
ing me that summer has officially
begun in some weird, old Icelandic
technicality. This means we’ll be-
gin our Summer Saga Series.
As I have recapped before, there
are many different kinds of Sagas.
To celebrate summer pastimes
like traveling and romance, I’ll
be recapping the most neglected
category of Sagas, called the rid-
darasögur. This literally trans-
lates as “sagas of knights,” but
they’re usually just referred to as
“romances.” So prepare yourself
for exotic lands, lords, ladies, lov-
ers, and LOLz. The first stop on
this journey is a close European
neighbor, Britain, with an Old
Norse translation of an Old French
poem about King Arthur’s court.
It centers on Erex, a knight whose
name has yet to be trademarked
by your start-up condom brand, so
act now!
All is fair in
love and dwarf
Not really. Dwarves can be total
dicks. All of King Arthur’s court go
out for a hunt, having been prom-
ised a kiss from the kingdom’s
most beautiful maiden to who-
ever can kill a special deer. Erex
is accompanying the queen and
a maiden when they see another
knight and a dwarf with a bullwhip
in the woods. When approached,
the dwarf whips the skin off the
maiden’s hand and the skin off Er-
ex’s neck. Erex is too ashamed to
return to Arthur’s castle Kardigan
without vengeance. He rides after
his new nem-
esis.
He arrives
at a castle and
scopes out the
most babeliest
babe in all of
Britain. He asks
her dad for her
hand in mar-
riage after he
explains that
he squandered
their wealth with war, then says
he’ll let her speak her mind on the
matter. The author doesn’t, how-
ever, writing only that she agrees
and they get betrothed. Typical
mansplaining.
Nice day for
a knight-wedding
Erex learns that the knight with
the dwarf has a golden bird statue
and challenges him for it. So he
and this other knight rub poles—
or joust or whatever—and they end
up on the ground, where Erex slic-
es off a piece of the other knight’s
skull. Apparently, he wasn’t using
that part of his skull anyway be-
cause he survives, surrenders and
becomes a lackey of King Arthur’s
Court, like a cabana boy.
Erex brings home his lady can-
dy and she promptly wins Medi-
eval England’s Next Top Maiden.
The king claims the kiss he prom-
ised to the deer-killer, who conve-
niently turned out to be himself.
(I see what you
did there, your
highness, and it
was creepy, not
cute.) The lov-
ers have a two-
week wedding,
during which
Erex apparently
learns his wife’s
name is Evida.
You can already
tell what a good
listener he is. Such a catch.
Erex loves Evida so much that
he never goes out with his bros
and they talk mad shit on him for
that. The first time Evida actu-
ally speaks, she’s like, “I feel hella
guilty that all his homies hate me
for keeping Erex moored on Girl-
friend Island.” He hears this and
insists that they pack up and ride
away from his entourage of man-
children.
Hack, slash,
enslave, repeat
What follows next is a series of
episodes, which might as well be
levels in a video game, in which
Erex and Evida run into people
in all sorts of unfortunate situa-
tions. Erex gets out of each with
startlingly hilarious displays of

1. Trademark Erex-brand
condoms while you can.
2. Joust responsibly.
Morals of
the story:
RECAP:
Episode 9
Erex Saga
TV ON THE
ANCIENT
MANUSCRIPT
Words GRAYSON DEL FARO
Artwork INGA MARIA BRYNJARSDÓTTIR
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 6 — 2016
66
HUMANS OF REYKJAVÍK
On surfing, here,
there, and anywhere...
I’ll go all around—sometimes
I surf here in the south but
really almost anywhere. It
just depends on the swell. I
lived in England, in Cornwall.
I applied to a school in
London, but I heard you
could surf in Cornwall. So I
went there instead.

On photography...
I was in art school in
Cornwall for three years,
studying photography. Now
I do all kinds of work, but
mostly outdoor stuff and
surf photography. I’ll travel
to shoot but I also work here
with visiting pro surfers.
I’ve worked in a few places
abroad, like the Philippines,
New Zealand, Hawaii, and
Spain.

On living abroad
versus living in one’s
home country...
I think I’ll probably stay here.
It’s one thing I’ve learned,
you kind of appreciate your
home country more after
you’ve lived somewhere else
and have travelled. Although
everything is expensive and
the politics suck, it’s a pretty
nice place for kids to grow up.
Words & Photo KELLEY REES & JÓHANNA PÉTURSDÓTTIR
violence. First, they encounter
a band of robbers, the leader of
which calls dibs on Evida, “first
choice of [dat] booty.”
Erex kills them all, splattering
one’s brains about and stabbing
another in the neck so powerfully
that his eyes fly out of his face.
Similar fates befall two giants
who have carried off a naked man,
a dragon who had half-swallowed
a knight, and two different earls
who attempt to woo Evida. Each
person rescued pledges their ser-
vice to Erex and he sends them off
to Arthur.
They come to a place called the
Joy of the Court, from which no
man has emerged alive. A dwarf
admits them and Erex finds his
cousin inside, who doesn’t kill
him. Instead, they all ride back to
Kardigan to join all the knights
who’ve collected there. Erex in-
herits a kingdom from his father
and everyone lives like Kard(igan)
ashians luxuriously ever after.
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