Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.10.2016, Qupperneq 60

Listen up because I am about to re-
cap the saga on which your favorite,
wildly inaccurate History Channel
drama series, 'Vikings', is based.
And yes, it is literally called the
Saga of Ragnar Shaggy-Britches.
It is one of few sagas that is basi-
cally a sequel to another saga, one
of the very best, so you may want to
refresh your memory of Völsunga
Saga and the most boss-ass bitch
in the Middle Ages, Brynhildur.
Tits and Áslaug
Remember how warrior princess
Brynhildur and dragon-slayer
Sigurður randomly had a baby?
Well after they died, Brynhil-
dur’s foster-dad whisks Áslaug,
their daughter, away for her own
safety. Unluckily for them both, he
is murdered in his sleep by some
shitty peasants who raise the girl
as their daughter/servant.
Meanwhile, some guy named
Ragnar is the son of a Danish
king. He’s big and strong and
whatever. He get his nickname by
commissioning some weird shag-
gy pants and cape, which he dips
in tar and wears as armor to kill
a giant snake, because obviously
shaggy tar-pants are snake-re-
pellent. Duh. By killing this giant
snake, he wins himself a shitload
of money and also a smokin’ hot
wife with whom he has two chil-
dren before she gets sick and ran-
domly goes tits-up.
He is on the rebound when his
crew discovers a babely peasant
girl. They’re supposed to be mak-
ing bread but they burn it because
they can’t take their eyes off dat
ass(laug). He requests she come to
meet him, but because dudes can
totally suck balls at communica-
tion, he says he wants her to come
neither hungry nor full, neither
clothed nor naked, neither alone nor
with someone. She craftily eats one
leek, wraps herself in fishnet, and
heads out with a dog. He is wooed
by her brains and beauty and wants
her to come with him immediately.
She’s like “Nah, come back later,
bro.” So he comes back weeks later
and they get hella married.
To bone or
not to bone?
Ragnar wants to have fuck pronto
but Áslaug has her mother’s gift of
future-sight and says no because
if they don’t wait three days then
their child will be born without
bones. Ragnar “disregards her.” I
wish I had to explain that this is a
barbaric, medieval form of sexual
assault but unfortunately, this is
pretty much what still happens to-
day because apparently the average
male’s attitude toward women’s
bodily autonomy has not changed in
over 1500 years. Grim, huh? So they
have one boneless son, Ívar, and
another four normal-boned sons.
Ragnar’s two sons from his first
marriage get killed in a battle with
an evil cow owned by the King of
Sweden. Áslaug is having trouble
convincing her sons to avenge her
not-sons until the three-year-old
son speaks a poem about he and
his mother setting off to take on
the Swedish king. The thought of a
mother and toddler versus a bovine
demon and the armies of Sweden
gets the other brothers on board.
Ragnar is away at this time, so
Áslaug leads them to Sweden. The
cow has a magic bellow that causes
opposing armies to attack their
own men, probably something like
“STOP HITTING YOURSELF STOP
HITTING YOURSELF STOP HIT-
TING YOURSELF.” Apparently the
trade-off for bonelessness is the
ability to change your weight at
will, so Ívar makes himself light as
a stone so his brothers can throw
him across the field. When he lands,
he’s as heavy as a boulder and this
kills the cow, allowing them to win
the war and tell the King of Sweden
to fuck right off.
Motherfuckin’ snakes
in a motherfuckin’ pit
Instead of being proud of his weird-
ass family’s success in Sweden, Rag-
nar is thrown into a fit of jealousy
over their new fame. Because he’s
a big baby manchild, he ignores his
wife’s voice of reason, trying to con-
quer England with only two ships
and getting his shit-for-brains
captured. He refuses to reveal his
identity to King Ælla, who has him
stripped and thrown into a pit of
snakes until he talks.
While in the pit, Ragnar man-
ages to recite a 29-stanza poem
about his own gloriousness but
refuses to frankly state his name.
As the God of Alanis Morissette
would have it, the man famous for
his snake-proof pants gets his na-
ked ass bit to death by snakes. His
sons are all sad and shit, so Ívar
orchestrates some dope treachery
and has the king killed by infiltrat-
ing his ranks. Then he becomes the
King of England, Áslaug lives to a
ripe old age, and all the brothers
rule their own kingdoms except the
one who ends up getting burned to
death on a pile of severed heads.
Morals of the story: 1. Do not
underestimate people with dis-
abilities. They are probably more
resourceful than you. 2. Rapists
deserve to be thrown naked into
a pit of snakes. Can we bring that
back, please?
SHARE:
gpv.is/sag16
Saga of Ragnar
Shaggy-BritchesSAGA RECAP
Words
GRAYSON
DEL FARO
Art
INGA MARÍA
BRYNJARSDÓTTIR
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2016
60
“See the Northern Lights” is an
item that commonly appears on
bucket lists. Lucky for Icelanders,
the country is in a prime viewing
spot for these lights, as it snuggles
up against the Arctic Circle where
they tend to appear.
Though the “season” is typically
described as spanning from Sep-
tember to April (since there’s 24
hours of daylight during the sum-
mer), the Aurora Borealis can be
and has been spotted around the
country throughout the year. As we
transition into fall, there’s been a
recent flurry of cosmic activity and
the city of Reykjavík even turned
off the street lamps in the evening
so that people could enjoy the spec-
tacle without the interference of
light pollution.
The Icelandic word for the
Northern Lights is “Norðurljós,”
which literally means “northerly
lights.” It is a pretty literal transla-
tion, and in this case the alternate
English name has a more interest-
ing origin—“Aurora,” the Roman
Goddess of dawn, and “Borealis,”
the Greek name for the north wind.
They are a sight to be seen, but the
cause of these auroras are far from
romantic. They are a result of par-
ticles from a solar flare bumping
into other particles in the Earth’s
atmosphere. Depending on the
speed and altitude of the collision,
the chemicals will produce differ-
ent colours: green, white, and
sometimes even red or blue. Basi-
cally it’s all just a glorified, Insta-
gram-friendly chemical reaction.
What is a little romantic though,
is that it takes 40 hours for the so-
lar particles to travel to Earth and
create those heavenly reactions. So
when you’re looking at the North-
ern Lights, you’re actually looking
into the past.
Every Single Word in Icelandic
(http://everysingleword.is) is a pic-
tographic exploration of the Icelan-
dic 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.
1
6
-1
4
4
0
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H
V
ÍT
A
H
Ú
S
IÐ
/
S
ÍA
G E T Y O U R D E S I G N E R B R A N D S
T A X F R E E A T K E F L A V I K A I R P O R T
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2016
60
Light It Up
WORDS OF INTEREST
SAGA RECAP
Words & Art EUNSAN HUH