Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.09.2016, Síða 60

Should you happen to be so stupid and/
or unfortunate as to have made the se-
ries of poor life decisions resulting in
having to frequently tell strangers that
you study Old Norse, you usually just
get three responses. 1. “Very useful/
practical!” (Very original, asshole! I’m
not arguing, you’re correct in implying
it’s all a giant crock of shit, but you’re
definitely still an asshole.) 2. “So like
Þór and stuff?” (Not bad.) 3. “So like
the Sagas?” (Ten points to Ravenclaw!)
People often assume the Norse gods
are somehow related to the Sagas, but
they’re usually about as related as John
Milton is to Harriet Beecher Stowe in
terms of content, genre and time period.
Luckily for you, I found one Saga
that centers around the Norse gods
and their constant fuckery with lower
beings. By “fuckery,” I mean a both
goddess literally fucks some dwarves,
but also (more figuratively) fucks with
a bunch of humans by starting wars
between them. I know you’ve only read
this far in search of sex and violence so
I won’t make you wait any longer.
This story starts in “Asialand,”
where the Norse gods apparently live.
There are also four dwarves who make
really amazing jewelry. Freyja, a god-
dess, sees a necklace that they made
and she wants to buy it but they will
not accept gold or silver for it. Only
sex. She’s like a goddess of fertility or
whatever, so she hops one dwarf-train
to sex-town each night and returns
home four days later looking fucking
fierce in that necklace as if nothing
had happened.
Loki, the tattle-y rat bastard he is,
tells Óðinn how she got the necklace
and he’s not mad, he’s just disappoint-
ed. So Óðinn sends Loki to steal it from
her. He sneaks into her place by trans-
forming into a fly and then gets her to
roll over in bed by transforming into
a flea and biting her. He steals it and
hands it over to Óðinn.
When she comes for it the next day,
Óðinn tells her that since she pur-
chased it with sex, he will only give it
back to her if she can get two kings who
each lord over at least twenty other
kings each to fight each other for all
eternity or until one of them is killed
by a Christian. I’m thinking WTF but
apparently this makes sense to her
because she literally just says “yes” and
he gives her back the necklace.

Why work when
you can steal?
Okay there is a Norwegian king and
a Danish king. Sörli, the son of the
Norwegian king, kills the King of Den-
mark to steal his really fancy, dragon-
shaped boat. He sails straight to find
the son of the king he just killed to
try to pay recompense and swear the
bonds of bromance/brotherhood, but
naturally they’re like, “Fuck off, dude.
You killed our dad. You’ll never be our
bro!” Then they kill him. Then Högni,
the older brother, brings Sörli back
to life and enters into bromance with
him anyway. (Srsly, guys?) Sörli sails
east and dies and when Högni follows
him there, he ends up winning the al-
legiance of exactly twenty kings. How
convenient!
If this is confusing, pay attention
because it’s only gonna get weirder.
There is a guy named Héðinn, son of
the King of “Serkland,” which is some-
where in North Africa or the Middle
East. He’s been all around the Medi-
terranean and happens to have some-
thing exactly like twenty kings paying
tribute to him when he bumps into a
beautiful woman in a forest. She not-
so-casually mentions this king in the
north, Högni, who happens to be pret-
ty fucking cool.
Héðinn sets off to find him and
when he does, they decide they are
equals and become bros. Högni even
offers the hand of his daughter, Hildur,
to Héðinn. But then the mysterious
woman pops up and serves his thirsty
ass a potion. Then she’s like, “Hey,
Héðinn, you should kill Högni’s wife by
running her over with your dragon ship
and kidnap Hildur!” He’s like, “Sure,
I guess,” and does so. What a chump.

Christianity
saves the day
Or so the Saga says. If any modern evi-
dence for such an event happening can
be believed, Christianity probably just
shoved itself in there and fucked up
everything even more. But hey, we’ll
go with the Saga for now. Högni chases
down Héðinn and their armies class,
but the mysterious woman (Surprise!
It’s Freyja!) has enchanted them so
they can’t die. So they fight for 143
years until a warrior sent by the Chris-
tian king of Norway sneaks up and
kills everyone.
When he returns with the king to
admire the carnage, everything has
vanished except the blood on his sword
and probably the smile on Freyja’s face
in the selfie she posts to her Insta-
gram, captioned “iz it 2 l8 2 say im sor-
ry nao? cuz im not lol!”
SHARE: gpv.is/saga17
Morals of
the story:
1. Don’t let a
dude with a
concubine
slut-shame
you.
2. Materialism
is tedious.
3. Never study
Old Norse.
S01E17:
Saga of Héðinn
and Högni
SAGA RECAP
WORDS OF INTEREST
Words GRAYSON DEL FARO
Art INGA MARIA BRYNJARS DÓTTIR
Words & Art EUNSAN HUH
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 14 — 2016
60
On with
the butter!
“Áfram með smjörið!” is an idiom that
literally means “On with the butter!”
It’s used to tell someone to quit dilly-
dallying and get a move on.
In pastoral times, butter was made
by hand in a plunger churn, and it
would take somewhere between 6000
and 7000 plunges to transform milk
into the soft, supple fat spread we all
know and love. You can imagine how
many hours and backaches this pro-
cess would take, and why a slightly
pushy “áfram með smjörið!” would
have been useful in such a scenario.

Back then, making butter was con-
sidered such a laborious task that there
are even stories of housewives tying
the churner onto the back of a shep-
herd. After many hours in the field
tending to his flock, he would return
home with churned butter and save her
those 7000 manual plunges.
Despite the backbreaking process,
Icelanders had a surplus of this stuff
and used it liberally in their day-to-
day lives. It was considered a source of
strength, especially during winter. The
recommended portion was a whopping
1700 grams (3.7lbs) per week per per-
son. It’s been recorded that butter was
sometimes used in place of soap, and,
in other cases, as lotion for children.
Weak lambs were also fed butter as to
make them stronger.
Every Single Word in Icelandic is a pic-
tographic exploration of the Icelandic
language.
- www.everysingleword.is
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