Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.09.2016, Blaðsíða 60

Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.09.2016, Blaðsíða 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 MADE IN ICELAND www.jswatch.com With his legendary concentration and 45 years of experience our Master Watchmaker ensures that we take our waterproofing rather seriously. Gilbert O. Gudjonsson, our Master Watchmaker and renowned craftsman, inspects every single timepiece before it leaves our workshop.
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