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first impressions matter, not least in the sagas. When our introduction
to Þorsteinn in both Grettis saga and Bjarnar saga warns of overbearing,
trouble-making, inequitable behaviour, certain associations are formed.
the names that spring to scholars’ minds when discussing ójafnaðar-
menn are those of murderers (Þjóstólfr in Njáls saga), tyrants (Hrafnkell
freysgoði) and greedy revenants (Þórólfr bægifótr in Eyrbyggja saga) – or
those who encompass all three identities (Víga-Styrr Þorgrímsson).22 Yet
Þorsteinn’s most aggressive actions in Grettis saga and Bjarnar saga are
lawsuits, legally presented as far as the sagas are concerned, brought for the
killings of men he was related to and allied with. His behaviour in Laxdœla
saga warrants the description somewhat better, but it is still distinct from
the provocations of Þorbjǫrn Þjóðreksson in Hávarðar saga or even Þórðr
hrossamaðr in Þorsteins þáttr stangarhöggs.23
Grettis saga demonstrates something of an ambivalent attitude towards
negative personality traits, absorbing the difficult personality of its hero
within a family of rogues, vikings and warriors.24 In this sense, Þorsteinn’s
description ensures that he fits in well. Yet a character’s introduction is a
period of the saga’s narrative in which an audience might be more alert to
the significance of the information provided. If we are told that a character
is good or bad, fights well or poorly, is popular or unpopular, then we ex-
pect the actions that follow to adhere to this description.
22 See William Ian Miller, “Why is your Axe Bloody?” A Reading of njáls saga (oxford: oxford
University Press, 2014), 288; Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, Fortælling og ære: studier i
islændingesagaerne (aarhus: universitetsforlag, 1993), 197; Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with
the Viking Age. Narration and Representation in the Sagas of Icelanders, trans. andrew Wawn
(reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1998), 157; theodore M. andersson, “the Displacement of the
Heroic Ideal in the family Sagas,” Speculum 49 (1970): 580–82.
23 Þorbjǫrn and Þórðr are both introduced as ójafnaðarmenn by the narrator in the texts in
which they appear. of those named above, only Þjóstólfr is not called this by the narrator
of his saga; Miller claims that Þjóstólfr fits the mould of the character type better than
Njáls saga’s ójafnaðarmenn (the Egilssynir, see Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar ól. Sveinsson,
Íslenzk fornrit, vol. 12 [reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954], 147). My doctoral
thesis explores the definition of ójafnaðarmaðr in more detail and questions whether we
should be applying the term where the sagas do not, if we wish to establish a useful idea
of what the term meant. See Shortt Butler, “narrative Structure and the Individual in the
Íslendingasögur.”
24 Katherine Hume, “the thematic Design of Grettis saga,” Journal of English and Germanic
Philology 73 (1974): 478–79; russell Poole, “Myth, Psychology, and Society in Grettis saga,”
Alvíssmál 11 (2004): 7; also cf. Hermann Pálsson, Úr hugmyndaheimi Hrafnkels sögu og
Grettlu, Studia Islandica, vol. 39 (reykjavík: Menningarsjóður, 1981), 97.