Gripla - 20.12.2017, Page 123

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ing Þórdís that Gísli brá sverði ok hjó til hans, ok vannsk Kolbeini þat at fullu
[Gísli drew his sword and struck at him, and this was absolutely enough
for Kolbeinn].89 It is therefore Þorbjǫrn’s disruptive influence on the
young Gísli that first causes him to behave in such a “reckless” or “uncom-
promising” way. this paternal influence is later depicted at two key points
in the saga: firstly, when the family decides to leave norway, and secondly,
during Gísli’s last stand. on both occasions, Gísli speaks verses in which
he overtly refers to his father’s influence on his life, first attributing future
problems to his father by saying faðir minn, af þraut þinni / stofnast styrjar
efni [trouble will arise from this, my father, because of your struggle],90
and later crediting Þorbjǫrn with Gísli’s heroic deeds: þá gaf sínum sveini /
sverðs minn faðir herðu [My father gave hardness to his boy’s sword].91 The
fact that these verses seem to provide a frame for Gísli’s life, being the first
and the last verses he speaks, show the immense impact Þorbjǫrn seems to
have had on “his boy”, as Gísli calls himself in the end.
Preben Meulengracht Sørensen argues that the different versions of
the saga are different interpretations of the same material: “M emphasizes
more than S the difference in character between the two brothers, while
S demonstrates more clearly than M the moral conflict into which Gísli is
forced by external circumstances.”92 These external circumstances are the
pressure that Þorbjǫrn puts on Gísli – and this pressure stays with him for
the rest of his life, introducing the conflicts with his siblings and in-laws that
in turn lead to his outlawry and death. this would also explain why Gísli
refers to his father in his last stanza: Þorbjǫrn has indeed hardened Gísli’s
sword by giving him reason to kill at least once, and by instilling in him a
focus on his kin’s honour that, like a sword, cuts through his family.
a similarly overarching, problematic paternal influence is depicted in
the other two outlaw sagas. Grettir seems to be subjected to what nowa-
days would be called emotional abuse from his father:93 Ekki hafði hann
89 Ibid., 11.
90 Ibid., 14.
91 Gísla saga, 114.
92 Meulengracht Sørensen, “Murder in Marital Bed,” 241.
93 Carolyne Larrington states that, although Egill has the worst of all saga childhoods, Grettir
“runs him a close second”; “awkward adolescents: Male Maturation in norse Literature,”
Youth and Age in the Medieval North, ed. Shannon Lewis-Simpson (Leiden: Brill, 2008),
155.
“HE HaS LonG forfEItED aLL KInSHIP tIES”