Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.08.2018, Side 46

46The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 15— 2018
Marshallhúsið, Grandagarður 20, 101 Reykjavík.
Bus route 14 (Listabraut)
To reserve brunch, lunch and dinner call +354 519 7766,
or info@marshallrestaurant.is, marshallrestaurant.is
Marshall Restaurant + Bar hosts SOE KITCHEN 101,
a temporary culinary project by chef Victoría Elíasdóttir,
artist Ólafur Elíasson, and the SOE Kitchen team.
Book
Saga Spots:
Searching for
Egill in Borgarnes
A prominent monument to an
insignificant characters
Words: Elijah Petzold Illustration: Lóa Hlín Hjálmtýsdóttir
Every time I drive by the gas sta-
tions and supermarkets along
Route 1 as it passes through Bor-
garnes, I’m reminded of the stark
disjunction between the town’s
substantial medieval inheritance
and the prosaic reality of modern
day life there. Although Borgar-
nes was only founded in the late
nineteenth century, the region
that comprises the modern day
municipality claims a rich history
stretching back to the first days
of human habitation in Iceland.
According to Egils Saga, Skalla-
grímr Kveldúlfsson, the father
of the eponymous warrior-poet
hero, fled the draconian clutches
of the Norwegian monarchy in
the late ninth century and estab-
lished the settlement of Borg—
on the edge of the modern day
city l imits—which remained
an important seat of authority
throughout the Middle Ages. It
is here that Egill Skallagríms-
son spends his precocious youth,
before embarking on a series of
adventures abroad; it is here that
he bickers with his father and
raises his family; and it is here,
after the tragic deaths of his sons,
that he composes Sonatorrek, his
most famous and poignant elegy.
Perhaps no other Icelandic
town can claim such an abundant
medieval inheritance: important
sites from other sagas mostly lie
well beyond the boundaries of
modern day towns. Egils Saga,
by contrast, details events that
occur in recognizable features
of the landscape in Borgarnes.
However, no medieval remnants
bear witness to this lofty past: a
drab expanse of mini-malls, gas
stations, and apartment blocks
comprises the modern hub of
Borgarnes, speaking more to
the quotidian concerns of con-
temporary life than to the heroic
deeds of its medieval inhabitants.
Yet the memory of Egils Saga is
hardly absent from Borgarnes. On
the contrary, it is impossible to
visit Borgarnes and not encoun-
ter Egill: the very streets take
their names from
the saga’s char-
acters, and sev-
eral cairns indi-
cate the locations
o f s i g n i f i c a n t
events. In Skal-
lagrímsgarður, a
public park in the
town’s old center,
a reconstructed
burial mound pur-
ports to mark the
site where Egil l
interred his father
and, years later,
his sons. Beside
the mound, a re-
lief portrays Egill
on horseback, de-
livering the drowned body of his
favourite son, Böðvarr, to this
very location. In front of the mod-
ern day settlement at Borg, an
abstract sculpture by Ásmundur
Sveinsson memorializes Egill’s
reaction to the loss of his sons: in-
tent on starving himself to death,
he nevertheless accepts the sug-
gestion of his daughter Þorgerðr
to seek solace in poetry. In the
resulting elegy, Sonatorrek, Egill
inveighs against the sea gods
Ægir and Rán for their complicity
in Böðvarr’s death. In the sculp-
ture, which takes its name from
the poem, Þorgerðr thrusts a harp
into his hands; a round cavity be-
tween father and daughter frames
the ocean—the agent of Böðvarr’s
death and the object of Egill’s rage.
Read together, these monu-
ments and markers are less con-
cerned with Egill’s heroic stature
than they are with his interior,
emotional life. Much of Egils Saga
recounts Egill’s swashbuckling
exploits abroad: he single-hand-
edly secures a military victory
for the English King Athelstan,
outwits the malevolent sorcery of
the Norwegian Queen Gunnhildr,
and composes a paean for King
Eiríkr Bloodaxe that convinces
the monarch to spare his life. His
affairs in Iceland, by contrast,
are remarkably mundane: he as-
sumes stewardship of the farm
at Borg, grapples
with family trage-
dies, and becomes
a lewd dotard in
his old age. It is
this latter Egil l
that we encoun-
ter in Borgarnes:
a legendary hero
who is neverthe-
less astonishingly
human, even fa-
miliar. The seem-
ing disjunction
between an epic
past and prosaic
present instead
reveals the con-
tinuity of human
ex perience, the
tedium and tragedy of everyday
life. Suddenly, it’s easy to imagine
Egill sipping bottomless coffee in
a gas station, scrawling mournful
lines for his dead sons.
gpv.is/lit
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Rough life and a lot of puffins
“It is this lat-
ter Egill that
we encounter
in Borgarnes:
a legendary
hero who is
nevertheless
astonishingly
human, even
familiar.”