Gripla - 2019, Page 97

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ings who can marry human brides, whereas the jötnar in the text are work-
ers of discord. Þorkell is an ójafnaðarmaðr “overbearing person” from a
young age, and passes this quality down to his sons. Without any apparent
provocation, Þorkell’s son Rauðfeldr pushes Bárðr’s daughter Helga out
into the sea on an ice floe. A rivalry then emerges between the saga’s risar
and jötnar, with Bárðr slaying Þorkell’s sons Rauðfeldr and Sölvi and then
besting Þorkell himself in a fight.53
Ármann Jakobsson has dismissed the author’s sharp division between
different giantlike creatures as a unique “taxonomical project” and has
suggested that “it is very difficult to find any source which, like Bárðar
saga, confidently divides the giants into groups and elaborates on their
differences.”54 It is quite true that no text draws as exact a distinction
between risar and tröll as Bárðar saga, but other sagas exist which sharply
demarcate the so-called “giants,” risar and jötnar. In Þorsteins þáttr bœjar-
magns and Samsons saga fagra, texts often overlooked by scholars of the
saga “giants,” the differences between risar and jötnar are distinguished
with a clarity that arguably rivals the genealogical introduction of Bárðar
saga.55
as svartr ok þursligr “swarthy and þurs-like.” Black hair and swarthy skin are also common
characteristics of poets and þrælar, who are often represented as physically flawed. For
example, Kormákr Ögmundarson is characterised in chapter 3 of his saga only with the
adjectives svartr “swarthy” and ljótr “ugly.” These are also the first two adjectives applied to
Skallagrímr and his son Egill in Egils saga. Such cases are common in the saga corpus. It is
likely that the author of Bárðar saga was drawing upon the connection between swarthiness
and ugliness in his characterisation of the jötunn Þorkell.
53 This division breaks down in the course of the saga, when Bárðr departs from human
company and lives among þursar and tröll. This is prompted by the tragic disappearance of
his daughter and his killing of Rauðfeldr and Sölvi: “svá brá Bárði við allt saman, viðreign
þeira bræðra ok hvarf dóttur sinnar, at hann gerðist bæði þögull ok illr viðskiptis” (Bárðar
saga, 118) [Bárðr reacted to everything together – the conflict with the brothers and the
disappearance of his daughter – by becoming both silent and difficult to deal with]. At this
point in the narrative Bárðr ceases to exhibit the benevolent and humanlike characteristics
typically attributed to risar, but this does not detract from the significant distinction that
exists until this point in the saga. on Bárðr’s turning away from human society, see Ármann
Jakobsson, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Bárðar saga and Its Giants,” Mediaeval
Scandinavia 15 (2005): 9–10.
54 Ármann Jakobsson, “taxonomy,” 205; Ármann Jakobsson, “the good, the Bad, and the
Ugly,” 5.
55 Samsons saga is traditionally considered to rest between the fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur.
Commentary on the genre of the text is provided in Mary L. R. Lockley, “An Edition of
Samsons saga fagra” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1979), i–xx.
A PROBLEM OF GIANT PROPORTIONS