Iceland review - 2015, Qupperneq 39

ICELAND REVIEW 37
The grandest of all settlers,” is how Landnámabók (Book
of Settlements), a medieval manuscript listing the
Norse settlers of Iceland in the 9th century, describes
Geirmundur Heljarskinn, the son of Norwegian king Hjör
Hálfsson. He was said to have traveled the country with no
fewer than 80 armed men, been in possession of a mighty work-
force of slaves and sources state that he owned ‘farms’ all around
Breiðafjörður in West Iceland and the West Fjords peninsula.
STIRRING UP HISTORY
“In the West Fjords, Geirmundur was like a king. He was a
practical thinker; it’s admirable to observe how he placed his
men strategically,” comments Icelandic author and doctor of
Norse studies Bergsveinn Birgisson. A decade of research led
to his publication of Den svarte vikingen (‘The Black Viking’) in
Norway in 2013, a cross between an academic essay and histor-
ical novel. “Originally it was printed in 4,000 copies, which sold
out in two months. Last year it was released as a pocket book
and is selling well,” says Bergsveinn as we talk over Skype in late
January. At the time he was in Stavanger in Southwest Norway
to give lectures about his book in secondary schools. “The stu-
dents have taken a keen interest in the topic,” he smiles.
Geirmundur’s spirit has been with Bergsveinn for a long time.
“I first heard stories about him as a boy,” he recalls. His family
comes from Geirmundur’s main settlement areas in Breiðafjörður
and Strandir, and according to the Icelandic genealogical data-
base, Geirmundur is actually Bergsveinn’s great grandfather, 30
generations back. “I started reading the fractions of sources that
existed about him when I enrolled in Norse studies and realized
that they didn’t make sense. How could it be that the greatest of
all settlers, who was in possession of all these slaves, didn’t have
a saga of his own? By comparison, Njáll Þorgeirsson was only
mentioned in one little by-sentence in Landnáma, yet an entire
saga was dedicated to him,” he points out of Njáls saga, one of the
most famous Icelandic mediaeval works of literature. Bergsveinn
explains that the Norse word göfugr (‘grand’ or ‘noble’), the way
it’s used in Landnáma, refers to Geirmundur’s wealth.
All sources agree that Geirmundur was “black and ugly.” While
‘black’ isn’t always to be taken literally—for example, slaves
were described as ‘dark’ or ‘black’ because of their low rank and
foreign origin—Bergsveinn believes in this case it should. “One
doesn’t make up nicknames,” he argues. “Heljarskinn means
‘black skin,’” literally: ‘skin like Hel,’ the Norse goddess of doom.
Bergsveinn concludes that Geirmundur’s appearance didn’t fit
the Viking image as his mother came from a tribe of Mongolian
origin living by the White Sea in northwestern Russia.
Bergsveinn’s book will be released in Icelandic next year and an
HISTORY