Egil’s Saga (40 page)

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

CHAPTER I

1
V
IKING
. Icel. has two words,
víkingr
, m., the practitioner;
viking
, f. (as here), the profession. This, the accepted occupation of a gentleman, was held in good esteem at home and in reprobation abroad. So to us, “The Unparalleled Exploits of Sir Henry Morgan,
our English Jamaican Hero
, who sacked Porto Bello, burnt Panama, etc.”; but to the Spaniards our far more respectable hero, Sir Walter Raleigh, was “Guatarral, an English pirate”.

For the derivation,
O.E.D.
hesitates between O.N.
vík
(creek, inlet, bay) and A.S.
wic
(camp), thus tracing this martial name to quiet roots among longshoremen or villagers; just as the buccaneers are etymologically but cattle-hunters.
Vík
is probably right; as all beasts of prey have their lurking places from which they pounce, so the first vikings lurked in bays, and peaceable chapmen learnt to know what sort of men were likely to come out of these ‘wicks’. In any case, the word has nothing to do with ‘sea-king’.
O.E.D.
gives no quotation earlier than the nineteenth century. The pronunciation ‘vicking’ and spelling ‘wicking’ may be set down as pedantical affectations.

2
B
ERSERK
(berserkr). See
special note
.

3
O
LIVER
H
NUFA
(Ölvir Hnúfa).
Surnames of the United Kingdom
(Harrison, Morland Press, 1918) says, “Almost certainly Scandinavian
nomenclature has had its influence on the great vogue of Oliver—if not the common O.N.
Oleif-r
itself (Dan.-Norw. Olaf), at any rate the O.N.
Oelver”. Hnúfa:
(?) ‘snub’. By the old laws of Norway, if a female thrall stole the third time, “Then shall they shear off her nose; then is she named
stúfa
and
hnúfa
, and let her steal aye as she will” (D., s.v.).

4
A
GREAT LADY
(skörungr mikill).
Skörungr
is one of those words that make a translator despair. It is derived from
skara
(to jut out; poke the fire): used metaphorically both of men and women it carries the idea of prominence and of stirring, and refers both to character and disposition and to outward appearance. Cleopatra, Meredith’s Diana of the Crossways, and Queen Elizabeth were
skörungar;
so were Don John of Austria, Hector, and Webster’s Brachiano. Arinbiorn is called a
skörungr
(p. 161), where I have translated it ‘lordly’ man: so is Olaf the Peacock. Morris (Gunnl. I) renders it ‘a stirring woman’, which misses the particular overtone of nobility: in Yngl. 32 he has “the greatest of noble women”; and (Eb. 28) ‘stately’ for Icel.
sköruligr.
Dasent (Nj. 13) has ‘brave woman’, which is unsatisfactory. Indeed, we have no word for it.

5
L
ANDED MAN
(lendr maðr). Probably what is meant is that Kveldulf was a
hersir.
^*
In that time, before the uprising of King Harald Hairfair, there were, strictly speaking, no landed men in Norway and the titles of dignity were but three:
KING, EARL
, and
HERSIR
. These titles signified in ancient times degrees rather than distinct kinds of eminence. The hersir, the folk-king, and generally the earl, was each supreme in his own countryside, wielding the powers spiritual and temporal, war-lord and temple-priest. All three seem to have been commonly hereditary, and although the earl was sometimes definitely subject to a king, as Earl Hroald to King Audbiorn (
ch.
II
), it seems likely that many of the earls mentioned in Landn. (notably the great line of earls of Halogaland whose seat was at Hladir) were independent sovereigns, differing from kings only in name. The hersir was bound to aid the king if he was attacked, but not necessarily to follow him to war outside his borders.
^†

When Harald Hairfair laid all Norway under him, these old rulers, whether kings, earls, or hersirs, had the choice of three things: fight, or flee the land, or become his men. The Landed Men were (
a
) those who, having become the King’s men, held their old lordship at his hands: if kings, they might henceforth be styled earls (as befell in Naumdale,
ch.
III
); if hersirs, they might retain their titles, as did Thorir the Hersir (
ch.
XXV
); and (
b
) creatures of the King raised up by him to a new dignity, like Thorolf Kveldulfson. Snorri says that “they are named hersirs or landed men in the Danish tongue [i.e. O.N.
or Icel.] but
greifar
in Saxland and
barons
in England” (Ed. 226). In this new order, the hersir ranked below the earl; next came, apparently, the landed man proper; next the franklin (höldr), who was a freeholder by birth (óðalborinn); next the bonder (bóndi), plain farmer or gentleman; then the freedman (leysingi); last, the thrall (þræll).

6
S
HAPE-STRONG
(hamrammr). See
special note
.

7
K
VELDULF
(Kveldúlfr). I.e.‘Evening-Wolf’.

8
T
HE YOUNGER
, G
RIM
. Afterwards called Skallagrim (p. 37); Egil’s father.

9
H
OUSECARLES
(húskarlar). As distinct from thralls: free-born retainers or servants, followers of their master (húsbóndi) as farm-men or fighting men as need might arise. So honourable a name was ‘house-carle’ in the old days that we find it as late as the eleventh century used of kings’ courtiers.

10
L
ONG-SHIP
(langskip). A ‘ship of war’, as distinct from the ship of burden or cheaping-ship (knörr, byrðingr, kaupskip). Long-ship is the generic term: drake (dreki), racer (skeið), snake-ship (snekkja), and cutter (skúta) are specific.

The
dreki
, or dragon of war, was named from the head and tail of that monster which stood at prow and stern. Magnússon (Hkr.
IV
, 431) thinks the terms
skeið, snekkja
, and
skúta
indicated decreasing order of size; the
skúta
beginning with 15 oars aside and going up to 20, the
snekkja
from 20 to 30, the
skeið
over 30. The
Long Worm
, King Olaf Tryggvison’s famous ship, was a 34-bencher, and her length probably 180 feet. Viking ships have been found in varying degrees of preservation at Gokstad, Nydam and elsewhere.

The
karfi
(which I have called ‘caravel’) was a small ship, apparently comparable with the
shúta
, used probably by kings and great men as a private yacht. The specimen found at Oseberg a few years ago has been identified with some certainty as that of Queen Asa, mother of Halfdan the Black.

The long-ship was a galley, primarily built for rowing, with a sail to help. She was not meant for ocean voyages, and there is no record of a long-ship sailing to Iceland in the days of the settlement. Cf. the report by Harald Gormson’s wizard, sent by him to spy out Iceland: “So great is the main betwixt the lands that all unmeet it is for long-ships” (ekki er þar fært langskipum) O.T. 37.

11
F
EE
(fé).
Fé
in Icel. is used indifferently of (
a
) cattle (in Iceland chiefly sheep), (
b
) wealth and goods in general, (
c
) money. ‘Fee’ in Old English has precisely these three meanings. I have rendered
fé
with ‘fee’ (which poets and the border ballads have made familiar in the vague sense of wealth, whether in money or goods) everywhere, except where the Icel. clearly meant cattle: in that sense the English word is dead past saving, and would sound awkward.

CHAPTER II

1
H
IS
EARL
(jarl). See
note
.

2
T
HE EARL’S SON
T
HORIR
. The first mention of Thorir the Hersir, a staunch friend of Kveldulf’s family, and the father of Arinbiorn the Hersir, Egil’s dear and lifelong friend.

3
E
ARL
A
TLI THE
S
LENDER
and his sons were, according to Landn., the proximate cause of a momentous event—the first settlement by the Norsemen in Iceland. The three brethren were messmates with Ingolf Arnarson and Hiorleif his fosterbrother, until at a feast one autumn Holmstein made a strong vow that he would have to wife Ingolf’s sister Helga, “or no woman else”. Hiorleif misliked this; quarrels followed, in which first Holmstein and then Herstein were slain; and in the end Ingolf and Hiorleif had to give up their estates in Norway to Earl Atli as atonement for his sons. Then “those fosterbrothers made ready a great ship and fared to seek that land which Hrafn-Floki had found, which then was called Iceland” (Landn. 6).

4
A
UTUMN-SACRIFICE
(haustblót). By ordainment of Odin, “Folk were to hold sacrifice against the coming of winter for a good year; in midwinter for the growth of the earth; and a third in the summer that was an offering for gain and victory” (Yngl. 8). The feasts of blood-offering (blótveizlur) in Thrandheim in the days of K. Hakon Athelstane’s-fosterling are thus described in his Saga: “It was the olden custom that when a blood-offering should be, all the bonders should come to the place where was the Temple, bringing with them all the victuals they had need of while the feast should last; and at that feast should all men have ale with them. There also was slain cattle of every kind, and horses withal; and all the blood that came from them was called Hlaut, but hlaut-bowls were they called wherein the blood stood, and the hlaut-tein a rod made in the fashion of a sprinkler. With all the hlaut should the stalls of the Gods be reddened, and the walls of the temple within and without, and the men-folk also besprinkled, but the flesh was to be sodden for the feasting of men. Fires were to be made in the midst of the floor of the temple, with caldrons thereover, and the health-cups should be borne over the fire. But he who made the feast and was the lord thereof should sign the cups and all the meat; and first should be drunken Odin’s cup for the victory and dominion of the king, and then the cup of Niord and the cup of Frey for plentiful seasons and peace. Thereafter were many men wont to drink the Bragi-cup; and men drank also a cup to their kinsmen dead who had been noble, and that was called the cup of Memory” (Hak. 16). See also the account of Thor’s temple at Thorsness in Iceland (Eb. 4). The editors of
C.P.B.
are probably right in regarding reference to idols as late interpolations based not on historic fact but on monkish fictions (
C.P.B.
vol. I, p. 401 ff.). Human sacrifices were not unknown but apparently very rare in the saga-time.

CHAPTER III

1
H
ARALD
. Harald Hairfair (Haraldr Hárfagri). For a fuller account of the life of this great King, see his own saga (Hkr.). He took kingdom after his father in 860 at the age of ten, in the little realm of Westfold, east in the Wick (that part of Norway that surrounds the Oslofirth). It is told that he wooed a maiden “exceeding fair, and withal somewhat high-minded”, who gave him this answer: “I will not waste my maidenhood for the taking to husband of a king who has no more realm to rule over than a few Folks. But that seems to me wonderful”, she says, “that there be no king who will so make Norway his own and be sole lord over it, like as hath King Gorm in Denmark, or Eric in Upsala”. Harald thereupon swore an oath never to let cut his hair or comb it till he should be sole King over all Norway. That oath he performed with the help of his mother’s brother, Duke Gutthorm, and married the lady.
^*
And when he had gotten to him all the land, “King Harald took a bath and then he let his hair be combed, and then Earl Rognvald sheared it. And heretofore it had been unshorn and uncombed for ten winters. Aforetime he had been called Shockhead [Lúfa], but now Earl Rognvald gave him a by-name, and called him Harald Hairfair, and all said who saw him that that was most soothly named, for he had both plenteous hair and goodly” (Har. Hfr. 23).

The best and shortest account that I have seen of Harald’s policy and achievements is in the first dozen pages of
ch.
II
of G. Gathorne Hardy’s
Norway
(Ernest Benn, 1925).

2
T
HRANDHEIM
(Þrándheimr). The countryside of the Trondhjem Fjord, divided into Outer and Inner Thrandheim, and again into eight folklands, viz. Orkdale, Skaun, Gauldale, Strind, Islesfolk, Spareby, Verdale and Stiordale. An open and fertile country, it was an early cradle of civilization, and later centred round the temple and seat of the great Earls of Hladir and, after Olaf Tryggvison’s days, round his new town of Nidoyce (Niðaróss), a little further N.W., which is to-day (or rather was till yesterday) Trondhjem.

3
T
UMBLED HIMSELF OUT OF KINGDOM
(veltiz ór konungdómi). Literally, it seems: cf. the fuller account in Har. Hfr. 8 of this singular procedure: “King Hrollaug went on the top of the howe whereon the kings were wont to sit, and let array the kingly high-seat, and sat down therein; then he let lay pillows on the footpace whereon the earls were wont to sit, and tumbled himself down from the high-seat on to the earl’s seat, and gave himself the name of earl”.

4
T
HRALLS
(þræll). Thralls were slaves: personal chattels, without the privileges of free men: probably as a rule outlanders, taken by war; cf. the references to Irish thralls
passim.
They were worked hard; cf. Eb. 37, “Arnkel was a great man for work, and made his thralls work all
day from sunrise to sunset”. The great Erling Skialgson of Soli treated his thralls with kindness and consideration, a fact which is set forth at length as something noteworthy and strange (O.H. 22). Hiorleif, the landnama-man, was murdered by his thralls, apparently because he overworked them: “he had but one ox, and he let the thralls drag the plough” (Landn. 8).
Thrall
became a term of obloquy: ‘a servile, mean fellow’, and then ‘a cruel, wicked wretch’ (
D.
s.v.). Cf. the story in Hkr. (Hak. 13) of King Eystein the Evil, who in his oppression bade the Thrandheimers choose whether they would have for king over them his thrall or his hound.