[In the following essay, Glendinning examines elements of the novella genre present in the Grettis Saga as well as motifs and devices it shares with the literature of continental Europe.]

During the second half of the 13th century, when the literature of continental Europe was beginning to move into the new intellectual constellation that was to become the Renaissance, the people of Iceland were still living in that brilliant period which saw the culmination of their mediaeval culture in the classical Icelandic sagas, the so-called Family Sagas. According to the traditional view, the classical Icelandic saga owes little of real substance to the mainstream of continental European literature. It owes nothing to the courtly vogue which at the end of the 13th century was just past its flowering.¹ In place of the voluptuous ideality of Arthurian romance, we find in the sagas “a hard and positive clearness of understanding, such as is to be found nowhere else in the Middle Ages,” according to Ker (p. 59). The Icelanders of the sagas, he adds, “had the faculty of seeing things clearly and judging their values reasonably, without superstition” (p. 61). Even the pre-courtly heroic epic pales beside the saga from the viewpoint of realism, substantiality and the depiction of complex individual characters.

Yet, notwithstanding the polarity underlying the literature of North and South, recent critics have increasingly recognized that Iceland in the Middle Ages was not a world unto itself hermetically sealed off from the European mainstream. Its relationship to the Roman-Christian culture of the continent was one of dialectic tension. Thus, for example, the greatest pagan Germanic cosmological poem that has been preserved, the Völuspá, of the Poetic Edda, seems to owe the vastness and grandeur of its conception to the inroads of Christian doctrine in the northern world around 1000 a.d.² In the case of the sagas, undercurrents both of Christian values and of romantic literary taste become evident in the late works written around 1300. Indeed, if Laxdæla saga was written as early as 1250, romantic taste may be said to date from this time. Chivalric literature had in fact made its formal entry into the Scandinavian world as early as 1226, when a monk named Brother Robert rendered Thomas of Brittany's version of Tristan into Old Norse prose for the Norwegian king, Hákon Hákonarson. Njáls saga, written near the end of the 13th century, and generally considered the greatest of the Icelandic sagas,³ is a veritable thesaurus of the mediaeval world—but its inner unity nevertheless derives from the tradition inherent in its Icelandic subject matter.⁴ Another of the late sagas, the one in fact which vies with Njáls saga for the final position in the classical chronological canon, is Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar.⁵ Written around 1300 or shortly after, it is full of heterogeneous material, with a particularly heavy inlay of motifs from folklore and folktale as well as from the polite literature of the continent.⁶ The protagonist of the saga, Grettir Ásmundarson, was the most famous outlaw of mediaeval Iceland. He became a folk-hero by dint of his protean elusiveness and cunning, his strength, endurance and daring, and above all, his Eulenspiegel-like gamesmanship. It is particularly concerning Grettir as a trickster-figure that the saga invites comparison with the themes of European literature popular in the late 13th century.

Although scholars have long recognized that the last six chapters of Grettis saga form a “pure novella in the contemporary European taste, made up of familiar motifs from a well-known European literary tradition,”⁷ the main body of the saga, that is, the story proper, has not been subjected to the scrutiny that it deserves in this connection. In his characterization of the progress of literature in the 13th century the German literary historian Helmut de Boor says:

Out of the equestrian class, classical literature had succeeded in developing and accrediting the idea of chivalry. It set a high-flown image of man in a real world with which that image had little in common. It paid for this sublimation by the narrowing of the circle in which it was valid, and by a severe limitation of the subjects it could treat in order to reach its high goal.⁸

At the end of the century both the old order and its literature were falling into decay. The emergence of the middle class and the beginning of a new horizontal world-view were preparing the ground for a concept of reality that conflicted with the postulates of mediaeval dualistic thinking. Already the climate was developing for the emergence of a Boccaccio, whose unregenerate world is characterized by Yvonne Rodax as consisting of “the rules of amour courtois,” “the vanished theological system,” and “the precepts of disillusionment.”⁹ The typical vehicles of literary expression at the end of the 13th century were the miniature forms: fabliau, Schwank, and novella or novellino.

The fabliau, or Schwank, was not new to the second half of the 13th century. Although we do not encounter it in written form before this time, it was nevertheless well known to earlier generations in an oral form, which was the complementary opposite, according to Erich Auerbach, of the exemplum.¹⁰ In his study of the Renaissance novella Auerbach disclaims a contributory role for the fabliau in the emergence of this genre. The true novella, he argues, which hardly existed before Boccaccio, is a delicate balance between the ideal and the real, between entertainment and revelation. The fabliau is pure sensuality, a form which makes no attempt to master empirical reality, cares nothing for causal relationships or symbolical meanings, and instead indulges itself in sensual gratification. In contrast with Boccaccio's literary world, which is based on “an immanent ethic of sensual love,” the fabliau is unreflecting and uncritical.¹¹

This view is not in agreement with more recent treatments of the subject by Yvonne Rodax and Helmut de Boor, by contrast with which it appears unnecessarily harsh and rigid. Both of the latter consider the novella proper to have begun in the 13th century when all three miniature forms, fabliau, exemplum and novella served, at least ostensibly, the purpose of moral didacticism.¹² In contrast with the courtly literature of an earlier generation these forms were rooted in a practical kind of realism.¹³ Their didacticism was not confined to their explicit moral precept, the fabula docet that was usually appended in a blatantly extraneous way. It was inherent in their common-sense view of the world. In novella and fabliau a cure for the world's folly is implicit in the unclouded view with which this folly is recognized and exposed.

The Schwank-literature above all, which is at this time a recognized form of moral didacticism, revolves around the themes of cleverness and folly and delights itself in the outwitting of the foolish by the clever, for this is the way of the world.

(de Boor, p. 17.)

According to Miss Rodax, the hero of this literary genre, through whom the moral effect in a deeper sense is realized, is a trickster-hero:

In the fabliau, folk always get exactly what is coming to them. The finest and most lively examples invariably demonstrate this law of compensation which functions like a moral code in that it preserves human existence from falling into chaos. A man or woman can learn how to get along by this rule and, if all the facts are available, can anticipate exact results. He who is poor must depend upon trickery, hypocrisy and deceit; he who is rich can satisfy his desires by force or purchase until he falls victim to one more clever or more powerful than he. … In this universe, as in the moral realm, there is a hierarchy of offenses which lead to ignominy, punishment or destruction. The greatest of these is to disobey or disregard the laws of unregenerate human nature.

(Rodax, p. 21)

The office of the new hero was not merely to deflate the pompous, dupe the gullible, and expose the follies of humanity to laughter and derision. It also included an element which was constitutive for a well-known type of fabliau and novella: the theme of illicit sexual relations. In the works of this type trickery and the erotic are indeed such complementary themes that it is difficult to imagine one without the other (de Boor, p. 270 ff.). The type has become especially well-known through certain of Boccaccio's novellas.

Returning to the Icelandic saga, it will be useful to enlarge somewhat on W.P. Ker's observations quoted at the beginning of this article, so as to place a brief characterization of this genre beside the better known courtly romance, whose essence has already been indicated here. We shall then be able to trace the converging lines of two literary traditions that were originally antipodal in form and spirit.

Old Icelandic literature realized its highest achievement in the Family Sagas. Although written in the 13th century, their subject matter is made up of the lives and exploits of the original settlers of Iceland and their immediate descendants, that is: the three generations extending roughly from 930-1030 a.d. The great strength of the Icelandic Sagas is their credible and realistic depiction of individual human character. The protagonists themselves reveal their own character by their words and deeds, in a style that is severely economical if not elliptical. Almost every description of the Family Saga begins with a tribute to its realism and objectivity.¹⁴

As a rule they treat their matter in an extraordinarily objective and realistic manner, far removed from spiritualism and metaphysical brooding. The ideology which is delineated in the speech and actions of their characters is of pagan origin; traces of Christian ethics are insignificant.

(Hallberg, p. 2)

Scholars have also noted in the sagas an idealizing tendency in their presentation of the past.¹⁵ This apparent contradiction is made possible because the idealism of the sagas is of an eminently practical nature. Its goal is human dignity in the everyday world.

Honor … is ethically the key concept in the world of the Icelandic saga. This was not an abstract idea, but a deep and passionate experience, a condition of life as basic as one's daily bread.

(Hallberg, p. 99)

The upholding of this ideal made a man master of his own destiny and victor over life and death. The fulfilment of life in death was thus a temporal fulfilment and was entirely in the hands of the hero himself—therein lies the fundamental distinction between the pagan ethic which informs the action of the Icelandic saga, and the Christian ethic which is assumed in the world of courtly literature. Scholars have recognized, however, that one saga in the classical canon, written in the 1260's or 70's, is unlike all the others. In its treatment of its subject matter, Bandamanna saga¹⁶ completely deflates traditional Icelandic values and ideals. It is based on a much cruder story, Ölkofra þáttr, which has been preserved. The prototype is closer to the folktale in style and content, and in fact shows a close affinity with the fabliau and Schwank in its crass indecency and its presentation of a hero of humble origin who triumphs over the mighty of his day by dint of sheer cunning and ingenuity.¹⁷

The heroes of Bandamanna saga are a father and son from the lower stratum of Icelandic society. The son, Oddr, is gifted with business acumen and becomes affluent through his commercial enterprises, an activity disdained by the chieftain class. Father and son become involved in a lawsuit with a group of chieftains who are conspiring to cheat Oddr out of his fortune by manipulating the law. The story of how the father, Ófeigr, not only outdoes the chieftains at their own game, but exposes them to disgrace and derision in the process, moves from raucous farce to razor-edged satire. Gudbrandur Vigfússon has called this saga “an essentially plebian story,” W.P. Ker has termed it “the first reasonable and modern comedy in the history of modern Europe,” and to Jan de Vries it is a “lustige Novelle.”¹⁸

As we have already observed in passing, Grettis saga has the structure and content of the novella in its concluding six chapters. It was written in the same district of Iceland, that of Miðfjördur, as was Bandamanna saga, a fact which should not be forgotten when we examine further novella-elements in this saga. The last six chapters of Grettis saga contain a sequel to the life of the hero, and relate the vengeance exacted for Grettir's slaying by his brother Thorsteinn. After following the slayer to Constantinople and joining, as he had done, the Varangian Guard, Thorsteinn takes his vengeance by slaying him in the presence of the assembled Guard while he is reciting the story of how he had killed Grettir. This carry-over from the northern world—one is tempted to say from the Icelandic saga proper—is, however, only the beginning of Thorsteinn's adventures in Constantinople. A configuration of motifs now emerges which is distinctly atypical of the saga genre, even though at least one of them can be found in an earlier saga. Thorsteinn falls in love with a noble lady of Constantinople named Spes [sic], and she with him. There follows a series of extra-marital intimacies, concealments and ruses that are strongly reminiscent of the novella and fabliau literature current in continental Europe at the time the saga was written.

Of special interest is a striking motif correspondence with the romance of Tristan and Isolde which was transmitted in the 12th and 13th centuries in several versions and languages.¹⁹ Spes' honour, like that of Isolde, is eventually put to the test in an ordeal, and both women avoid disgrace by means of an ingeniously ambiguous oath. Although the details vary, the basic idea is the same in both cases: by prearrangement, on the day the oath is to be sworn, the lady's lover appears in the precincts of the church in the disguise of a beggar (pilgrim) and is called upon to carry the lady over a muddy ditch (ashore from a boat). Just as he is about to reach dry land he stumbles and pitches to the ground with his burden; whereupon the lady, jestingly at first, then with increasing earnestness, avers that she is now unable to swear that she has lain with no other man but her husband. This condition is accordingly put into the oath, which, duly sworn, results in a full restoration of the lady's honour and good repute.

Several scholars have drawn attention to the existence of a somewhat similarly ambiguous oath sworn under similar circumstances in a Byzantine Greek novel of the 6th century a.d., Leucippe and Clitophon, by Achilleus Tatius. It is conjectured that the motif may have been brought from Byzantium to Iceland in the later Middle Ages by Icelanders returning home after their service in the elite Varangian Guard.²⁰ According to Odd Nordland, who has more recently devoted a detailed study to the Spes-episode and its sources, there is another correspondence between this part of Grettis saga and the Tristan material. In both works there is a notch in a sword-blade which was caused by the slaying of a man and later serves to identify the slayer. In Grettis saga the sword is carried by the slayer of Grettir, and in Tristan it is the hero's own sword with which he slew Morolt. Despite the fact that in the one instance the sword is that of the hero, and in the other, the hero's slayer, Nordland sees no reason for doubting that the motif, like the ambiguous oath, indicates a connection between the Spes-episode and Tristan, either in terms of a direct literary borrowing, or dependence on a common source. Indeed, he has demonstrated the probability that the ambiguous oath in Grettis saga was borrowed from a particular version of the Old Norse translation of Thomas of Brittany's romance. His study of the variants of this oath shows that it is a motif belonging to an international inventory of narrative materials current in Europe in the Middle Ages.²¹ Its appearance in the courtly Tristan makes for a strange combination of the farcical and the sublime, and in the classical telling of the Tristan story by Gottfried von Strassburg, a moderately careful reader will not fail to realize the dilemma confronting the author at this point.²² Nordland's reference, to an “europeisk litteraer sameige i mellomalderen” (p. 39) as background and framework for the variants in the motif of the ambiguous oath, makes it possible to account for both a direct relationship between the Spes-episode and Tristan, and an indirect relationship between these works and the Byzantine novel by Achilleus Tatius. It is well known that a stream of narrative materials from Greece, the Byzantine world and even India flowed westward and northward from the time of Herodotus up to the close of the Middle Ages, stories which were in the main anecdotal, often lewd and highly ingenious.²³ These stories enriched the indigenous fabliau literature of the west and in a number of instances served as prototypes for Italian novellas of the 14th century.²⁴ The more fabulous kind of Oriental lore was, in fact, a very considerable source of material for a poet of chivalric romance like Wolfram von Eschenbach.²⁵ But because such stories existed on a plane that was much broader and more productive in terms of the future, they not only outlived the world of chivalry but came into their own in the age that saw the fabliau and Schwank become popular literary genres. Hence Nordland explains the Spes-episode, which he demonstrates to be fictional and probably a late addition to the older Grettis saga, as a love story which addresses itself to a new literary taste, a taste which is evidence of literary impulses reaching Iceland from continental Europe near the end of the 13th century.²⁶

One of the concealment devices used by Spes and her lover Thorsteinn occurs, as we have already pointed out, in an earlier Icelandic historical saga, the Morkinskinna redaction of Haralds saga harðráða. It is generally agreed that the author of the Spes episode in Grettis saga borrowed the motif from that source,²⁷ but he has done more than merely transfer it from one saga to another. He has expanded it by introducing a husband—this figure is lacking in the earlier saga—and by having the lovers use an ingenious trick to avoid discovery not once, but three times. The role of the hood-winked husband and the more or less farcical atmosphere that attaches to it is therefore new. Moreover, it is precisely this aspect of the story that the author intensifies still further by including the motif of the ambiguous oath already mentioned. This combination and expansion of motifs may be seen as a perfect reflection of the shift of the literature in continental Europe from the idealistic courtly forms to the novella and Schwank in the later 13th century. The question which must now be considered is whether, in Grettis saga, this element is restricted to the Spes episode, or whether it has also influenced the other, more purely Icelandic parts of the work.

One of Grettir's most famous exploits is described in chapters 74 and 75 of Grettis saga. He was living with two companions on a barren, unapproachable island off the northern coast of Iceland, called Drangey. One night a crisis occurred when the fire was inadvertently allowed to die. Grettir decided to swim to a farm on the mainland 7[frac12] kilometers away to fetch fire. He not only accomplished his original purpose, but enjoyed an amorous encounter with one of the farmer's maids into the bargain. This episode has attracted a certain amount of critical attention. Although Grettir himself was most certainly an historical person, the historicity of this particular event is dubious. There is the matter, first of all, of the scaldic verses that Grettir is reported to have extemporized during his visit to the farmhouse. In early sagas, especially the Sagas of the Kings, authentic scaldic verses were a primary historical source for the saga-writers. In later sagas they came to be treated as an artistic device and were invented by the authors for embellishment and as a pseudo-authentication of their material. Critics have agreed that most of the verses in Grettis saga were invented either by the last author or by earlier oral narrators. Of the two stanzas spoken by Grettir in this episode, one (No. 65) has been unanimously considered spurious, and the other (No. 64) questionable.²⁸

Although Grettir's swim from Drangey to the mainland has been performed in modern times, its authenticity in the saga has been questioned for several reasons. R. C. Boer has noted that this is the second time the motif of swimming to fetch fire occurs in the saga. He considers it a mere variation of the first occasion, with the addition of the encounter with the serving-maid (p. xxii). Arthur Hruby has suggested that the model for the episode is to be found in a number of the myths of the gods found in Eddic poetry, the stealing of the Poet's Mead by Odin, the stealing of Thor's hammer, and the devouring of the sun by the Fenris-wolf at the end of time. One is even reminded, he thinks, of the fire-bearing god Prometheus.²⁹ While there is other evidence in the saga to suggest that some element of myth occasionally strayed into the author's conception of Grettir, it is difficult to find any convincing parallel between Grettir's swim and Hruby's conjectured mythical sources. The fact that these suggestions are so numerous has the effect of devaluing the theory. Almost as an afterthought Hruby mentions the story of Hero and Leander, but makes no attempt to investigate its possibilities as a possible source for the episode. Since this story was widely known in Northern Europe in the late Middle Ages, the conjecture seems plausible. Friedrich von der Hagen, who edited a mediaeval German Hero and Leander, tells us in his introduction that the subject matter originated in India and was bequeathed to the Middle Ages by Roman and Greek authors. Dante refers to the story in the Purgatorio, the existence of Old French versions may be assumed, and in Germany and Scandinavia its popularity is attested by a great variety of folksongs and ballads.³⁰ Yet if this explanation seems to offer a more acceptable source for Grettir's amorous swim than the myths of the Gods, it remains conjecture, and we can only say that if the legend did provide the source, its love ldyll has been badly vulgarized in the saga. An Icelandic farmhouse in the 11th century may not have been an ideal setting for a Hero and Leander. Nevertheless, we may wonder whether the relative crudity of the saga-episode was necessarily inherent in the saga style, or whether this too might not be traceable to a European source, a motif of novella-like character with which the Hero and Leander story could have been contaminated. Such a motif, in fact, exists.

In the Decameron (Day 3, Tale 1) Boccaccio tells the story of a certain Masetto who, by pretending to be a deaf mute, obtains employment as a gardener in a convent. His purpose is not to cultivate the convent garden, but to attempt intimacies with the nuns. This he accomplishes, first by pretending to be asleep in the garden when two of the sisters chance to come along, and on another occasion, by really falling asleep with his smock disarrayed in a manner irresistible to the abbess of the convent.³¹

In his study of Boccaccio's sources Marcus Landau notes a corresponding story in another collection of novellas, the Cento novelle antiche, and regards oral tales circulating at the time as the common source of the two works (p. 165). According to the evidence cited by Landau the story also appears with rather wide variations in several other works of the 13th and 14th centuries (pp. 175-177). One of these is a Middle High German novella which the Middle Ages mistakenly attributed to Konrad von Würzburg,³² a poet who flourished around the middle of the 13th century. Although the German poem may post-date Konrad, the literary incidence of the story nevertheless suggests that it was popular in the 13th century as a fabliau.

In the various renderings of the story only the basic motifs remain fairly constant. In the pseudo-Konrad novella, for example, Masetto's counterpart is a Ritter Arnold, who pretends to be deaf, dumb and a simpleton. He lingers about his lady's door awaiting his opportunity, and one day is brought into the chamber to serve as a butt for the company's jokes. The lady's concupiscence is aroused by the banter, and the predictable eventually takes place. Here the element of nakedness is absent in the motivation of the event, but the most reliable manuscript appears to include it as a blind motif. We read that Arnold had a habit of lying in front of the lady's door, and that he was observed there one evening by a lady's companion in a certain condition:

dâ vant si den blâzen
der dâ ein tôre solte sîn.

(Wolff, ll. 232-233)

The meaning of the “blâz” is uncertain, but one explanation sees it as an Alsatian dialect form of “blôz,” “uncovered” (p. xxvii). If this is correct, it is quite clear that the story is based on migratory material comprising three basic motifs that appear in a mixture of persistence and dispensability: a man who is sleeping or pretending to do so, is indecently clad, and is affecting some kind of deficiency.

A closer look at Grettis saga is now called for. Here we read:

He [Grettir] smote the water bravely and reached Reykjanes after sunset. He went into the settlement at Reykir, bathed in the night in a warm spring, and then entered the hall, where it was very hot and a little smoky from the fire which had been burning there all day. He was very tired and slept soundly, lying on right into the day. When it was a little way on in the morning the servants rose, and the first to enter the room were two women, the maid with the bondi's daughter. Grettir was asleep, and his clothes had all fallen off on to the floor. They saw a man lying there and recognized him. The maid said:

“As I wish for salvation, sister, here is Grettir the son of Asmund come. He really is large about the upper part of his body, and is lying bare. But he seems to me unusually small below. It is not at all in keeping with the rest of him.”

The bondi's daughter said: “How can you let your tongue run on so? You are more than half a fool! Hold your tongue!”

“I really cannot be silent, my dear sister,” said the maid; “I would not have believed it if any one had told me.”

Then she went up to him to look more closely, and kept running back to the bondi's daughter and laughing. Grettir heard what she said, sprang up and chased her down the room. When he caught her he spoke a verse.

(Hight, p. 195)

Here our fastidious English translator breaks off and leaves us to our own resources. We translate, then, as follows, reducing the intricate scaldic structures, for the most part, to straightforward prose:

The wanton girl's behaviour is mischievous; few warriors can show the sword in their hair completely to others. I'll wager I have larger testicles than other men, though they may have a larger penis.

With that he whisked her onto the bench and the bondi's daughter ran out of the room. Then he spoke this stanza:

The woman has said I have a little sword. The goddess of the scrotum bough has spoken the truth. The horse with the mane down in the forest of the young man's thighs can grow very long. Just wait, girl!

The serving girl shouted loudly, but when they parted she was well satisfied with Grettir.

(Jónsson, pp. 240-241)

The elements observed in the above passage which are common to it, the Boccaccio novella, and the pseudo-Konrad are: a sleeping male, two or more women who hold a conversation about him,³³ nakedness, a feigned or only apparent incompetence or inadequacy in the male, and the sexual act arising from a combination of the above. The stanzas extemporized by Grettir in the manner of the traditional saga hero during his great moments, are unrivalled in their indecency until the mythical-heroic work Bósa saga, written several decades after Grettis saga.³⁴ Although the story told by Boccaccio is mild in this respect, the pseudo-Konrad is more than moderately prurient, and if the episode in Grettis saga owes its origin to some such source, that source may well have provided not only the erotic situation, but also its exceedingly lewd treatment.

We cannot, of course, prove that the story of Masetto, that is, the prototype of Boccaccio's story, was one of the forerunners of Grettir's adventure at Reykir. But the plausibility of the theory is much enhanced by the results of a study made by Alexander Krappe, who showed that at least two of a collection of stories written by the Icelandic Bishop of Skálholt, Jón Halldorsson (1322-1339), owe their origin to Italian stories of the 13th century.³⁵ These stories reached far-off Iceland, Krappe concludes, “through the medium of one of the many Icelanders studying at Italian universities.”³⁶ Jón himself studied at the university of Bologna in the late 13th century, which is the conjectured time of the writing of Grettis saga.³⁷ It is difficult to believe that of these many Icelanders studying at Italian universities, Jón was the only one to bring back Italian novella material to Iceland.

In the light of these conjectures, a glance at Grettir's life and character in other parts of the saga reveals some astonishing affinities. To begin with, he is an almost classic example of the jester and wag prominent, according to Jacob Burckhardt, in Renaissance society.³⁸

As a youngster Grettir was a good-for-nothing who refused to earn his keep. While this may be seen as a reminiscence of the Dümmling-motif of fairy-tale, a motif which often occurs in the sagas as well,³⁹ Grettir combines it with other characteristics that make him both a consummate practical joker and an inveterate lady's man. Chapter 14 of the saga tells of Grettir's boyhood and his father's attempts to set him to work. Three times Grettir is given a task to perform, and three times the result is a rather malicious practical joke. At the same time Grettir composes satirical stanzas whose authenticity is now considered doubtful.⁴⁰ At the conclusion of the chapter the saga reports that Grettir played many more childish pranks that are not related, and that he continued composing lampoons. His attitude to work seems to have changed little during his lifetime. We read that in the sixth year of his outlawry (Chapt. 53) he was sent away by an erstwhile benefactor because he refused to work, and again in the same chapter, that he was “a first-rate hand at forging iron, but was not often inclined to work at it.”⁴¹ At the age of fifteen Grettir left home and took passage for Norway (Chapt. 17). We are told at the beginning that the mate of the ship had a young and pretty wife. Grettir refused to do any work on the ship and spent his time lampooning the crew instead. As a storm increased in violence, so did Grettir's verses, until the crew became more vexed by this baiting than by their incessant bailing. They reproached Grettir with “patting the belly” of the mate's wife instead of doing his duty and bailing like the others. Finally he agreed to lend a hand, but only to please the mate's wife. At least four of the five stanzas spoken by Grettir in this chapter are spurious according to Jónsson (pp. xxxv, xl).

Grettir's relations with the opposite sex cannot be pursued in detail here, but the above instance, together with the fire-fetching episode, may be considered outstanding examples of his exploits. In the introduction to his edition of the saga, Guðni Jónsson has drawn attention to the sensual vein in the story and provides a list of specific references to the text (p. xii n.) Likewise, a complete list of Grettir's hoaxes and practical jokes would become tedious out of context. The point can, however, be illustrated by citing two examples,

While living on Drangey, Grettir decided one spring to go to the mainland to fetch supplies; he had the secondary motive of joining in the festivities of the spring assembly at Hegranes (Chapt. 72). Arriving in disguise, he persuaded the unsuspecting chieftains to grant him safe-conduct, whereupon he revealed his true identity and stayed on at Hegranes to enjoy the entertainments of the day. The authenticity of the whole episode has been questioned by R. C. Boer, who suggests that it is based on a similar event in another saga.⁴²

In the year 1026 or thereabouts, Grettir was living on the Reykir Heath (Chapt. 63) with a companion. One day he suddenly caught sight of his longstanding enemy, Thórir, approaching the spot with a band of armed men. Grettir and his companion, not at a loss to hide their horses in an almost completely open landscape, dragged them, prostrate, into the very low-roofed dairy shed in which they had been living. Thórir passed by unsuspecting. But this was not good enough for Grettir. He donned a disguise and set off after Thórir. “It would be a good jest,” he told his companion, “if they didn't recognize me” (Hight, p. 169). He arranged to meet Thórir on the heath, and when the latter asked him if he had seen Grettir Asmundarson, he replied in the affirmative and sent the company galloping off at top speed into a swamp; they spent the rest of the day extricating themselves. In the meantime, Grettir and his companion rode to Thórir's farm and paid their respects to his daughter with a satirical verse. This verse, like the others, is regarded by Jónsson as spurious (p. xxxviii).

In looking back on Grettir's character traits, it must be conceded that wit, a sharp tongue, and even guile, are characteristics often found in the old saga-heroes. Moreover, as an outlaw, Grettir had particular occasion to develop these qualities. But the striking fact about Grettir is that he used his wits less to elude capture than out of sheer waggery. The theme of the relation of the sexes is not peculiar to Grettis saga. It played a prominent role in at least four earlier classical sagas. There, however, it is treated with deep respect in love stories whose outcome is consistently tragic. Grettir's character derives its particular hue from the combination and cumulative effect of his penchant for trickery and his amorousness. This is unique to Grettis saga.

Grettir's character and career follow a clearly marked pattern that bears a close affinity to the new kind of literature coming into being in Europe in the latter 13th century, a literature which marked the demise of the great age of chivalry and the birth of a new social and cultural world. If the Icelandic sagas considered here, Ölkofra þáttr, Bandamanna saga, and above all Grettis saga, may be said to form a particular stylistic branch of late saga-writing—and we must remember the connection noted earlier between these works—then it is undoubtedly true to say that in this branch Icelandic literature and the literature of continental Europe in the 13th century moved from what were originally antipodal positions with respect to subject matter, style and spirit, to a point of considerable resemblance in the style of the newly elevated fabliau and novella.

All literature is in one way or another a document of the age that has produced it; so also are the sagas of Grettir and the bandamenn. In the year 1262 history witnessed the astonishing spectacle of the ancient Republic of Iceland voting in its parliament to eclipse itself and to accept the sovereignty of the crown of Norway, ironically a dynasty that was itself in the twilight of its day. Though the spirit lingered, the world which bore and nourished the Icelandic saga had ceased to exist as a political reality.

Notes

1. Cf. W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance, Essays on Mediaeval Literature (1896; reprinted New York, 1957), pp. 57-61, 179-186; Peter Hallberg, The Icelandic Saga, trans. Paul Schach (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), p. 2.

2. Cf. G. Turville-Petre, Origins of Icelandic Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), pp. 60-61, 64.

3. Cf. loc. cit.; W. P. Ker, op. cit., p. 60; Jan de Vries, Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1942), II, 424-425.

4. Cf. Turville-Petre, op. cit., p. 253.

5. Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ed. Guðni Jónsson (“Íslenzk fornrit,” vol. vii; Reykjavik, 1936); The Saga of Grettir the Strong, ed. Peter Foote, trans. G. A. Hight (London, 1965).

6. Cf. Jan de Vries, op. cit., pp. 405-407; Grettis saga, ed. Guðni Jónsson, pp. viii, ix, lvii.

7. Odd Nordland, “Norrøne og europeiske litteraere laan i Grettis saga,” Maal og Minne, xliv (1953), p. 44.

8. Die deutsche Literatur im späten Mittelalter, von Helmut de Boor (München, 1962), p. 229.

9. Yvonne Rodax, The Real and the Ideal in the Novella of Italy, France and England, (North Carolina, 1968), p. 36.

10. Erich Auerbach, Zur Technik der Frührenaissancenovelle in Italien und Frankreich (Heidelberg, 1921), p. 41.

11. Ibid., pp. 6, 21, 30-31.

12. Yvonne Rodax, op. cit., p. 127; Helmut de Boor, op. cit., p. 221f.

13. Yvonne Rodax, op. cit., p. 18-19; Helmut de Boor, op. cit., pp. 16-17, 229-238.

14. Cf. G. Turville-Petre, op. cit., p. 230; Jan de Vries, op. cit., pp. 275-276, 278.

15. Cf. ibid., pp. 98-99; Jan de Vries, op. cit., p. 286; Bandamanna saga und Ölkofra þáttr, ed. Walter Baetke, Altnordische Textbibliothek, Neue Folge, 4. Band, (Halle, 1960), p. 17.

16. Bandamanna saga, Odds saga Ófeigssonar [=Ölkofra þáttr], ed. Guðni Jónsson (“Islenzk fornrit,” vii, Reykjavik, 1936); Walter Baetke, op. cit.

17. Walter Baetke, op. cit., pp. 2-4, 26ff, esp. 28.

18. Sturlunga saga, ed. Gudbrandur Vigfússon (2 vols.; Oxford, 1878), I, p. liii; W. P. Ker, op. cit., p. 229; Jan de Vries, op. cit., p. 399.

19. Cf. R. S. Loomis, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1959), pp. 134-159.

20. Cf. H. G. Leach, Angevin Britain and Scandinavia (Cambridge, 1921), p. 188; Guðni Jónsson, op. cit., p. lvi.

21. Cf. Odd Nordland, op. cit., p. 34.

22. Cf. Tristan, ed. Karl Marold (Berlin, 1969), 1. 15,701 ff, 1. 15,737-15,754.

23. Cf. Eberhard Hermes, Die drei Ringe. Aus der Frühzeit der Novelle (Göttingen, 1964), pp. 18, 22-44, (esp.) 27, 42-43. The occurrence of pan-European motifs, of which at least one came from the Orient, has been demonstrated in the cases of several relatively early Icelandic sagas. Jan de Vries has pointed out the presence of one such anecdote in Ljósvetninga saga; cf. “Een Indisch Exempel in een Ijslandsche Saga,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal en Letterkunde, xlvii (1928), pp. 63-80. A better known instance is the Kálfr-episode in Víga-Glúms saga; cf. Víga-Glúms saga, ed. G. Turville-Petre (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1960), pp. xxxiv-xxxv and Jan de Vries, op. cit., p. 393.

24. Cf. Marcus Landau, Die Quellen des Dekameron, 2. Aufl. (Stuttgart, 1884), pp. 1-2, 120-121; Cassell's Encyclopædia of Literature, ed. S. H. Steinberg, (London, 1953), p. 216.

25. Cf. Margaret Fitzgerald Richey, Studies of Wolfram von Eschenbach (Edinburgh and London, 1957), p. 157.

26. Odd Nordland, op. cit., pp. 38, 43. Nordland conjectures that Grettis saga may have been written by the Icelandic historian Sturla Thordarson, a hypothesis which would place its composition in the period between 1270 and 1284 (cf. p. 42). As noted earlier Guðni Jonsson (op. cit., p. xxxi) and Jan de Vries (op. cit., p. 406) argue for a later date, namely around 1300 or shortly thereafter.

27. Cf. Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ed. R. C. Boer, Altnordische Sagabibliothek, Heft 8; (Halle a.S, 1900), pp. xxvi-xxxi; Odd Nordland, op. cit., p. 39.

28. Cf. Guðni Jónsson, op. cit., pp. xxxii, xli.

29. Arthur Hruby, Drei Studien zur Technik der isländischen Saga (Leipzig und Wien, 1936), pp. 11-16.

30. Gesamtabenteur. Hundert altdeutsche Erzählungen, ed. Friedrich von der Hagen, 3 vols. (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1850), I, pp. cxxix-cxxxiii.

31. The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio, trans. Francis Winwar (New York, 1955), pp. 147-148.

32. Diu halbe bir, Ein Schwank Konrads von Würzburg, ed. G. A. Wolff (Dissertation, Erlangen, 1893); H. Laudan, “Die halbe Birne nicht von Konrad von Würzburg,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, L (1908), pp. 158-166.

33. Cf. the conversation between the two nuns in Boccaccio, and that between the lady and her mentor in the pseudo-Konrad.

34. Cf. Jan de Vries, op. cit., p. 461.

35. Cf. Alexander H. Krappe, “The Italian Origin of an Icelandic Story,” Scandinavian Studies xix (1946-1947) pp. 105-109.

36. Ibid., “Parallels and Analogues to the Death of Örvar Odd,” Scandinavian Studies, xvii (1942-1943), p. 35.

37. Cf. Ibid., xix (1946), 105.

38. Cf. Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860; reprinted in “Gesammelte Werke,” Bd. III, Basel, 1955), pp. 105-106.

39. Cf. Heinz Dehmer, Primitives Erzählungsgut in den Islendinga-Sögur “Von deutscher Poeterey. Forschungen u. Darstellungen aus dem Gesamtgebiet der deutschen Philologie,” Bd. 2, (1927), pp. 6 ff.

40. Cf. Guðni Jónsson, op. cit., p. xli, xxxiv-xxxv.

41. G. A. Hight, op. cit., p. 143.

42. Cf. R. C. Boer, op. cit., p. 256 n.