SOURCE: “Withdrawal and Return: A Ritual Pattern in the Grettis Saga,” in Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi, Vol. 88, 1973, pp. 91-110.

Grettir Ásmundarson, one of the strongest men of his time, a victim of both ill luck and the tempestuousness of his character, lived almost all of his adult life as an outlaw and was slain according to the saga written about him, as a mortally sick man on the lonely island which had sheltered him and his faithful brother Illugi. He was, his saga asserts in its closing chapter,¹ the most notable of all outlaws for his strength and his many victories over the fiends of darkness, the length of his exile and the effection of his vengeance from abroad. Grettir was a well-born man belonging on his mother's side to the people of Vatnsdal and numbering among his paternal ancestors the famous Omundr Tréfót. By the time his tale had found its way to the manuscript which underlies our editions of the saga Grettir's figure had grown beyond the boundaries of the area assigned to him by his human parentage.²

The oral and written tales which had kept his memory from fading had also altered and extended the factual basis of his life until its historic core lay embedded in a web of imaginary matter. This fate Grettir shares with many a historic personage who has kindled the imagination; these figures are frequently remodeled and redrawn until their life and deeds conform to the same basic patterns which shape the destiny of the heroes of legend and literature. So the great men are remembered less in their transitory and unique appearance in time, less in their own, individual likeness than in that of the more lasting and encompassing type to which they have become assimilated. To illustrate the process Mircea Eliade recounts how in a small Roumanian village the events and characters of an unfortunate incident were reshaped and assimilated into a pattern within the life time of some of the witnesses.³

The type of which Grettir appears to be the Icelandic manifestation is that of the gifted fighter, the protagonist of ‘heroic literature’ who is lifted above ordinary men by his strength and skill in battle, by an excessive sensitivity to any stain on his honor and by a spirit which drives him to both: deeds of glory and an early doom.

There have been attempts to trace the outlines of such a life; Jan de Vries, taking his models from many stages in history and many areas of the world found the following recurrent features (not necessarily present in their entirety in every heroic life): divine or semi-divine parentage, superhuman feats of strength and courage, a voyage to the beyond, the winning of a maiden, defeat of a monstrous being inimical to man, and an early death.⁴ It is possible, even on superficial investigation, to ascertain these elements within the tales gathered in Grettir's saga, so that we may be well justified in looking for his spiritual kindred among the traditional heroes, on the battlefield of Maldon, before the ramparts of Troy and in the mountain pass of Roncevaux.⁵

One would, of course, never deny to Grettir his specific place in space and time nor question the saga's rendition of medieval Iceland, her pastures and grazing horses, her mountains and valleys peopled by giants, her drinking feasts and bloody feuds. But one may have to consider that the appeal of the central figure, his hold on our interest and emotion may stem from our response to a configuration which has exercised its spell through the ages.

Ancient as the scenario of the heroic life may be, it is composed of yet more ancient matter: the elements of archaic myth and ritual. The battle with a monster fought and won by the warrior hero may be traced ultimately to the mythical battle in which a warrior god defeated a primordial being, symbolic of chaos, and thus assured the establishment of cosmic order. The heroes' deeds, the exhibition of strength and courage, their solitary passage to non-human regions, may recall the initiation ritual of archaic religion, the ordeals to be endured, the proofs of manhood to be given, the contact with the sacred to be achieved by young men before they are admitted into adulthood or into special classes.⁶ Such rites are assumed to have pervaded everywhere, at a certain stage of civilization, the fabric of communal life (therefore also that of the ancient Germanic tribes or their ancestors) and may be observed and studied in modern times among those people who have remained on the appropriate level of cultural achievement.

In a recent study Margarete Arent examines, in the light of the heroic life-pattern, Grettir's repeated struggles against ghosts and monsters in relation to their most famous parallel: Beowulf's encounter with Grendel and his dam, grim night-time visitors from their dank dwellings to the hall of Hrothgar.⁷ It is the purpose of this paper to retrace another archaic pattern, less strikingly apparent, but still discernible through the realistic overlay, and to follow the thread of a ritual sequence.

As Grettir's life reaches its culminating moments in the fierce ecstasy of combat with human or non-human foes, its external course follows his pendulum movements between wilderness and settled dwellings, between separation from society and brief integration. The journeys may be understood realistically on the basis of Grettir's inability as dangerous outlaw to receive lasting hospitality and, on the other hand, his need for human companionship. They may also be understood differently.

There is, in fact, in ritual, an analogue to the rhythm of withdrawal and return which actuates Grettir's outlaw existence. Segregation is the indispensable first step in the initiation ceremonies of primitive societies which have earlier been mentioned. A rite of separation, as called by van Gennep, a stay in bush, forest or mountain assures the stripping away of all that is secular and profane, all that belongs to the earlier existence of the individual who, in this ceremony, must die and emerge reborn into a higher mode of living.⁸

Such segregation may extend for several months, as in Ceram,⁹ but last up to several years (up to six years in the Congo),¹⁰ especially if the membership desired is that into a secret and selective group. So deeply entwined appears to some Australian tribes the experience of initiation with the stay in the forest that they use one word to designate both (the word ‘Jeraeil,’ for example among the Kurnai, or the word ‘Kuringal,’ among the Yuin means: ‘that which is from the forest,’ and ‘initiation’).¹¹

The acts of violence by which Grettir, by necessity, procures the means of sustaining life also find their counterpart in the religious practices. The geographic distance from the normal habitation brings to the novices at times a liberation from the laws which had bound their profane life. In Liberia, for instance, the young men are allowed and expected to steal and pillage, to obtain in nightly attacks on the villages what they need for their maintenance.¹² The seizing of any food they might like to eat is a license enjoyed by the newly circumcised of Fjuta Djaloon in Australia;¹³ in French West Africa, where circumcision also forms part of the ceremonies, the right to steal is granted from the time of cicatrition of the wound to the moment of complete healing.¹⁴ The code of Lykurgus sent the youth of ancient Sparta, for one year, naked into the mountains to live on what could be obtained by dagger, the only implement allowed to the young men.¹⁵

Thus, truly outside of the community and its norms of life, often subjected to cruel ordeals, such as beatings or the infliction of wounds, the old form of the individual is thought to die; induced, at times, by intoxication, encounter with the sacred is achieved; then the men return, profoundly altered and affected beings, often bearing the marks of their experience on their body (a scarred cheek, a pierced tongue, a circumcised genital). They may also carry less permanent signs of their communion with the godhead, and may appear disguised, masked, their body painted or naked:¹⁶ they may return frenzied and in need of exorcism as do the Kwakiutl of North America.¹⁷

On their return the men must frequently give proof of the powers which fit their new status: the mastery of magic techniques (in the case of shamans), feats of strength (in the case of the warriors), before they may assume their rightful place in the community or the young men be allowed to marry. There is also periodic and diluted repetition throughout life of the sacred experience.

The ancient rites have left their footprints, easily noticed in the folk customs of nations who have long forgotten the ancient religion. We know, just to cite an example, that in a remote Swiss valley young men in terrifying masks appear yearly among the inhabitants, stealing and looting, spreading fear and horror through the countryside, recalling in this way the lawlessness and sacred frenzy of the newly initiated.¹⁸

One may also look to literature for the impress of initiatory themes. These are strikingly realized in the tales of the long and weary exile of Odysseus and his eventual return and integration, which we know from the version said to be Homer's. We may remember that in the poem the beings met on the perilous journey are almost always superhuman, that after ordeals on the angry sea Odysseus enters his island kingdom in the disguise of a ragged beggar, unrecognizable even to his nearest kin, that he passes with surpassing skill a test of stringing an ancient bow and shooting an arrow through twelve axes, before he resumes his rightful place as king and husband.¹⁹

In the northern tale of the Volsungs we may also recognize various stages of the initiation ritual: 1. The young hero Sinfjotli is sent into a forest to stay with the older Sigmund; he passes ordeals, such as baking bread from flour which harbors a living snake; 2. Both heroes transform themselves into wolves by donning wolf-skins (they appear in disguise); 3. Still in this form Sinfjotli slays in a single encounter eleven men without asking Sigmund for help (proof of valor); 4. The two burn their wolf-skins and resume human form (return to society). These events complete the initiation and Sinfjotli is ready to take up his life's work, the act of vengeance for which he was begotten.²⁰

We shall now probe five episodes of Grettir's life for the chain of events which parallels the ritual sequence: exile, disguise, proof of valor, revelation of identity, and reintegration into society.

I. HáRAMARSEY (CHAP. 18–20, PP. 56–73).

The ship which carried Grettir on his first voyage to Norway has foundered on a rock so that the sailors are forced to seek shelter on a small island off the Norwegian coast. Here the farmer Þorfinnr is settled and Grettir stays with this man and his household though he holds himself rather reserved. He is present at the moment when twelve pirates, known for their plundering and ravishing of women, pull their boat unto the shore in a way which indicates that “they do not mean to wait for an invitation.”²¹ In the absence of the farmer, away at a Yule gathering, Grettir approaches the vikings, welcomes them warmly and bids them enter the hall. Despite the horror and despair shown by the women and servants of the household, Grettir, usually a sullen man, entertains the strangers with merry jests, plies them with food and ale and promises the mistress of the house as a bedcompanion. When the visitors are heavy with drink he leads them into a combination of store- and outhouse and locks them by a ruse into the building. Immediately they are trapped he drops his role, and arming himself, charges against them as they emerge, sobered, through the broken wall. Though they are without weapons and he wields arms it is “a trial of a man's strength to stand up against their superhuman powers,”²² for they have the ability to turn themselves into ‘Berserks.’ Ten of them Grettir kills singlehandedly, two escape and find death, exhausted by their wounds, in the snow. The returning hero is treated with the utmost deference and admiration as savior of life and honor, and is later offered by the farmer a place in the household.²³

Let us note that in this episode the hero arrives on the island after ordeals at sea, shipwrecked, stripped of his belongings, a man completely removed from his former life; on meeting the Berserks he masks his action and reveals his true nature when he commences the battle which is the first to spread his fame. Through this proof of valor he receives definition of his role in society and integration into the small community of the farmstead. The question of old and new personality and the significance of the battle to the revelation of manhood is touched upon in a short dialogue between Grettir and the housewife. “Am I not the same man,” he inquires observing her new courtesy towards him, “that I was when you treated me so contemptuously?” “I didn't know that you were such a stout man as you now have proved yourself to be,” is her answer.²⁴

II. SODULKOLLUVíSUR (CHAP. 47, PP. 147-153).

Grettir has landed in Iceland only to hear that he has been outlawed for the burning of Þorir's sons (of which he is not guilty). He stays with his ship because “he didn't find a suitable horse,” until one night under cover of darkness “for he didn't want the merchants to know,” he conceals his giant frame under a black cloak, seizes the best horse of a farmer named Sveinn, as it was grazing on the pasture, and rides off through the countryside. Sveinn laughingly hears the news that a big man in a black cowl has been seen mounted on his swiftest horse, composes a verse and races after the thief. As Grettir gallops through the meadows he encounters a man and entreats him to spread the tale of the theft through the district. The information is dutifully passed on to Sveinn who again chants a verse and moves after Grettir. A woman is next told by Grettir the destination of his journey and again asked to transmit the intelligence. Once more Sveinn answers with a strophe full of threats and the greater speed of his riding. At Gilsbakki, the destination, pursuer and pursued dismount, exchange more merry verse and part in friendship, for Sveinn considers himself amply repaid for the ‘borrowing’ of his horse. Grettir is warmly received by the owner of Gilsbakki and proceeds after a short stay to his family's home and to his mother in Bjarg.

One would be hard pressed to find a realistic interpretation of the incident; there is little reason for Grettir to leave his ship in the dark, but to seize the horse when dawn has broken and he may be observed, to conceal himself and then to disclose his theft, his destination and his name (the last in verse 34, 3, 4; lautar áll—ormr—Grettir). Unfitting also to the character of an Icelandic householder, no matter how ‘merry’ is the acceptance by Sveinn of insult and theft. We can only think that both Grettir and Sveinn act in accordance with the rules of a certain tradition.

The stanzas themselves might help us to understand this custom; verse 34 contains the word ‘gamanvísa,’—‘a playful, joking verse, a jest;’ in verse 32 Grettir calls himself one who throws dice, gambles, plays (drýgja dufl—to gamble);²⁵ Grettir also asserts that he would ride so furiously that he might receive hospitality in Gilsbakki.²⁶

The poetry thus seems to reveal the vestiges of a gamble or game in which there was furious riding on a stolen horse; the object must have been arrival at a certain place, safe and unimpeded, though information was tossed into the path of the pursuer. It has earlier been stated that theft often belonged to the cultic practices; the right of rapine forms, as stated by Otto Höfler, one of the most characteristic marks of the secret male societies.²⁷ Mock theft of horses specifically, has been substantiated in the ancient Germanic practices, and may still be observed with the young men of the Alemanic regions on a certain day of the year (gumpiger Donnerstag) or with the fur clad Öja-Busar of Sweden; the jolesveinar, also, figures of Norwegian myth, similarly deplete the stables of horses in their Yuletime frolics.²⁸

In a line of strophe 35, spoken by Sveinn, Grettir is abused as ‘dogeyed,’ (hundeygr); this adjective may be expressive of Sveinn's feigned anger, but it could also easily contain a memory of the very widespread custom among Germanic peoples of dog and wolf impersonations, exemplified by the ‘Isengrind,’ a dog with burning eyes who roams, at the turning of the year, the towns of Switzerland.²⁹ We may at this point recall the dogheaded warriors, (Cynocephali) of the Langobardi.³⁰

Black, the verses tell us, are horse and rider (verse 32, 8; í svortum kufli; verse 35, 3 á hrossi svortu) and ride through a storm (verse 35, 2 í róstuvedri), thus painting an image evocative of the black figures on horseback who speed through the stormy night in the furious train which is in legend led by Odin (also related to cultic practices as shown by Otto Höfler).³¹ Black is the color favored in numerous folk disguises, as that of the Schemen of Bavaria or the Morris dancers of England; it is also the color chosen by the painted warriors of ancient Germanic times who have been described by Tacitus.

With these considerations in mind one may be justified in assuming that the prose and especially the poetry of the episode contain the elements of a folk tradition or game, which in turn had arisen from cultic practices.

When, in the narrative, Grettir has arrived unscathed at his destination, the conditions of the game are apparently fulfilled; he must have removed his concealing clothes, though this is not stated; the warm reception of Grettir by the farmer of Gilsbakki, the friendliness of Sveinn, the owner of the horse, and Grettir's return to his mother's house may be understood to symbolize the return to life in the community.

III. SANDHAUGAR (CHAP. 64-65; PP. 209-214)

The household at Sandhaugar in Bardardal has been sorely troubled by supernatural visitors who carried off in successive Yule seasons its master and later a bondman. Grettir, drawn by the prospect of grappling with troll or giant, turns to the haunted dwelling; naming himself Gestr (a stranger), he is received by the young and merry mistress of the household. This young woman, Steinvor, must, in order to attend mass, cross a river so swollen and heavy with floating ice that she despairs of reaching the other bank; but Grettir, placing her daughter on her knee, carries both safely through the turbulent waters, striding firmly through the icy waves, so that the woman, frozen with terror, later reports to her kinsmen that she didn't know whether it was a man or a troll who had served her so bravely.

Back in the hall while the rest of the household is numb with fear Grettir-Gestr waits for the ill visit. And indeed, in the dark watches of the night the troll woman enters and seizes the hero. A mighty struggle ensues and continues through the night first in the hall amidst the wreckage of the grim encounter, and later in the open between cliffs and boulders where Grettir finally cuts off the arm of the troll woman and sees her plunge into the waterfall (or turn to stone according to local tradition).

Steinvor is deeply impressed on her return by the deed and now once more asks for the stranger's name; this time she is told the truth. She extends to him henceforth the utmost of devotion and it is rumored that a child later born to her was fathered by Grettir.

In this episode Grettir does not use physical means of disguise, but hides his name to give it freely after his victory. His respite from the exile's loneliness in the arms of Steinvor, lasting for a winter only, is, as always, shortlived.

IV. HEGRANES THING (CHAP. 72; PP. 229-236)

The spring Thing at Hegranes is well frequented and the men from the proper districts stay long over their business and pleasure, for many in these parts are fond of merriment. Just at this time Grettir decides to lay in new supplies, and concealing himself in shabby clothes, proceeds to the mainland. After he has accomplished his purpose he turns, irresistably drawn, to the place of assembly and arrives when the men have finished their legal affairs and are ready for some sport. As the young begin to wrestle it appears that two brothers, the sons of Þord, emerge as greatly superior to the rest. Looking in their pride of victory for a fiercer challenge they notice Grettir, a huge stranger, sitting quietly in his cloak among the crowd. He gives his name, when asked, as Gestr, but does not let himself be drawn into the games until he is solemnly promised safety from attack. After an oath of peace has been pronounced he removes his cloak and all his garments; then a hush falls over the assembled men for they have recognized Grettir in his nakedness. The promise of peace, however, is not broken and the wrestling commences, Grettir holding his own against the brothers who engage him simultaneously, but still cannot defeat him though they are each said to have the strength of two. As the contestants become increasingly bruised and battered and the issue yet remains undecided the onlookers find it an ever more splendid sight to watch such mighty men exert their powers. At the end of the episode Grettir returns unmolested to his island.

In this incident recognition occurs (in contrast to the preceding episodes) before proof of manhood is offered; acceptance by society is indeed shortlived not outlasting Grettir's return to his shelter.

V. REYKIR (CHAP. 74–75; PP. 237-241)

Þorbjorn Glaum who lives with Grettir and Illugi, removed from settled society, on the islet of Drangey has neglected to tend the fire so that it died. The choice is now to wait for a passing boat or to undertake the long swim (one sea mile) to the mainland. Not heeding his brother's counsel who considers the venture beyond human strength Grettir prepares for the swim by having his fingers webbed (animal disguise?); in his usual coarse cloak and breeches he sets out towards evening with the current in his favor and crosses the water. He reaches Reykir at sunset and warms his chilled body in a hot spring. Then he enters a farmer's hall, still filled with the smoke of the day's fire, and soundly falls asleep in the warmth. He lets his garments slide, in his untroubled sleep, to the floor so that he lies naked; this nakedness, as at the Thing, reveals Grettir's identity to the first members of the household who enter the room in the morning: the farmer's daughter and a servant maid, the latter's emotions irresistably aroused by the sight of the sleeping man. Her giggling taunts which awaken Grettir are effectively stopped when he forces her, against her loud protests, onto the bench on which he has slept. Later, the farmer in admiration of the long swim lends the exile a boat for his homeward journey.

To interpret the rape of the bondwoman in the light of the ritual we must remember that initiation often brought the young men admission to the ranks of the sexually mature. A sexual element is, in the words of Jan de Vries, “inseparably linked up with the initiation. This often takes the form of orgiastic promiscuity; the newly-gained virility has first to run its full course … so as afterwards to be canalized.”³² Sexual or other aggression against women has been so marked a feature, throughout the ages, of the celebrations of the secret male societies that these are said, by some, to have originated as a force rebelling against the female rulers of a matriarchal society.³³

Two strophes spoken by Grettir to the maid are suppressed in some editions for the general reader in possibly the same spirit which caused the church to suppress certain relics of the pagan practices: as too gross for a Christian population. These verses emphasize the character of the incident as a challenge extended to prove manly vigor and potency and adequately answered by Grettir. The girl expresses her surprise, for “He is so small below, and that is not in keeping with the rest of him,”³⁴ and does not stop to wonder at this condition until Grettir assures her in words, before proceeding to deeds, of his adequacy: “The small horse in the forest of my thighs can grow as long as need be, for me a young man.”³⁵ And in truth, the girl complains no longer.

Grettir's long swim may be classed with the cruel ordeals, unnecessary except in the context of the ritual; could not three able-bodied men in possession of tools have built a raft? Bathing in icy rivers is indeed one of the known tests of initiation.³⁶ The helpfulness of the farmer to a dangerous outlaw, a threat to settled life, who had crept into his hall and done violence to one of his household may represent integration into society after initiation is completed.

It has been seen that in each of the segments of Grettir's life lifted up for our inspection the hero has emerged from some form of unsettled existence to enter into organized society: he came to Haramarsey from a sea voyage and a shipwreck, to Gilsbakki from travel in Norway, to Sandhaugar, Reykir and the Hegranes Thing from his various lonely hiding places. In every case there has been some form of disguise which was later removed: friendliness towards the Berserks masked his true feelings, a cloak concealed him on his furious ride to Gilsbakki and shabby clothes on his entering the Hegranes Thing; an assumed name hid his identity in Sandhaugar and again at the Thing; no overt mask is mentioned in the Reykir episode; we only hear that he stole as an unknown man into the hall. The mask falls during the combat (the test of manhood) in episode one and his true identity is revealed after the victory; the disguise is lifted in episode two and three after successful completion of the test; recognition of the hero through nakedness precedes proof of valor in episode four and five.

The name Gestr, used by Grettir in two of the episodes to hide his identity, describes him as a ‘stranger.’ A correspondance to this aspect of Grettir may be found with the newly initiated in the Congo who acts upon reentry into the community as if he knew no one and did not understand the language (since he is newly born), who must laboriously relearn customs and speech.³⁷ Grettir's later naming himself may remind us that the giving of a name often follows or parallels admission into a group (as in Christian baptism). Norse literature offers another analogue: the stranger who visits in the Norna-Gests þáttr the court of King Olaf assumes like Grettir the name: Gestr. He is indeed a stranger, unbound by the laws of time, who has been living for several hundred years. In both cases the name signifies one who has entered from outside of the boundaries of normal life.

These are the proofs of manhood so easily given by Grettir: victory over twelve Berserks, successful stealing of a horse, defeat of a troll woman, championship in a wrestling match, exhibition of sexual potency. In every case the deed was rewarded by acceptance into a community and the honor and admiration of the group.

The tale of Haramarsey is the only one which could be explained satisfactorily in a purely realistic manner, for here Grettir's disguise was an apt and necessary trick for the defeat of the pirates. Even this episode is lifted from the purely profane by certain features: the action takes place at Yule time, a traditional period for communion with the supernatural, (also a traditional time for the celebrations of male societies); the invaders of the household can turn into Berserks, (supernatural beings) a threat, like the monsters of heroic tales, to settled life; the incident is interlaced with Grettir's preceding adventure, in which he descends a barrow, and which abounds with legendary features.

One might consider the fact that recognition (through nakedness) precedes the test of manhood in episode four and five and follows it in the others a variation of the pattern; there is however a different way of understanding the sequence. Grettir, we hear, takes off all his body garments, and his cloak before the assembly at Hegranes. The clothing of a farmer consisted according to Shetelig of a cloak, a woolen shirt, woolen trousers and leg bands;³⁸ the ‘worn, shabby garments’ which Grettir had used to conceal himself would not have included the elegance of an undershirt. If he therefore removed, besides his cloak, more than one piece of clothing he was completely naked. Trousers also were not attached to the leg coverings and can not be defined as ‘leg clothing;’ they would have to be part of the ‘bolklœdi’, the body coverings removed by Grettir. Wrestling in complete nakedness was not to my knowledge the custom.³⁹ We may also observe that it seems strange that a man be recognized by his naked body when he has not been recognized by his facial features or general stature.

Weakly motivated also is the disrobing of Grettir in the Reykir episode; he had been dressed for his swim in cloak and breeches; such breeches were in historic times short belted trousers and no longer the short belted skirts from which they had developed;⁴⁰ they could not, in this case, have easily slipped off an unwitting sleeper even if the belt was loosened.

We have observed that Grettir was recognized in his nakedness before he had passed a test of valor; such a test shows the novice in the new role he will play in the community, as shaman, warrior, or hunter. It is, in the language of van Gennep, a rite of integration; anything preceding still belongs to the period and practices of sacred isolation. The nakedness in which, in the Congo, the novice emerges from the forest marks him, as would a mask, as still belonging to his spirit.⁴¹ Nakedness as part of the practices is noted elsewhere; it was endured by the young men of Sparta in the Krypteia, their year of lonely and wolflike existence in the mountains. Nakedness in a traditional and religious context, similarly, has been found among the Germanic nations; so Tacitus described the sword dances performed by naked youths; partial or complete bareness was required at some of the sacrifices, at the swearing of oaths and some agricultural practices.⁴²

The nakedness of Grettir thus seems to have entered the saga through its ritual substructure; we may perceive in it the vestiges of a ritual nakedness; and Grettir was recognized not in his social but in his still numinous aspect, still the carrier and vessel of sacred forces. Such an assumption would be supported by the strong emotions which the sight awakened. The awe of the Thing assembly may recall the shock of the villagers before the masked figures, i.e., the terror before the divine revelation. The fascination of the servant girl may be understood in its original sense: the enchanting of an individual by a supernatural agency. Even the farmer's daughter does not wholly escape the spell and does not run off immediately (as she does later,) a fact noticed by R. C. Boer.⁴³

Regarding the structure of the five episodes we find that in each narrative one element encapsules its abstract and numinous content, which we have also tried to extract, or opens a window to the symbolic. The pithy dialogue between Grettir and the mistress of Haramarsey shows up Grettir's combat in its purpose: the proof of valor; the stanzas exchanged between Grettir and Sveinn and those spoken by her ravisher to the maid point to the folk custom and the challenge embedded in the tales; the name Gestr in episodes three and four (Sandhaugar and Hegranes Thing) reveals Grettir as one who has entered briefly from afar the human community.

It may be significant that Boer considered all these episodes, except for the fight on Haramarsey, as ‘interpolations,’ as additions which trouble the clear waters of logical sequence.⁴⁴ In this latter we may agree for we too have understood the course of action to be stimulated by an agency divorced from rational considerations.

It has been shown in the preceding pages that we may find in the saga not only individual elements of the ritual, such as lawlessness, return from exile, disguise, but also their analogous arrangement. It is this arrangement which allows us to assert more boldly the presence of the pattern of initiation in the narratives. We saw in two and five the elements of folk practices (the wrestling game, the theft and the rape) and in one and three (the Berserks and the troll woman) the incorporation of legendary themes into the sequence.

In the second part of this paper we shall consider the concluding remarks of Miss Arent's comparison who, having ascertained the same archaic pattern in the life of both, Grettir and Beowulf, finds the former wanting in the truly heroic stature reached by the visitor to Hrothgar; for Grettir has become a character in a folk tale, a farmer's son who disports himself with lads of his own class and vanquishes phantoms begotten by local superstition. His deeds, “heaving stones, carrying an ox, flaying a mare, killing goslings emerge from a folk culture … the fights with ogres takes place in ordinary farm houses and not in the most illustrious of kingly halls.”⁴⁵

We may answer that surely all heroes have been presented in the terms of their own physical environment; within his own country which had not constructed kings' halls Grettir is, as member of one of the leading families, as highly stationed as a prince.

In his coarse cloak and breeches Grettir may, in Miss Arent's view, be an individual who commands our sympathy and compassion, but not, like Beowulf, the admiration reserved for the carrier of heroic virtues who rises like a guiding star before the young.⁴⁶

To counter this interpretation we must investigate how heroic literature uses the inherited themes, and how the heroic character stands in relation to the themes, the physical events, and the conviction of the epics. We cannot help but notice, in this endeavor, how much the emphasis has shifted. The myth of the warrior god slaying the monster of chaos, so often ehoed in the poems, surely proclaimed the establishment of civilization, the triumph of order over chaos. The rites of archaic religions surely served to sustain the functioning of the community.

While evidently early religion demanded an occasional retreat from settled life, allowed freedom from the restraints of civilization, it also demanded a return; the novice was sent into the forest where he recaptured an earlier condition of life in which man and god, or man and beast had not achieved their separate identities, but he always reentered the human dwellings as a being, and this was the purpose, more ably fitted to defend them against natural and unnatural foes, as warrior or magician, more adequately equipped to maintain and propagate life as adult male.

No such concerns with the safeguarding of life on earth or establishment of new cultural levels move the warrior heroes of the poems. For they have chosen honor above all other values, in the words of Heraclitus: “… they chose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals.”⁴⁷ Their striving is not for happiness, their own or that of their community, though they might slay a dragon; it is for their bright image among men. So it is not surprising that a proper hero, holding life lightly, dies young; it is also not surprising that in works upholding heroic ideals death and defeat in battle (The Battle of Maldon) or even the destruction of nations (Iliad and Nibelungenlied) are not considered the ultimate tragedy, but rather the appropriate background for the awesome and terrifying spectacle of human greatness.

While the monster was slain in myth for the sake of creation, the initiatory ordeal suffered for the sake of rebirth, heroic literature has often dedicated itself to transmitting the grandiose and fascinating scene of death and destruction. We must consider such literature to represent a turning away, an emancipation from the original ideals of its ritual substructure.

In the climate of violence and destruction the hero moves as in his natural habitat; the dispensing of death is after all his prime business; and his destructiveness, against his will, includes often those he loves the most: so Roland destroys Oliver, Achilles Patroklus, and Grettir his loyal brother Illugi. Heroes cannot, on the whole, foresee and control the outcome of their action. Their catastrophes are brought about, in the words of Gertrude Levy “… by the excess of pride arising from their special gift of mana, or manas or menos: the heroic energy which is the sign of their divine ancestry.”⁴⁸

With respect to Welsh heroes Marie-Louise Sjöstedt observes “that all the words for ‘hero’ express the notions of fury, ardour, tumescence, speed. The hero is the furious one, possessed of his own tumultuous and blazing energy.”⁴⁹ To illustrate the violence of the heroic character she relates how the Welsh hero Kulhwch (probably the prototype of Parsifal) went to king Arthur's court and asked for admission into the hall. When courteously told to return somewhat later because the banquet had already begun he threatened to emit such shouts that all pregnant women in the land would abort and those not pregnant be never able to conceive. And in fact, he gained admission. Miss Sjöstedt concludes that “it seems to be the rule for a great hero to enter always by violence even into his own social group and that before becoming a member of society he must establish himself against it in disregard of its customs.”⁵⁰

Heroes, needless to say, do not listen to the voice of prudence which is often heard in the tales: Odysseus pleading with Achilles to renounce his private grievance and to return to the Achaian camp, Polydamas warning Hector against giving battle outside of the city walls (such battle indeed brings disaster), Þorfinn counselling Grettir against struggling with Glam whose curse then pursues him through life, Oliver reasoning with Roland to sound his horn. Relying on their superior strength and force heroes fall easy victims to Hybris, the stand against the gods and the assertion of human achievement, which inevitably brings ruin, but also, here, deep admiration; for, in this genre the poets are on the side of men.

One might alternately describe heroes, with reference to the ritual of initiation, as such in whom is often and easily induced that state of frenzy and possession which marks the initiate on his emergence from the sacred wood and before his integration, as such to whom is rarely granted a return from their god-haunted wilderness to the sheltering community. A period of violent destructiveness may occur in other men's lives as a passing phase, it is the abiding feature of heroic existence.

Periods of integration, though brief, are nevertheless present and complete the sequence. To illustrate such an interlude we may cite the case of Achilles brought back from his superhuman fury over the slaying of Patroclus by his compassion for Priam. The old man, come to plead in the hostile camp for the lifeless body of his son, awakens in Achilles, through the memory of his own father, an awareness of his common humanity. Such participation in general human experience is necessary to the heroic life, for without it heroes would be wholly gods or monsters. And heroic literature is above all humanistic, acclaiming not the divine manifestation, but the man on whom it has descended.

The literary works admit, of course, an inordinate number of variations on the basic pattern in varying degrees of resemblance to the abstraction which has here been attempted. But there can be little doubt that to the picture here drawn Grettir bears a stronger likeness than does Beowulf, a wise and magnanimous ruler who died in the fullness of his years.

Traces of a ruthless striving for glory are, to be sure, detectable in the slayer of Grendel. Did he not lead his faithful band on a voyage from which none thought that he would return?⁵¹ Yet this trait is dwarfed beside his savior aspect due undoubtedly to the Christian author of the epic, eager to present a figure possessing the virtues of his time.

Grettir, on the other hand, little concerned with saving others or himself, cares above else about his honor. Spattered at one time, in a struggle, with curdled milk, he is more pained than if he had “received a great wound.”⁵² In his exuberant strength he provokes fate wherever he goes, so in his unnecessary mocking of sailors on his voyage to Norway for which he nearly pays with his life. Like a true hero also Grettir does not stop to count the cost of his action; so he strikes down a boy who has taunted him and bars himself from the cleansing ceremony which might have saved him from exile.⁵³ As his prototype spends large portions of his time in that initiatory frenzy from which ordinary men are swiftly released, so Grettir must stay most of his life in that state of lawlessness which is to those, who practice the ancient rites, a passing interlude. Like the heroic model also Grettir is allowed brief and periodic integration, so in enjoying the acclaim of his prowess, or in finding peace with Steinvor, or in sharing the sorrow of his mother.

In one way Grettir appears to perpetuate a specifically Germanic warrior tradition: in his aloofness from menial work. Tacitus observed: “Whenever they are not fighting, they pass much of their time in the chase, and still more in idleness, giving themselves up to sleep and feasting, the bravest and most warlike doing nothing …”⁵⁴ True to this pattern, Grettir refuses to participate in the common toil while sailing to Norway, but rises to perform the work of eight men when the safety of the boat is threatened. In his loathing of menial labor, Grettir does not exert himself while staying with Þorsteinn Kuggason, even though he is in desperate need of hospitality, and thereby loses the much needed shelter. Considering that Grettir did not hesitate at the prospect of crossing an icy river, or swimming a sea mile, one must conclude that in the Germanic as well as in Grettir's system of values any effort which did not enhance a man, demeaned him.

We may also ask ourselves whether the time and place of the saga's composition could be favorable soil for the growth of a heroic epic. And we find that conditions were similar to those which had elsewhere fostered such creation. Heroic epics are said to arise at a time of peace which looks back to an earlier age of migration and warfare when men, torn from their familiar surroundings, placed high value on individual courage and loyalty to close comrades. So the Germanic peoples looked back on the battles and conquests of the great migrations which ultimately destroyed Rome, Homer celebrated the deeds of Achaian expeditionary forces of some centuries earlier and Iceland remembered the time of settlement and the Viking raids of her forebears so that with her the old heroic themes received a new habitation, though her sagas were written in prose.⁵⁵

The themes of the ritual retained in the Grettis saga have, in Miss Arent's view, become devoid of their religious meaning while the same patterns appear recharged and revitalized, through contact with Christianity, in the epic of Beowulf, so that it gains close kinship with the religious ideals, the basis of the ritual, which had provided the scenario of the heroic life. While this may well be true it does not make the tale of Beowulf more truly a heroic epic; for these are not religious, intent not on the gods but on the men and their conflicts enacted on a human plane, their loyalties expended on human comrades, their striving directed towards honor in the human community. The poems of warfare and heroism treat of the glory to be gained in combat, the fortitude to be shown in the face of disaster, and the price to be paid for the divine visitation.

Of such stuff is the saga of Grettir, the outlaw who carried to their extremity the violence and rebellion of the traditional heroes and who therefore had to bear the most crushing burden of isolation.

Identical patterns, Miss Arent declares, may be expressive of widely differing values. There is no arguing against such a statement. This paper merely wishes to assert that an utter change of values had already taken place when the poets used the themes inherited from stone age herdsmen and hunters to celebrate the deeds of bronze clad warriors.

Notes

1. Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, Gudni Jónsson, ed. Islenzk Fornrit 7, Reykjavik 1936, ch. 93, p. 289.

2. Recent scholarship assumes that the saga, as we have it, forms an organic whole while earlier scholars (R.C. Boer, Árni Magnússon, Gudbrand Vigfússon) believed in a basic core with later additions. Grettir died between 1030—1040; the first version of the saga is supposed to have been written before 1284 on the basis of oral family tradition by Sturla Þorddarson; a second author expanded this narrative and a third author combined both versions to give us the saga of our editions. It cannot in its present form have been written before 1300 a.d. For more information: Sigurdur Nordal, Sturla Þordarson og Grettis saga, Studia Islandica, Reykjavík 1938; also the preface to Gudni Jónsson's edition. No other Icelandic saga contains, according to Guddni Jónsson, so much folk material.

3. Mircea Eliade, Le mythe de l'éternel retour, Paris 1969, pp. 51 ff.

4. Jan de Vries, Heroic Song and Heroic Legend, B. J. Timmer, transl. Oxford University Press 1963, pp. 211—217.

5. Grettir numbers Hallbjorn Hálftroll, a supernatural being, among his ancestors; his feats of strength include the carrying of an ox, the killing of a bear, defeat of a superior number of men, victories over supernatural beings who devastate the countryside, such as Glám (chap. 35). He stays for a time in a valley ruled by a giant (þórisdal chap. 61) and in the cave of another giant and his daughter (chap. 57); both places belong to the supernatural landscape. Grettir wins the woman Steinvor after defeating a troll (chap. 64—65); he dies, according to one set of manuscripts at the age of thirty-five, according to another when he is forty-four, in both cases, in the middle of life.

6. De Vries, as in ref. 4, pp. 220—226. Also: Margarete Arent, “The Heroic Pattern: Old Germanic Helmets; Beowulf and Grettis Saga,” Old Norse Literature and Mythology, Edgar C. Polomé, ed. Univ. of Texas Press 1969, pp. 130—199; p. 144.

7. Arent, as in ref. 6, pp. 186—199.

8. Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, Monika V. Vizedom, Gabrielle L. Caffee trsl., Chicago 1960, p. 82.

9. Heinrich Schurtz, Altersklassen und Männerbünde, Berlin 1902, p. 104.

10. van Gennep as in ref. 8, p. 81.

11. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Joseph Ward Swain, trnsl., London 1964 (fifth ed.), p. 310.

12. van Gennep, as in ref. 8, p. 115.

13. Schurtz, as in ref. 9, p. 107.

14. van Gennep, as in ref. 8, p. 115.

15. H. Jeanmaire, Couroi et Courétes; Essai sur l'éducation spartiate et sur les rites d'adolescence dans l'antiquité hellénique, Lille 1939, pp. 550 ff; the feature was called Krypteia; any novice who allowed himself to be seen during this time was punished.

16. van Gennep, as in ref. 8, p. 81.

17. Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth, The Religious Meanings of Initiation in Human Culture, Willard R. Trask, transl., New York 1938, pp. 71—72.

18. R. Rütimeyer, Urethnographie der Schweiz, Basel 1924, pp. 358 ff.

19. Homer, The Odyssey, E. V. Rieu, transl., first published 1946, Penguin books Ltd., XXI, pp. 317 ff.

20. Volsunga Saga, Fornaldar Sogur Norddurlanda I, Gudni Jónsson ed., 1954, pp. 107—218.

21. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, p. 63. …

22. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, p. 68. …

23. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, p. 72. …

24. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, p. 69. …

25. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, p. 149, verse 32. …

26. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, verse 34. …

27. Otto Höfler, Kultische Geheimbünde der Germanen, Frankfurt a.M. 1934, p. 259; Ein solches Stehlrecht, an gewisse—zum Teil “heilige”—Zeiten gebunden … gehört zu den allercharakteristischsten Kennzeichen kultischer Mannerbünde.

28. Otto Höfler, as in ref. 27, p. 260; the information appears in a footnote.

29. Höfler, as in ref. 27, p. 105.

30. Höfler, as in ref. 27, p. 187.

31. Höfler, as in ref. 27, p. 40—43.

32. de Vries, as in ref. 4, p. 221.

33. Eliade, as in ref. 17, p. 73; the view is advanced by Frobenius.

34. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, chap. 75, p. 239. …

35. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, verse 65, p. 241. …

36. Höfler, as in ref. 27, p. 30.

37. van Gennep, as in ref. 8, p. 81.

38. Haakon Shetelig and Hjalmar Falk, Scandinavian Archaeology, E. V. Gordon, tr. Oxford 1937, p. 338.

39. The word ‘bolklœdi,’ is glossed on the basis of this occurrence as ‘garment (coat, waistcoat) for the body,’ in the English-Icelandic Dictionary of Cleasby and Vigfússon, Oxford 1962; R. C. Boer translates the term as: ‘Kleidungsstücke für den Oberkörper,’ (Altn. Sagabibl. 8, p. 257); Paul Herrmann who translated the saga in Altnordische Dichtung und Prosa 5, p. 195, also uses the term: ‘Oberkleider.’ In the translation of G. A. Hight for the Everyman's Library, the phrase is: “Then he took off his hood and all of his upper garments”, p. 190. Another translation into English (Morris and Magnússon, London 1869, p. 214) has: “all his outer clothes.” These translations, based on the picture of the conventionally clad wrestler, are not justified. Could one assume with Cleasby—Vigfússon that “Grettir took of his cloak and all his waist coats?” The word bolr from an IE root *bhel, ‘to swell,’ means: ‘tree, trunk, body;’ (acc. to Cleasby—Vigfússon). One of the meanings of bolr is identical to búkr, m. (acc. to Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog) which means: ‘trunk or belly;’ the definition of bolklœdi given by Fritzner as: ‘Klœdningsstykke som tjener til Kroppens Bedœkning’ is therefore more acceptable. Later in the passage Grettir also talks about himself as: klœdlauss, ‘naked.’ It is not surprising that a meaning has to be supplied which is not warranted in the text, if the story is understood on the realistic level alone. M. L. Sjöstedt cites other instances of such dramatic disrobing with strong effect on the audience, also based on a forgotten ritual context; as in ref. 49, p. 66.

40. Shetelig, as in ref. 38, p. 340.

41. van Gennep, as in ref. 8, p. 81.

42. Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte I, Berlin und Leipzig 1935, p. 257.

43. R. C. Boer, “Zur Grettis Saga,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 30, (1898), pp. 1—71; p. 16.

44. Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, R. C. Boer, ed. Altnord. Sagabibl. 8, 1900, p. X (Introduction).

45. Arent, as in ref. 6, p. 196.

46. Arent, as in ref. 6, p. 199.

47. As quoted by C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry, London 1952, p. 2.

48. Gertrude R. Levy, The Sword from the Rock, New York 1953, p. 15.

49. Marie-Louise Sjöstedt, Gods and Heroes of the Celts, Myles Dillon, transl. London 1949, pp. 58—59.

50. Sjöstedt, as in ref. 49, p. 63.

51. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, F. Klaeber, ed. Boston 1922, lines 691—693.

52. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, chap. 28, p. 96. …

53. Grettis saga, as in ref. 1, chap. 39, pp. 132—134.

54. The Complete Works of Tacitus, Alfred John Church and William Brodribb, trnsltrs, The Modern Library, New York 1942, Germany and Its Tribes, 15, p. 716.

55. Levy, as in ref. 48, p. 87.