SOURCE: Kuhn, Hans. “Fabulous Childhoods, Adventures, Incidents: Folktale Patterns within the Saga Structure of Heimskringla.” Fabula: Zeitschrift fur Erzahlforschhung / Journal of Folktale Studies 41, no. 1-2 (2000): 76-86.

[In the following essay, Kuhn discusses the role of folktale elements in the narratgive and structure of Heimskringla.]

INTRODUCTION

At the conference of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research in Innsbruck in 1992, I gave a paper entitled The Supernatural Turned Natural: Icelandic Folk-Tales between Fairytale, Legend and Saga. My point of departure was the observation that the usual genre divisions of folktales seem to be blurred in Iceland. What elsewhere could be labelled ‘supernatural’ might for an Icelander be unusual but still a phenomenon to be reckoned with as part of the natural world, e. g. huldufólk, the invisible people, or a poltergeist in the house. Fairytales, normally taking place in a world of fantasy beyond time and space, were often localized and told with the factual realism of saga narration. I exemplified this blending of narrative genres with a folktale from Jón Árnason's collection, Smalinn á Silfrúnarstöðum, the structure of which is pure fairytale: The youngest of three males, a boy of humble origin, passes a test requiring courage and secrecy, with the apparent ogre and taskmaster turning into a supernatural helper. He acquires the Icelandic equivalent of a princess and half a kingdom with the help of three magic gifts and gains further treasure from the supernatural helper upon performing a further task. The ogre turned helper is a grýla, a witch or giantess descending from the wilderness at Christmas, the beginning of the twelve-night period when human beings are especially prone to fall victims to the demons then at large; this is the legendary element of the story. Yet the mode is biographical as in the sagas, with saga-like descriptions and dialogues and named everyday characters and identified places. In a real fairytale, the witch would probably have been released from her ogredom by turning into a noblewoman or relative as a result of the hero accomplishing his task. Here she dies and leaves her treasures to the hero, which is against fairytale and legend conventions but is a concession to the human/realistic/biographical saga code.

In this paper I am going in the opposite direction by taking as my starting-point an outstanding work of medieval history, the Heimskringla, Snorri Sturluson's chronicle of the lives and actions of Norwegian kings, which is definitely human/realistic/biographical, and ask about the place of folktale patterns in it, calling them ‘fabulous’ because they can, but do not need to, include a supernatural element. In doing this, I disregard the fabulous prehistory of the first book, the Ynglingatal, and confine myself to the books starting with Harald Finehair's father Hálfdan, when we get on comparatively safe historical ground in the mid-10th century.

Much has been made of the ‘Icelandishness’ of Heimskringla, last in Sverre Bagge's book¹. It is true that the way Snorri organizes his material around the lives of Norwegian kings as protagonists, and around personal conflicts arising from competition for power and influence, is strongly reminiscent of family sagas; so is the genealogical information provided and the use of skaldic verse for corroboration. Indeed, the bulk of the work could be described as an extended saga of the rivalry between Harald Finehair and his descendants and the Hlade jarls (based in the area around Trondheim, then the economically and strategically most important part of Norway), which for a few decades around the year 1000 was parallelled by the conflict between Christian missionary zeal and heathen conservatism, and at times it is the saga of the rivalry between different branches of Harald's numerous descendants; with events at the end of the 11th century, this strand begins to peter out. And one can see why Snorri was justified in visualising Norwegian history as a family saga. To take one example: When King Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri dies of a wound received in fighting his life-long enemies, the sons of Gunnhildr, he does not name as his successor Sigurðr jarl, his trusted friend and supporter and advisor and, on the basis of his family, character and record, ideal royal material, but the sons of his half-brother whom he had worked all his life to keep out of Norway, blood relation taking precedence over all other considerations.

Saying that Snorri narrates Norwegian history in the form of a family saga does not mean that he writes fiction. For once, due to the prominence of the protagonists, there was a much greater body of agreed historical fact here than in the case of an Icelandic family saga; while he could elaborate scenes, characters, dialogues so as to give them a story build-up and resolution, the main sequence of events was given and could not be altered. I am not concerned with the relationship between Snorri's account and what events and characters can be reconstructed from other historical material, nor am I interested in the question what Snorri derived from other (written) sources and what is his own contribution. I am taking Heimskringla as a narrative in its own right that claims to be a record of what happened in Norway between the 9th and the 12th centuries. There is, however, enough evidence to show that Snorri was scrupulous and critical in ascertaining historical truth, which he was eager to document by quoting skalds or, more occasionally, referring to informants. In some instances he expressly rejects some traditions as being too uncertain; one well-known example occurring in chapter 36 of Haralds saga harðráða, where he says that there would be much more to tell but that he has decided against rendering uncorroborated tales, and that he would rather have things being added to his account in the future than things he wrote taken off as untrustworthy².

SNORRI AND THE SUPERNATURAL

In contrast to most medieval historians, historical events are for him propelled and shaped by human beings and their very human aspirations: lust for power, greed, family solidarity, friendship, loyalty, a desire to stabilize (or undermine) the existing social order, a desire to establish or fend off a new faith, which inevitably also means a new social order. God and his agents (angels, saints) do not interfere, nor do the devil and his helpers. Snorri's modern, realistic, sceptical approach that he shares with the prevailing family saga view of human affairs, is most clearly in evidence in Óláfs saga helga. It is not part of a Christian salvation story; Olaf's conversion to Christianity is no turning point, and his death at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030 not a martyr's death. It is true that pious anecdotes such as the burning of wood shavings in his hand because he had transgressed the no-work-on-the-sabbath command are dutifully reported, and so are the jarteiknir, the miracles reported after his death, that turned a defeated ruler into a saint within a matter of years, but these accounts are simply treated as part of the record as transmitted and generally accepted as historical; after all, these were the very germ of the king's saga. The same is true of Olaf miracles in Haralds saga harðráða, Magnúss saga berfœtts, Sigurðar saga Jórsalafara and Inga saga Haraldssonar; these are, like some of the skaldic verse, only just barely integrated into the narrative and not foregrounded as of crucial importance.

So when we talk about Snorri's attitude, as a historian, to the supernatural, these elements can be discounted; they are neither questioned nor given prominence. It is worth mentioning that when it comes to pre-Christian folk beliefs, Snorri can also be seen as sceptical. He must have been familiar with the popular tradition preserved in the Flateyjarbók about the giant Dofri as young Harald's fosterfather, teacher and, later, helper (the folktale's ogre turning out to be the supernatural helper to the fearless child, as in Smalinn á Silfrúnarstöðum), yet what we get in ch. 8 of Hálfdanar saga svarta is, in comparison, a toned-down and humanized version. We still have the supernatural element of food and drink mysteriously vanishing at a yule feast but the suspect is not the giant Dofri but a margfróðr Finnr, a Lapp with magical knowledge. He is being tortured in vain, the boy Harald obtains his release and follows the Lapp not to a cave, but to the hall of a chieftain, who acknowledges the magic removala of provisions and keeps Harald not for five years, but only until spring, when he can give him the good news of his father's death and his future reign over the whole of Norway. Theoretically, the Flateyjarbók version could be a later accretion (the older Agríp is no help, only a few letters being legible on the first leaf), but the story makes better sense in its fairytale context of a youth helping a wild man to escape from captivity, following him either willingly or against his will, and drawing later on the wild man's assistance. This story, AaTh 502: The Wild Man³, is especially widespread in Scandinavia and around the Baltic; internationally, it may be best known as the Brother Grimms' tale Der Eisenhans (KHM 136). Inger M. Boberg⁴ rightly lists the Flateyjarbók account as motif N 812.1: Wise giant as foster-father of hero while omitting any reference to Heimskringla.

If ‘fostering by giants’ is played down by Snorri, he gives Harald in ch. 25, in accordance with Agrip, a supernatural wife, Snæfríðr (Snow-Beautiful). Like the shepherd at Silfrúnarstaðir, she gets him, through her father Svási, at the beginning of the yule period; once he has accepted a drink from her, he forgets everything and just wants to sleep with her. After formal betrothal, they have four sons, and after her death she keeps her fresh complexion like Snow-White after eating the poisoned apple, and like the dwarves in Snow-White he stays with her three years and waits for her to come back to life. The spell is broken when þorleifr spaki persuades him to change her clothes and the underlying decay is revealed. Now the king awakes from his delusion and returns to the human world and his responsibilites as a ruler. Snow-White stories (AaTh 709) are found all over Europe but are especially frequent in Scandinavia.

Like father, like son. In ch. 32 Eiríkr blóðyx (whose mother was not Snæfríðr but Princess Ragnhildr of Jutland), twenty years old and with an eight-year record of harrying at sea, makes an expedition to the extreme North. Like his father, his men enter a gammi, a Lappish hut, and find a beautiful young woman, Gunnhildr. She claims to be from Helgeland and currently learning the skills of two fróðastir Finnar, wisest Lapps, who would both like to have her for a wife and who have killed all men who came anywhere near the hut; but she will hide Eiríkr's companions. This is a situation doubly reminiscent of folktales: the father/guardian who kills all potential suitors of a beautiful princess, and a protagonist having to obtain some life-saving substance and/or knowledge from the devil or some cannibalistic demon and being helped by a female relative of the ogre's (cf. AaTh 461: Three Hairs from the Devil's Beard). Gunnhildr assuages the murderous instincts of the returning Lapps by offering to share her bed with both of them; three times she tests the depth of their sleep, then ties them up in sealskin bags and has them killed by the Norsemen.

The magic Gunnhildr had learnt from the Lapps, and undoubtedly practiced in inducing a sleep so deep that it rendered even the magicians helpless, was to accompany her through life and act as an evil power in the lives of her husband Eiríkr and of her sons, who typically are called Gunnhildarsynir, sons of Gunnhildr, rather than Eiríkssynir. Famous in literature are her attempts, as a bird, to distract the captive Egill Skallagrímsson in York from composing the life-saving poem Höfuðlausn⁵, and in Heimskringla she is seen throughout as a baleful influence, with hints of black magic involved, although Snorri is cautious enough to present these as rumours rather than hard facts. It is well-known that Snorri does not normally pass, or even imply, moral judgment; but if anybody in Heimskringla is cast in the role of a villain, it is Gunnhildr. Not only are her sons an unsavoury lot, greedy and treacherous, but she is personally seen as engineering the death of rivals for her husband's or her sons' power. She has Hálfdan svarti the younger poisoned⁶, gets Grjótgarðr to betray his brother Sigurðr jarl so he can be burnt while at a party⁷, and even Hákon Aðalsteinfóstri's death is laid at her door, for the comparatively trivial wound in the upper arm he receives from a fleinn (large dart or small spear) thrown by Gunnhildr's servant Kispingr never stops bleeding⁸. Sigurðr jarl and Hákon Aðalsteinsfostri qualify as maybe the most unblemished chieftains in a ruthless age, and by the same token, Gunnhildr can be seen as the equivalent of the witch of fairytales.

Folk beliefs also surface in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, and again, Snorri shows some reticence in reporting them. In ch. 80, the King's return from his violent missionary expedition to Helgeland is described, and Snorri mentions stories of trolls and other evil spirits taunting the king and his men on the way; but he will, he says, rather write about Olaf's missionary activities⁹. True, he does not expressly throw doubts on such reports; he just states that he has other priorities. And there is one famous example when he cannot refrain from telling a similar incident where his own country comes into play. In ch. 33, King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark, since he is already in Nordmøre with his fleet, takes it into his head to punish the Icelanders for lampoons they had made about him. He asks a man who can change his shape to swim to Iceland and report on the lay of the land. The man does so in whale shape but is repelled by fierce land spirits appearing as all sorts of animals and giants every time he tries to approach land, so he advises against such an expedition upon his return. The story is authenticated by enumerating the names of settlers at all the points where the whale attempted to land: Brodd-Helgi in Vápnafjörðr, Eyjólfr Valgerðarson in Eyjafjörðr, Þórðr gellir in Breiðafjörðr, Þóroddr goði at Ölfus. One can see why Snorri, as a proud Icelander, could not leave such a story untold, but what did he think of the spying whale? Changing into a whale or similar creature is not uncommon in fornaldar sögur, the mythic-heroic sagas¹⁰, but hardly to be found in the (‘realistic’) Íslendiga sögur. Did Snorri take the whale story at face value or was he, just for once, writing tongue in cheek?

WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A KING

Taking a broad view, Norwegian history during most of the 10th and 11th centuries appears in Heimskringla more like a ritual or ballet than as a complex interplay of forces; undoubtedly this is the case because there were enough parallel occurrences to encourage such a structuring of events. The recurrent scenario is a young pretender from abroad, often having acquired glory and wealth in Viking raids, poised to wrest power from a ruler who has made enough mistakes to undermine his position, or who comes to an end through death in battle or from other causes. So we have Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri ousting Eiríkr blóðyx, Haraldr gráfeldr succeeding Hákon, Hakon jarl Sigurðarson supplanting first Haraldr gráfeldr, then defeating Ragnfröðr, Óláfr Tryggvason succeeding Hákon jarl, Eiríkr Hákonarson succeeding Óláfr Tryggvason, Óláfr digri succeeding Svein jarl Hákonarson, sending Eiríkr into exile and ousting Hákon jarl Eiríksson. The pattern is broken when Magnús góði shares power with Sveinn Álfífuson, but the latter soon fades out of the picture, so the effect is the same. The same applies to Haraldr harðráði becoming Magnús' co-regent; Magnús dies soon afterwards. As said before, there must have been sufficient occurrences of the kind to make this a plausible pattern, but there is also a resemblance with the folktale hero almost invariably arriving on the scene from abroad, achieving some great deed singlehandedly and ending up with the princess and half the kingdom, if not the whole. The Gunnhild sons are conspicuous by their absence from this list apart from Haraldr gráfeldr, who managed for a few years to establish himself as ruler of Norway by default so to say, being offered an open door by the dying Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri; despite their valour and energy, the brothers seemed to be ‘cursed’ by their descent.

While we can assume that the broad lines of events, once the pretender or successor sets foot in Norway to assume power, are rendered in accordance with an established body of existing traditions about the king in question, the period before his appearance on the home front is, if not a carte blanche for fantasy, at least more prone to fabulous accretion, both because of the comparative remoteness of the scene of those early lives and because of their relative obscurity. The amount of detail about the pre-Norwegian history of the rulers varies a great deal. For two of them, Óláfr Tryggvarson and Haraldr harðráði, we get a continuous story, and it is here that we may be reminded of other fabulous childhoods, usually those of cult heroes such as Joseph, the saviour from famine, Moses, the liberator, or Jesus, the founder of a new and, for the first time, universal religion. In Óláfr Tryggvason's case, it starts with a threatened and secret birth, as for Moses and Jesus, here in the wilderness of an uninhabited island. He is persecuted and exiled in early youth like Jesus, at an earlier age than Joseph and Moses. The Swede Þorsteinn hides the boy from his persecutors on a wooded island, as Vífill hides the brothers Hróar and Helgi in Hrólfs saga kraka. He is sold into slavery in Estonia as Joseph is in Egypt. His six-year stint of working for a farmer is paralleled by the seven years, subsequently doubled, that another Old Testament character in exile, Jacob, does for Laban. He is accidentally and almost miraculously recognized by a relative, here an uncle, while Joseph, believed dead by his brothers, recognizes them when they come to Egypt to buy wheat. His position at the court of the Russian king is not unlike that of Joseph at the Pharaoh's court. Other features, like 10-year old Óláfr avenging the killing of his fosterfather, is more in the saga tradition. Exile and a threat to his life, although of a passing nature only, also characterize Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri's childhood. He is of low birth, the son of a bondswoman, and if Harald Finehair sends him to England to be fostered by King Æthelstan, this is meant—and understood—as a taunt. Æthelstan's first reaction is, indeed, to kill him, but he is no King Herod, and later on the boy becomes his favourite¹¹. Another ambáttarsonr or woman slave's son growing up in exile, in Russia, is Magnús góði.

FABULOUS ADVENTURES

Haraldr harðráði's fabulous life abroad occurs at a later stage in his life. In contrast to Óláfr Tryggvason and Óláfr digri, whose fathers both died before they were born, he grows up normally and securely with parents, brothers and sisters. His period abroad starts at the age of fifteen, after the Battle of Stiklestad. So his adventures in the Eastern Mediterranean, which he reaches via Sweden and Russia, are more of the kind found in Icelandic sagas as accounts of Viking achievements a long way from home. We remember that there, too, verisimilitude tends to wane in proportion to the distance from home. So maybe young Harald's exploits are not all that extraordinary by those boasting standards: After commanding King Jaroslav's border troups in Russia, he takes service with the Empress Zoë in Constantinople. All Norse troops want to be under his command, and by various means he manages to shake off his Greek commander-general (which has been interpreted as an ‘Icelandic’ unwillingness to submit to authority). He harries in Africa and in Sicily, conquers four strong cities, scores eighteen victories, and even subjects the Holy Land. He is imprisoned by Zoë when he wishes to leave for home, is freed by a powerful lady upon the intervention, in a dream, of his by now saintly half-brother, he blinds the sleeping Emperor, breaks out of Constantinople and takes his immense riches to the Russian court, where he marries the King's daughter. Snorri goes to some trouble asserting the veracity of his account, apart from quoting a variety of skalds. In ch. 9 he invokes the eyewitness account of Halldórr Snorrason, in ch. 13 he refers to reports of Væringjar, members of the Imperial Guard, coming north as to the truth of the Empress Zoë wanting Harald as her husband¹², and at the end of ch. 14 he stresses that the blinding of the Emperor Michael Kalaphates by Harald was attested both by different skalds and by Harald's own testimony and that of his companions at the time.

That a foreign soldier of fortune was used for such a purpose is not unlikely, for those were indeed confused and violent times in Constantinople, as Sigfús Blöndal has documented¹³. The campaign in Sicily, with the conquest of four fortified cities, may have attracted some tall tales. That the Norsemen should gain entry by digging a subterraneous passage is not in itself unlikely; more often it is used as a means of escaping from captivity. But that the intruders should surface in the middle of a banquet, sounds very much like a storyteller's point. Scholars are not in agreement whether it is possible to set a city on fire by tying burning sticks to captured birds. Carlo Santini pointed out¹⁴ that this device is used no less than three times in Gesta Danorum, the third time by Fridlevus at the siege of Dublin, which would seem to indicate that it is a wandering story. One of the conquests has a touch of comedy, namely the Trojan horse trick variant used in ch. 10, where Harald feigns death, the Norsemen ask for permission to bury their general in town, and churches and monasteries compete for the honour in anticipation of rich rewards. At the right moment, the lures are blown, the swords come out, and now the clerics who were eagerest to be near Harald run fastest to save their lives.

FOLKTALE MOTIFS

The fabulous element, as the discussion has shown, appears not so much in sequences of events as in details. Diana Whaley, in a couple of paragraphs on folktale influence¹⁵, mentions half a dozen possible instances, but her list is by no means exhaustive.

Maybe the best-known folktale element in Heimskringla is Harald's vow not to cut or comb his hair until he is sole ruler of all Norway (Haralds saga hárfagra, ch. 4); Snorri introduces it as a reaction to Gyða Eiríksdóttir's haughty response to his courtship. Such vows, with varying things to be achieved before the scissors may touch a person's hair, are well attested since classical antiquity¹⁶, which does not mean they must be purely literary; just as literary motifs do not originate without a substratum in reality, reality can imitate literature. One real instance in recent times was the Danish teacher and patriot Hans Mikkelsen Tofte (1825-1917), who was so aggrieved by the loss of Slesvig in 1864 that he vowed he would not cut his hair until the Danish-speaking Slesvigers would be reunited with Denmark; although he lived to the ripe age of 92, he missed the fulfilment of his wish by three years.

There is another choosy Gyða, Óláfr kvárans sister, widowed in England, who, in true folktale fashion, arranges for an assembly of suitors to choose from. She is not as intellectually arrogant as Turandot (AaTh 851) or as contemptuous of the suitors' looks as the princess in King Thrushbeard (AaTh 900) but with good sense goes straight for Olaf Tryggvason as her best bet, which rids her of the importune Alvini and saves her from becoming a tamed shrew like her sisters in folktale analogues and in Shakespeare¹⁷.

As mentioned in connection with Haraldr hárfagri's conquest of Sicilian cities, these folktale stories of tricks and cunning often have a humorous element. That is certainly also true of what might be called a fótajafnaðr, a competitive comparison of feet, in Óláfs saga helga (ch. 85), when the contest to find a foot even uglier than Þórarinn Nesjólfsson's extremely ugly foot is won by Þórarinn when he produces his other foot. Bo Almqvist has found Irish analogues of this story¹⁸, and it fits in well with Norse traditions of riddles and mannjafnaðr, competitive comparison of men.

Another form of trickery or cunning known from folktales involves the protagonist being called upon by brothers or heirs to act as umpire in a dispute and managing to get the loot for himself. That is how Sîvrit, in the Nibelungenlied, acquires the treasure, and that is how St. Olaf establishes his hold over the Orkneys when Brúsi and Þorfinnr cannot agree who should have Einarr's share¹⁹. Again, such a constellation need not be seen as a mark of fiction; it was probably common enough in real life.

TRIADS

One of the most common features of folktales is the prominence of the number three in structuring a tale or an episode: a third brother succeeds, a third attempt produces a result, as with Gunnhildr putting the Lapps to sleep. If it is a matter of brothers, it is invariably the youngest who measures up to the task. So it comes as no surprise that when St. Olaf tests his step-brothers in ch. 76, the two older ones are easily intimidated and show ambitions to be successful farmers (like their father, Sigurðr sýr), whereas the youngest, the future Haraldr harðráði at age 3, shows himself promising royal material by being fearless, playing with woodchips representing warships, and wishing for a large number of housecarls under his command.

The tripartite structure does not have to follow the pattern ‘2 failures + 1 success’ but can be three variants of the same outcome. In Rogaland there is strong opposition to Óláfr Tryggvason's campaign to impose Christianity. The farmers get organized and ask their three best speakers to reject Óláfr's proposal at the assembly as ólog (breaking of the law). But when the time comes the first is seized by a fit of coughing, the second by stammering, and the third is so hoarse that he cannot be heard. This is, then, a triple variant of the story type Pagan disputant with Christian struck dumb (Mot. V 352; the sources there given are English and Spanish).

In Óláfs saga helga, there is in ch. 94 a very formal double triad as part of the friðgerðarsaga, a story of peacemaking, when King Olof skötkonung of Sweden is finally forced into a reconciliation with St. Olaf. The lawman Emundr from Skara tells a sequence of three parables, about a hunter losing all his skins while chasing one squirrel, about a Viking losing his own warship after capturing four merchant ships because he chases after a fifth, and about a law suit over property in which the mightier party disregarded the settlement. These are interpreted the next day by three of the king's councillors symmetrically called Arviðr the blind, Þorviðr the stammerer and Freyviðr the deaf. Lars Lönnroth calls their physical disabilities ‘fruits of old age and wisdom’²⁰ and consistently calls them the “old brothers”, but Snorri does not specify their age. Rather, these defects might be associated with the idea of appearances being deceptive and an unpromising-looking person—a Tom Thumb, a ‘coal biter’ or male Cinderella—turning out smarter than people without any handicaps.

Before Haraldr harðráði's departure to England, which was to lead to his being killed in the Battle of York, three ominous dreams spell an evil outcome; in the first two, a troll woman speaks a verse against a suitable background—birds of battle on every ship, a wolf with a body in his mouth—; in the third, St. Olaf himself warns his brother in a lausavísa, a skaldic stanza. Snorri adds that many other dreams and portents were then mentioned, but it is in keeping with folk narrative conventions that only three are described²¹.

A ritualized three-step sequence also characterizes the overcoming of King Magnús berfœttr's garrison on Kållandsö in Lake Vänern. King Ingi of Sweden, while resolved not to tolerate this Norwegian bridgehead in Västergötland, is trying to minimize hostilities. He waits until the lake is solidly frozen, then offers the Norwegians free departure with all their booty. When their commander replies that the Norwegians would not let themselves be driven away like a herd of cattle from a pasture, Ingi moves his troops to the island and still offers the Norwegians free departure with all their equipment, but without the booty. When this is rejected, too, he attacks the fort and sets it alight, and when the Norwegians sue for armistice, they have to leave their weapons and upper garments behind, and each man is hit with a stick as he is leaving²².

One of the two Norwegian commanders thus humiliated, Finnur Skoftason, also figures in my last tripartite story. Skofti Ögmundarson and his three sons have been faithful supporters of King Magnús but at a later stage, there is some disagreement with the King about an inheritance to which they are entitled. In ch. 17-19, their attempts to obtain their right are described. They plead their case before the king, first the father, then Finnr, then Ögmundr, who had secured the king's survival after a defeat by putting his doublet on and thus detracting his pursuers, but the king remains stubborn. After that, Skofti and his sons leave Norway and sail to Italy. What about the third son, Þórdr, who in ch. 20 is said to have lived longest of them and died in Sicily? There was, narratively speaking, simply no room for him after three parallel actions had been undertaken.

Notes

1. Bagge, S.: Society and Politics in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla. Berkeley 1991.

2. “En þó er miklu fleira óritat hans frægðarverka. Kømr til þess ófrœði vár ok þat annat, at vér viljum eigi setja á bœkr vitnislausar sogur. Þótt vér hafim heyrt rœður eða getit fleira hluta, þá þykkir oss heðan í frá betra, at við sé aukit, en þetta sama þurfi ór at taka” (Heimskringla 3, 119). All quotations are taken from: Snorri Sturluson: Heimskringla 1-3 (Íslenzk Fornrit 26-28). ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Reykjavík 1941/45/51.

3. Aarne, A./Thompson, S.: The Types of the Folktale. Second Revision (FF Communications 184). Helsinki 1964; cf. Ellis, H. M.: Fostering by Giants in Old Norse Sagas. In: Medium Aevum 10 (1942) 70-85, on the youth of Harald Finehair 79-81.

4. Boberg, I. M.: Motif-Index of Early Icelandic Literature (Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana 27). Copenhagen 1966.

5. Egils saga Skallagrímsonar, ch. 59.

6. Haralds saga hárfagra, ch. 41.

7. Haralds saga gráfeldar, ch. 5.

8. Hákonar saga góða, ch. 31-32.

9. “[…] ok varð í þeiri ferð mart þat, er í frásogn er fœrt, er tröll ok illar véttir glettusk við menn hans ok stundum við hann sjálfan. En vér viljum heldr rita um þá atburði, er Óláfr konungr kristnaði Nóreg […]” (Heimskringla 1, 328). Later popular tradition has ascribed these dealings with the trolls of Northern Norway to Olaf Tryggvason's more famous namesake St. Olaf, see Jonsson, B. R./Solheim, S./Danielson, E., in collaboration with M. Nolsøe/W. Edson: The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad. Oslo 1978, E 116.

10. Strömbäck, D.: Sejd (Nordiska texter och undersökningar 5). Stockholm/København 1935, 164.

11. Ch. 39: “Konungr varð reiðr mjok og greip til sverðs, er var hjá honum, ok brá, svá sem hann vildi drepa sveininn”; ch. 40: “Aðalsteinn konungr unni honum svá mikit, mera en ollum frændum sínum” (Heimskringla 1, 145).

12. “Svá hafa sagt Væringjar norðr hingat, þeir er verit hafa i Miklagarði à mála, at sú sogn væri þar hofð af fróðum monnum, at Zóe dróttning vildi sjálf hafa Harald sér til manns” (Heimskringla 3, 85).

13. Blöndal, S.: The Varangians of Byzantium: an Aspect of Byzantine Military History. Revised ed. B. S. Benedikz. Cambridge 1978.

14. Santini, C.: Intelligenza, astuzia e stratagemmi nei Gesta Danorum. In: id. (ed.): Saxo Grammaticus: Tra storiografia e letteratura (I Convegni di Classicanorroena 1). Roma 1992, 293-316, here 305 sq.

15. Whaley, D.: Heimskringla: An Introduction. London 1991, 80 sq.

16. cf. Thompson, S.: Motif-Index of Folk Literature 5. Copenhagen 1957, M 121.

17. Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, ch. 32; Heimskringla 1, 267-269.

18. Almqvist, B.: The Uglier Foot (AT 1559 B*). An Anecdote in Old Icelandic Literature and Its Counterpart in Irish Folk-Tradition. In: Béaloideas 37-38 (1969-70) 1-50 (reprinted in: Viking Ale. ed. E. Ní Dhuibhne-Almqvist/S. Ó Catháin. Aberystwyth 1991, 82-113).

19. Óláfs saga helga, ch. 100-101.

20. Lönnroth, L.: Ideology and Structure in Heimskringla. In: Parergon 15 (1976) 16-29, passage quoted: 27.

21. Haralds saga harðráða, ch. 80-82; “Margir aðrir draumar váru þá sagðir ok annars konar fyrirburðir ok flestir daprligir” (Heimskringla 3, 178).

22. Magnúss saga berfœtts, ch. 13.