And so the calendar turns once more to my favorite time of year - a time known by many names. Autumn,
fall, spooky season - whatever the title, this time is well known for its crisp nighttime
breezes, its picturesque cloud-covered moons, and its ghost stories. And while
there are many fantastic tales to choose from, today let’s talk about an icelandic saga with
many a ghoul and ghost to its name. Today we recount the Saga of Grettir The Strong.
Now for context, while the term “saga” has been kind of… watered down in recent centuries, sagas
originally described icelandic and scandinavian historical narratives, moderately to severely
fictionized and written in prose. They were mostly a middle-ages thing and tended to describe family
histories and events from a few centuries earlier, often from right around the time
Iceland was originally settled. Most well-known sagas are “family sagas” focusing on genealogical
and familial history, like a multigenerational biography. Consequently, they are dry as hell.
The purpose of these sagas is not to lay out a bold and daring carefully-paced narrative of
adventure and glory, it’s to document generations of dudes doing stuff. These dudes are typically
not heroic bastions of power and chivalry, but just guys. But luckily for us, the Saga of Grettir
is mostly about one dude, especially if we skip over the first and last several chapters that are
not about that dude - a luxury I did not have, but one that I will graciously extend to all of you.
Practically speaking, the Saga of Grettir begins with Grettir’s birth,
which you’d think would be a sensible starting point but somehow there are thirteen chapters
before this. Grettir is the second son of one Asmund Longhair and is a textbook problem child.
Super strong and very antisocial with a habit of getting into fights about a whole lot of nothing,
Grettir’s mom likes him okay but his dad ain’t jazzed about his prospects.
Grettir’s messing-things-up career takes a bold leap forward when he’s sent to a Thing - technical
term for a big important meeting - in his father’s place on account of being generally useless enough
that his presence won’t be missed on the family farm. Grettir heads to the Thing with a bunch of
other guys, but crisis strikes when they wake up one morning to find their horses scattered
and their food depleted. A very hangry Grettir accuses one of his travel companions of theft,
who responds to the allegations with an axe, so Grettir kills him. Barely a day
out from home and Grettir has committed his first murder! They grow up so fast.
Grettir claims Skeggi was killed by a troll - which the others find dubious at best - and
Grettir eventually owns up to the murder, earning himself a three-year banishment. To prep him,
Grettir’s mother gives him a sword that belonged to her grandfather, and Grettir sets off on a ship
to his future exile, which - spoiler alert - will basically be the entire rest of the story. On the
voyage he proceeds to do absolutely nothing to keep the ship running until one fateful
night the ship springs a leak, which Grettir singlehandedly and superhumanly rectifies for the
sole purpose of impressing a lady, saving the ship - until it hits a rock and fully sinks anyway.
Fortunately they’re not too far from an island off the coast of Norway, and a local rich dude
named Thorfinn helps out the sailors. The rest of the crew head south out of the story but Grettir
sticks around, mostly because Thorfinn is too nice to kick him out. Grettir spends his days
hanging out with the local farmers being generally unhelpful, until one night he notices a huge fire
in the distance. He asks a farmer about it, who tells him that the flame is the result of
a haunting. Thorfinn’s deceased father, Kar the Old, haunts his burial mound. Grettir decides
this will not stand and heads to the barrow to dig his way in. He tunnels down into a burial
chamber full of riches and the remains of the grave goods Kar was buried with, and then he’s
attacked by what is presumably what’s left of Kar the Old. They have a furious wrestling match that
smashes up the entire barrow and Grettir manages to cut off the monster’s head. He digs himself out
with the treasure and heads back to Thorfinn to let him know that he killed his dad’s ghost and
dug up his grave goods, a fact that Thorfinn is shockingly okay with, all things considered, and
he thanks Grettir for returning his treasure to him. Grettir asks if he can have the cool sword he
found in the grave and Thorfinn says if he wants to make that happen he’ll have to prove himself.
Fortunately Grettir gets his chance in short order, as one day when Thorfinn is out on
business, Grettir notices a small ship pull into harbor and a bunch of dudes pile out,
steal Thorfinn’s boat and tell Grettir they’re here for revenge on Thorfinn,
which Grettir cheerfully accepts and happily guides them to the house where he’s a model host,
getting them blackout drunk and partying with them for hours. Then he guides them to a large wooden
outhouse and slams the door, barricading them in. He sprints back to the house and asks the at this
point very displeased lady of the house if she has any weapons he can borrow, and she catches
on - this whole thing has been a ploy by Grettir to catch the outlaws off guard. She gears him
up in the armor and weapons of Kar the Old and Grettir heads out to fight them. The battle is
surprisingly even, since even though Grettir is the only one with armor or weapons the outlaws
are all berserkers and they do outnumber him, but after a long and taxing fight he manages to kill
them all. He heads back to the house, stiff and exhausted, and the lady of the house lavishes him
with praise and rewards for saving them, though at this point he just wants a nap and an ice pack.
When Thorfinn returns he of course honors Grettir as highly as he can to thank him for saving his
wife and loved ones, and Grettir makes a lifelong ally - as well as getting that shiny sword he
wanted! Bonus! Man, this heroism thing is easy! Word of Grettir’s valor begins to spread, so by
the time he leaves in the spring he has no trouble finding somewhere else to crash. The seasons turn,
Grettir wanders around a bit, fights a giant bear just to spite a guy named Bjorn, wanders around
some more - this is going to become a theme - and eventually crosses paths with Bjorn again.
He demands a fight and threatens to make chicken noises and call Bjorn a weenie if he refuses,
so Bjorn accepts - and dies. And it turns out murder can have inconvenient consequences, because
Bjorn’s brother Hjarrandi demands vengeance for the killing. He even refuses weregilt, literally
man-price, which is a carefully-calculated tally of how much gold you would have to pay as
compensation for killing someone. Very efficient, if a bit macabre. Unfortunately for Grettir,
Hjarrandi has the local jarl on his side, who demands Grettir pay up his weregilt
and get out of his jurisdiction immediately, so with his original three-year exile over,
Grettir returns to Iceland, famed and glorified for his many feats of strength.
And if this were anything other than an icelandic saga, this is where we’d end the story! But nope,
we gotta watch this hero’s journey turn into a trainwreck. Grettir’s back in Iceland and
has picked up a touch of the ol’ hubris, picking fights and relitigating old childhood grievances
left and right. He briefly crosses over with another Icelandic saga, “the saga of the
Heath-Slayings” when he runs into this dude Bardi who’s gathering allies to prepare for a personal
quest for revenge. Grettir is always eager to bust some heads and volunteers, but Bardi’s
foster-father Thorarin tells him that Grettir is hot-headed and arrogant and inviting him along
would be asking for trouble, so they ditch and go do the plot of their own saga without him.
So basically this bit is Grettir being rejected from the Icelandic equivalent of the argonauts.
Fortunately Grettir will have plenty more opportunities for hubris-fueled downfalls soon,
as there’s a ghost story in the making nearby. A wealthy dude, Thorhall, keeps finding his
livestock dead, and concludes that his field is haunted by some kind of monster. On the
recommendation of a local seer, Thorhall hires this dude Glam, who makes the rookie
mistake of smack-talking the Christian god in a post-Christianized narrative and after spending
yuletide out in the fields rather than fasting like a good boy, he turns up the next morning
brutally murdered, having successfully killed the unnamed monster threatening the fields,
but immediately taking its place, haunting his impromptu burial ground, stalking the valley,
hammering on rooftops, slaughtering livestock and driving the locals mad. The region is
largely abandoned as Glam terrorizes the area, killing Thorhall’s daughter and murdering any
livestock unlucky enough to be left behind. Grettir learns about this haunting and obviously
jumps at the chance to punch a ghost, and despite being warned that this is a very bad idea Grettir
heads to Thorhall’s place to scope out the sitch. The first two nights Glam exercises commendable
self-restraint, only brutally murdering Grettir’s horse, but on night number three Glam tears up the
roof and then slips into the hall, now revealed to be hideously distorted and monstrously huge.
Grettir launches himself at him and the ghost-wrestling begins! The entire hall is
wrecked in the process and they struggle for a while before Grettir launches Glam through the
door, smashing the whole wall to splinters. The wounded Glam stares up at the moon and
strikes Grettir with a curse - while he can’t take Grettir’s tremendous strength away from him,
he can do all kinds of other horrible stuff. Glam declares that Grettir will never be stronger than
he is right now - it’ll be all downhill from here. On top of that, instead of winning fame and glory,
his great deeds will all turn sour and foster hatred and rejection for him. Plus,
for bonus spice, Glam’s nightmarish eyes will haunt him forever, and Grettir’s life
will become a steady downward spiral of torment and isolation until he eventually dies alone.
Grettir manages to shake off his bone-deep terror long enough to cut off Glam’s head,
winning heroic fame and glorious rewards one final time. But Glam’s curse is no joke. Grettir can
feel his temper getting worse, he’s more impatient and reckless than he was before, and - as a new
addition - he’s developed a fear of the dark, because in the night Glam’s eyes haunt him and he
sees specters and visions that aren’t there. The narrator helpfully informs us that this is the
etymological root of the word glamour, which is pretty cool, albeit cold comfort for Grettir.
Unfortunately Grettir’s downfall begins pretty much immediately. Word on the street is that the
new King Olaf is taking all comers with unique skills to form his own little posse of the round
table, and obviously this appeals to Grettir, whose ghost-punching and super strength would
make valuable assets to any king. Grettir starts making his way to the court of King Olaf but it’s
winter in scandinavia so it’s cold and miserable, and after fording an icy river to get fire he
breaks into a house and, in his iced-over state, is mistaken for a troll. In the ensuing scuffle
the house burns down with everyone inside. Among them are unfortunately the two sons of this dude
Thorir who is the kind of well-respected pillar of the community that makes people really upset
with whoever accidentally murders his kids, so word of Grettir’s clumsy manslaughtering spreads
like wildfire, overtaking all his previous ghost-punching goodwill. Grettir’s arrival
at King Olaf’s court doesn’t help, as Grettir’s temper sabotages his attempt to clear his name
and he’s deemed far too much of a liability for the king to take into his service. Bummer!
Grettir leaves, and despite a few more heroic victories, forces are moving against him - the
terrible forces of the consequences of his own actions. See, on the way to King Olaf’s,
Grettir casually killed this rude dude Thorbjorn Slowcoach for making fun of him, and this really
upset Thorbjorn Slowcoach’s brother, Thorbjorn Oxmain. I swear this book is like 50% legal
battles, 40% dudes named “thor something”, 10% ghost-punching. Anyway, Thorbjorn Oxmain wants
revenge on Grettir and his family and, after a few scuffles, kills Grettir’s brother Atli.
Meanwhile at that year’s All-Thing, Thorir petitions to have Grettir exiled to be an
outlaw again to pay for the death of his sons, which is a bit unkosher because Grettir isn’t
even there to defend himself, but the sentence passes and Grettir is exiled in absentia. Grettir
learns this when he returns to Iceland, where he finds his father and brother dead, his mother
facing potential eviction and a price on his head. Regardless, he promises his mother he’ll
help balance the scales. But killing Thorbjorn Oxmain, while satisfying, doesn’t help with
his outlaw situation. With his brother avenged and the price on his head only getting higher,
Grettir bids his mother farewell and enters the part of the saga I affectionally refer to as
“the great couch surf.” Grettir spends the next twenty chapters bouncing from place to place,
sometimes relying on the hospitality of the friends he made before being outlawed,
sometimes getting taken in by kind strangers, sometimes just camping out in the wilderness.
He does assorted acts of banditry and winds up with the biggest bounty in history on his head
because that Thorir guy just hates him so much. Anyway a few cool things happen during the Great
Couch Surf - Thorir starts sending full-on paid assassins after Grettir, who bounces between an
assortment of fun bandit lairs like a cabin he builds himself, a very defensible cave in
a mountain, and a glacier-lined valley ruled by a friendly giant - confusingly ALSO named
Thorir - that’s straight-up idyllic. It’s kept magically temperate year round by a volcanic
hot spring, it’s absolutely full of sheep, Thorir has a bunch of daughters Grettir gets along with,
the valley’s completely hidden and nobody attacks him - and then, and this is not a joke,
he gets bored and leaves. Sorry Grettir, from now on I officially have no sympathy for you.
Grettir starts traveling in disguise so Thorir - the dude, not the giant - won’t send more
assassins after him, and it’s under these circumstances that he hears about another fun
monster-slaying opportunity! An estate currently belonging to this lady Steinvor has been attacked
two yuletides in a row by some sort of troll that carried off her husband and later a servant.
Grettir offers to help out and house-sit while she goes to yuletide mass, and he even carries her and
her daughter across the icy river so they can get to church on time. Then he heads back to the
estate just in time for a huge troll-woman to turn up. They have a classic Grettir-style fight that
smashes up the whole building, and Grettir manages to slice off her arm before she can pull him into
the river. She books it into the waterfall, and when Grettir dives in he finds a monstrous
giant - not the troll lady, which is confusing, but long story short he kills it, retrieves a
bunch of treasure as well as the bones of the two dead guys and heads back. Grettir, having
officially exorcised the area by force, spends the winter in peace until Thorir catches wind of his
location and goes back to sending assassins. Grettir is directed to maybe try camping out
on the island of Drangey, which is extremely defensible due to being surrounded on all sides by
cliffs and only being accessible via a ladder. The problem is Grettir is still haunted by Glam’s eyes
which makes it very unpleasant for him to spend the nights alone, so even if he does camp out
on Drangey he’ll need some company. The solution comes when he briefly returns home to visit his
mother, and his young brother Illugi, now fifteen, volunteers to join him in exile to keep him
company. Grettir is very grateful and their mother cheerfully sends them on their way with some
pocket money and a prophecy of shared doom. Uh oh! They head north to Drangey, picking up a dude
called Glaum along the way, and reach the island pretty easily. There’s just one problem: Drangey,
while uninhabited, is co-owned by about twenty different people, and they all hate
each other - but not as much as they now hate Grettir for taking their island and all the
stuff on it. The responsibility for getting rid of Grettir is claimed by one Thorbjorn Angle,
whose plan for dealing with Grettir seems to boil down to asking him nicely to leave. While
Thorbjorn Angle frets, Grettir continues to do his thing - you know, wrestling dudes, showing
off his prodigious strength by swimming from the island to the mainland just to retrieve some fire
and more accurately prove he can, stuff like that. Meanwhile, more super fun legal battles happen and
the crew at the All-Thing decree that Grettir can only be in exile for one more year, so Thorbjorn
Angle now officially has a deadline on when he has to kill Grettir or he’ll lose his shares
of the island, so in desperation he goes to his foster-mother Thurid for help, who is conveniently
a deviously evil witch with a sorcerous scheme to destroy Grettir. When Thorbjorn goes back for
about round six of Asking Grettir Nicely To Leave, Thurid comes along and throws a quick
curse Grettir’s way, which he takes very well and only responds by chucking a huge rock at her and
breaking her leg. That’s okay, her vengeance is already in the works! She finds a huge treetrunk,
ensorcels it with bloody runes and has the lads shove it into the sea, at which point it beelines
for Drangey and floats invitingly around the island, looking like oh-so-tempting firewood.
Grettir knows better than to use that extremely suspicious firewood and keeps shoving it back
out to see, but Glaum - remember Glaum? this is the only reason he’s important - doesn’t realize
the danger and uses it for firewood, and when Grettir goes out to chop up said firewood his axe
bounces off the log and severely injures his knee. The injury is both physically nasty and magically
cursed and Grettir becomes weaker and weaker, and Thorbjorn takes this chance to wrangle up
a posse and storm the island. Glaum then does his second and final important contribution to
the plot by forgetting to raise the one ladder that keeps the bad guys from invading the island
and sure enough Thorbjorn and co swarm the place. Grettir’s brother Illugi fights so valiantly that
Thorbjorn and friends can’t help but compliment him at every turn, but when they reach Grettir
they find he’s actually already dead - his injury got him before they could. Thorbjorn
takes his head to claim his bounty, which everyone thinks is rather gauche, and amicably negotiates
with Illugi about killing him now to forestall another tedious revenge plotline. But uh oh!
Thorir catches wind of the fact that Grettir was killed by evil sorcery, and that means he doesn’t
want to pay that bounty he promised! Be still my heart, is it time for another legal dispute???
No! We are not doing this! The Saga of Grettir is over! Sure there’s a follow-up where his
half-brother Thorsteinn Dromund avenges him but we’re good, all right? We’re good! We don’t need
another edition of Thorvald Asgeir: Ace Attorney! As his story comes to a close let’s celebrate the
life of Grettir the Strong - warrior, outlaw, ghost-puncher, and by far his own worst enemy.