Last Blog: Favorite Character

I believe one of my favorite characters in all the sagas we've read was Ofeig, Odd's father. I thought he was a very noble man, and cunning too. While we begin the Saga of the Confederates not knowing much about Ofeig and why he dislikes his son so, when we read on, we see Ofeig showing his true, quite admirable, colors. I personally did not have much respect for Ofeig at first seeing as he did not give his son the proper attention he deserved and allowed their relationship to become estranged. However, when Odd is grown and successful, he is cheated and subject to loose all of his wealth simply because of a small loophole in the law and a couple exploitative and greedy landowners. When this happens, Ofeig really comes through, he puts aside this grudge he has held and lets go of his ego to not only stand up for his son at the Althing, but also take many risks to cunningly go about and deal with other powerful men to hopefully sway their opinions in favor of Odd. In the end he is successful and there is a happy ending with the reuniting of father and son.

The Saga of Ref the Sly

My initial response after reading this saga was that it was incredibly entertaining. The storyline was very easy to follow since there were few tangents and it flowed at a relatively fast pace forward throughout. I agree that this saga seems to have more of an influence from continental European literature, mainly in the sense that it included a character which was very strongly portrayed as the protagonist, which contrasts with other Icelandic sagas. I found Ref very easy to relate to and I found myself hoping for his wellbeing throughout the saga. While he may have been rather harsh about compensating for losses and wrongdoings against him, I felt like he behaved very rationally and never acted unprovoked. Whenever Ref planned his vengeance, he made sure he had accommodate for his family's safe keeping first, which I found very admirable.
Also, I did think that this saga seemed a lot more romantic than other sagas which are much more cut-and-dry. There was certainly an element of fantasy in the great feats that Ref achieves as well as in his sort of Cinderella story where he transforms from a useless lump to a heroic and talented individual. Also, the happy ending for the protagonist seemed rather romantic and more similar to other European works than Icelandic/Viking sagas to me.
I did think it a little strange that the King seemed to have a good deal of respect for Ref but after he was influenced by Bard, he immediately lost that respect and even gave Bard advice on how to potentially defeat Ref, despite the fact that he thought Ref was innocent. The King seemed like such an intelligent man, one who would appreciate Ref's cleverness and ingenious instead of making him a target and enemy of the state.

The Vinland Sagas

While it was highly impressive to learn about the great seafaring skills displayed by numerous voyages into uncharted territory that these Vikings bravely made, what I found most noteworthy about these two sagas was how each compared to one another. They seemed to me to be the same tale simply highlighting the adventures of different characters for the most part. Though, while many of the descriptions and characters appeared in both sagas, there were noticeable differences in the telling of this story of North American discovery. One example of this is in the simple event described where Eirik is riding down to join Leif on his journey and is injured. In The Saga of the Greenlanders, Eirik injures his foot in the fall and interprets this as a sign that he should not embark on the voyage, sending his son off alone. In Eirik the Red's Saga, Eirik hurts his ribs and shoulder which signifies that hiding away some of his wealth while he is gone was a poor idea and so he tells his wife to remove it from the hiding place and leaves on the journey to Vinland nevertheless. Another noteworthy discrepancy is in the portrayal of Freydis. While she is certainly described as being strong-willed and harshly critical in both tellings, The Saga of the Greenlanders portrays her as a much more manipulative, demanding, and overbearing than in Eirik the Red's Saga.
While these discrepancies may seem miniscule and insignificant, there are certainly enough of them to inspire curiosity about the way sagas are written down and how reliable they are as historical insights. Can the discrepancies simply be chalked up to translational errors or were there simply many versions of the same story circulating? To me, it seems that the Vinland Sagas just goes to show how one story, because of various versions in the oral tradition, can take such different forms. Because of the oral tradition in the culture, it seems that stories must have evolved through time, perhaps become more extravagant or had more influence from Christianity. These are only two of the versions and it is stated in the introduction that there were several others both preceding and following these two. It makes you wonder how different those versions might be from the two in this book. Would they differentiate significantly more the further they are from the original chronologically? What other sagas have we read that have other versions that might differ noticeably from those we are now familiar with?

Egil's Saga Part II

What stood out to me about the life of Egil was how much loyalty and keeping one's word was valued by everyone, especially Egil. While sometimes it seemed that Egil was acting rashly or else displaying the "shape shifting" traits of his father and grandfather, almost always, he was really acting to protect, avenge, or help someone he was very loyal to. In this respect, it was rather amazing to see how long Egil's friendship with Arinbjorn lasted.
Another thing I noticed was the complexity of Egil's array of emotions. While some of his decisions (especially in his younger years) seemed rather immature and rash, we are shown throughout the sagas how wise and talented Egil is. And while he has the capacity to kill many people in cold blood while on raids, he still retains the fundamental human emotions which cause him to mourn the death of his sons.
Finally, a characteristic of Egil's life which I noticed was how Stigma and rivalry can be passed down through the generations. While both Thorolfs attempted to resolve the feud between their family and the royalty of Norway, they perished in the attempt which only served to intensify the stigma towards the other. I have to wonder if, after he has lost his sons as well, Egil still believed that the feud was worth it?

Egil's Saga: Part I

Firstly, I wanted to note that I found it rather strange that Egil was not even introduced until 50 pages into the saga, such was the extent of the background story of how the feud began between his family and King Harald. While other sagas generally give a more brief overview of preceding events, Egil's Saga went very in depth, seeming to accentuate the significance of the roots of this feud that is passed through the generations.
I noticed that Egil and all of his kin were portrayed as very noble, righteous men with strong morals as well as physique. They seem to be very prosperous and good leaders who can accomplish most anything they might put their minds to. Because of this those like Thorolf are taken advantage of or slandered by those less industrious and successful. Also, it seems as though in every generation of Egil's family, of the two sons born, one is strong and handsome in appearance while the other is talented, but described as being rather ugly.
As a side note, I was wondering if when the saga states that Egil and his brother, Thorolf, were sprinkled with water if that was a reference to Christianity and baptism?

Prologue to Prose Edda

What struck me most about this piece was the incredibly close resemblance to the creation story in Genesis. The prologue differed so greatly from anything else we have read, even from those written after the saga age, mainly because the blatant conversion to Christianity. This prologue seems to be an adaptation of the biblical story meant to relate more to the Scandinavians than the original text. It takes on a very historical and educated air when explaining not only how God made earth, but also how people migrated and paganism arose.
I found it interesting that Snorri made room for the pagans in his account and how he did not demean them or call them heathens, he simply portrayed them as a people who, over time, strove to find meaning in life and thus found God again. The mapping of the different philosophies was intriguing in that it was delivered very matter of factly and showed a very logical progression. And finally, I thought it was worth noting how Troy was not only mentioned in this prologue, but it seemed to be an integral part of this historical story.

The Saga of the Confederates

Despite having been pointed out in the intro, I thought that it was rather evident that this saga was written after the designated, traditional Saga Age. One clue to this is that the Saga of the Confederates has very few episodes and is fundamentally based around a sole sequence of events, which differs from previous sagas which often include many tangent stories and semi-superfluous background information. Another hint is that there are hardly any allusions to pagan rituals or beliefs and also, the Christmas holiday is mentioned, indicating that Christianity had been accepted and infused into Icelandic culture by the time this saga took place. Also, this saga was written rather satirically and with a slightly sarcastic sense of humor, which differs greatly from the other, more straight-forward sagas. Finally, I found that the system of law in this saga to be much more detailed and procedural. Generally, cases brought to the Althing in other sagas seemed to be mainly a popularity contest in which all forms of cheating and bribery were common place. In this saga, however, we are shown that the law is much more strictly defined to the extent that people could find loopholes in the judicial process in order to manipulate the law.
As a side note, I found it rather funny that once Ospak was outlawed, Odd simply stood up and announced to the people around him this new decision and gave a pretty vague description of Ospak which I thought could easily have described half the Icelandic men in that day. I simply thought it a strange way of following through on a such a formal court sentancing.