The Sagas of the Icelanders (126 page)

*
The edited Iceland text reads ‘ride after them’. This may be an error; there is no indication that Hunrod was with his brother at this point.

*
Perhaps a reference to Ulfhedin’s journey to the duelling place early in this chapter; if so the significance of Ulfhedin’s recollection seems unclear.

*
The byname Manvitsbrekka is thought to suggest wisdom.

*
Thorstein was also known by his byname ‘the Red’.

*
The addition of an extra week to the summer season was an attempt to readjust the calendar to fit the solar seasons. As the settlers of Iceland had only fifty-two weeks to a year, or 364 days, their calendar was a day and a quarter short of the proper length. As the calendar and solar seasons became more and more out of joint, the idea of adding an extra week every six years in compensation was adopted.

*
Brightly dyed woollen material. The original
skarlat
is somewhat deceptive as the cloth could be red, but also dark brown, blue, grey or even white.

*
Wearing clothing considered suitable for the opposite sex was sufficient grounds for divorce, and either men or women could advance such a claim.

*
All details of masculine clothing, cf. previous footnote, and thus grounds for divorce.

*
From
Möðruvallabók
. Translated from
Íslendinga sdgur
.

*
The idea that the confiscation court should take place at a particular time of the day, in a sacred area an ‘arrow-shot’ away from the farm, outside the limits of cultivated land, must go back to early pagan belief and custom.

*
I.e. he never made land near the home of his father in Midfjord.

*
Thorarin’s ‘duty’ towards Ospak arises from his kinship with Ospak’s wife Svala, even though he had refused to countenance the marriage.

*
The implication is that Hermund has buried two hundreds of silver in the gully, so that Egil’s insult to him (p. 490) was at least partly true.

*
Gisli, son of Thorkel, is the uncle of the eponymous hero of the saga. Gisli Sursson himself is not introduced until
Chapter 2
.

*
Both the wording of the original and the positioning of the two effigies make it clear that a sexual insult is intended.

*
The Icelandic suggests that they could not hear the dogs which means they were safe.

†
These are the figures given in the original.

*
Gisli is referred to, not as Thorbjornsson (i.e. son of Thorbjorn), but Sursson after his father’s nickname.

*
The fact that they had dyed or coloured clothes was a sign of their prosperity.

*
See
Chapter 1
.

*
Shoes tied to the feet of a dead man. See note on p 222.

*
The word for such a blow to the face is
buffeit
or
kinnhestur
, the latter literally meaning ‘cheek-horse’. Thus Geirmund’s pun suggests that he intends to pay back Thorgrim in kind for the blow.

*
The name
Snorri
is a twin form of the name
Snerrir
which means ‘unruly’, ‘argumentative’.

*
The ‘short’ distance is that between Gisli’s hideout (Geirthjofsfjord) and Otradal where Eyjolf lived.

*
‘Ref’ literally means ‘fox’, which might suggest links with Reynard in European beast fables and a possible allegorical interpretation of this episode. See
The Saga of Ref the Sly
.

*
Vestein’s son.

*
This attribution to Ari (in one manuscript) must be fanciful.

*
The copyist has presumably skipped a section in his exemplar, where the names of Thorfinn’s four remaining sons were recorded.

†
The farmer’s objection appears to be justified, since according to the law code the legal penalty for knocking someone unconscious was lesser outlawry. By contrast, the shepherd was liable for a fine of three marks for stealing the horse.

*
Illugi’s dispute with Thorgrim and his sons, which centred on Illugi’s claim for his wife’s dowry, is described in
The Saga of the People of Eyri
, Chapter 17.

†
Thorstein’s feud with Steinar, who had trespassed on land belonging to Thorstein, is described in
Egil’s Saga
, Chapters 80–84.

*
The
Borg
is a high rocky outcrop immediately behind the site of Borg farm from which the farm takes its name.

*
Earl Hakon Sigurdsson was murdered by his servant Kark, while hiding from his enemy Olaf Tryggvason in a pigsty.

*
See footnote on
p. 311.

*
Sigtrygg appears to have ruled in Dublin from
c
. 996–1042. The chronology of the saga suggests that Gunnlaug visited him in 1003.

*
This verse is also found in
Kormak’s Saga
, and should probably be attributed to him, not to Gunnlaug.

*
The ‘new’ game with two kings is a version of chess. In the old game with one king, the attacking pieces attempt to surround the king so that he cannot move. If that happens, the attacking player wins. The king, with the help of his pieces, attempts to reach one of the four castles in the corners of the board. If the king does so, the defending player wins.

*
This sentence has been the subject of no small amount of speculation, for instance, by equating
eyktarstaSur
with the point of Nones and
dagmdlastaiur
as the point of late morning, in an attempt to fix a location for Vinland, which has been to little real avail as the meaning of these obsolete terms of reference is impossible to interpret with any certainty. Interesting discussions on this and many other aspects of the Vinland voyages are raised by Gwyn Jones in
The North Atlantic Saga
, Páll Bergborsson in
The Wineland Millennium
and Anna Yates in
Leifur Eiriksson and Vinland the Good
.

*
As philologist Ólafur Halldórsson points out, it is conceivable that references here and elsewhere to ‘cutting [grape] vines’ (
vinviiur
) could result from a copying error or misunderstanding, and that instead of
vinber
and
vinviiur
(grapes and grapevines) the text should read
vínber
and
viður
(grapes, literally wine berries, and wood). The latter would be much more understandable as a valuable product worth transporting home to treeless Greenland. It could also be ‘original’, reflecting the general unfamiliarity of Northerners with grapes and vines and supporting suggestions that the ‘wine berries’ of Vinland grew on trees.

*
The Icelandic word
hiisasnotra
could refer not to a decoration but to a kind of astrolabe.

†
The Icelandic word
mösur
could also refer to burl or burly wood.

*
This was in the south-west of Greenland.

*
Literally, ‘ward enticers’ (
vardlokkur
), chants likely to have been intended to attract the spirits to the sorceress, who was enclosed in a ring of wards as described below.

*
The story is told in
The Saga of the People of Eyri
.

*
This sentence, or even the whole paragraph, appears to be misplaced. Presumably ‘the country’ refers to Greenland.

*
Although the Icelandic term
helgirfiskar
(literally ‘holy fishes’) means ‘halibut’ in English, these could be any type of flatfish.

*
Some scholars have suggested this refers to Native Americans, others to a Christian ceremony, as the term ‘white men’ was used for Christians. One manuscript supplies the explanation that it refers to ‘Ireland the Great’.

*
From
AM 162 C fol., AM 156 fol
. and
AM 496 4to
. Translated from
Íslendinga sögur III
.

*
Morkinskinna
version. Translated from
Íslendinga sögur III
.

*
Sigurd Sow was Harald’s father. Snorri was Halldor’s father.

*
From
Flateyjarbók
. Translated from
Íslendinga sögur III
.

*
In the other version of the poem, presented in the Morkinskinna manuscript, line 3 reads ‘A revolution took place! I’m residing with Ran’; line 6, ‘I landed out beyond the beach’; and line 9 ‘Pale seaweed undulates about me where your neck will be.’

†
Harold Godwinson who was Earl of Wessex and for nine months in 1066 King of England; his tenure of the throne was unsuccessfully challenged by Halli’s patron, Harald Sigurdarson, and successfully by William the Conqueror.

*
From
Flateyjarbók
. Translated from
Íslendinga sögur III
.

*
Translated from
Íslendinga sögur III
.

*
From
Modruvallabok
. Translated from
Islendinga sdgur III
.