Women of the Icelandic Sagas Trivia Quiz

Answer: Unn the Deepminded

The historical Unn Ketillsdottir, called "the Deepminded" (djúpúdhga), was surely a most remarkable woman. Unn was a widow when she left Norway for a new life in Scotland, accompanying her redoubtable father Ketill Flatnose and bringing with her her son Thorstein.

It is related that Ketill so harried the Scots that they gave him half of all Scotland in exchange for peace. When the Scots broke their oaths of peace and slaughtered both Ketill and Thorstein, Unn coolly and rationally planned her own departure for Iceland; of her departure the Laxdaela saga-writer states that "scarce may an example be found that any one, a woman only, has ever got out of such a state of war with so much wealth and so great a following" so evidently she not only planned well but also executed her plan effectively. Once in Iceland she claimed *vast* tracts of land for herself, and then parceled the land out both generously and wisely to her followers, several of whom were freed slaves.

The saga-writer is, as is typical of the genre, quite elliptical on this point, but reading between the lines it is easy to speculate that these erstwhile slaves cum landowners were fiercely loyal to their benefactress and her kin, which is probably why the descendants of Unn continued to dominate the region after her death. Unn died old, and with style.

Indeed, the story of how she died was repeated for centuries after her death in approximately 920 CE until it was written down in the saga 325 years later. Apparently she threw a huge and lavish party, and at its peak she announced that she was leaving everything she had to her favorite grandson. She then left the grandson Olaf in charge of the party, and went to her chamber to sleep. The next day Olaf found her sitting up straight in bed, dead: "She walked at a quick step out along the hall, and people could not help saying to each other how stately the lady was yet. They feasted that evening till they thought it time to go to bed. But the day after Olaf went to the sleeping bower of Unn, his grandmother, and when he came into the chamber there was Unn sitting up against her pillow, and she was dead. Olaf went into the hall after that and told these tidings. Every one thought it a wonderful thing, how Unn had upheld her dignity to the day of her death." Unn was given the fullest funerary honors known to Nordic culture, burial in a ship, a form typically reserved for the most powerful chieftains: "So they now drank together Olaf's wedding and Unn's funeral honors, and the last day of the feast Unn was carried to the howe that was made for her. She was laid in a ship in the cairn, and much treasure with her, and after that the cairn was closed up." [All quoted material above is from the 1899 Muriel Press translation of Laxdaela Saga, and is in the public domain.]

Answer: (a) wins the first lawsuit ever argued by a woman

Gudhrun's powerful character has led some to speculate, without any real evidence, that the author of Laxdaela Saga may have been a woman. Whoever the anonymous saga-writer may have been, Gudhrun is a fascinating character, as coldly rational and as deadly an opponent in the saga-age "game of honor" as any warrior, but also capable of deep and passionate love. Still, she wasn't one to let love get in the way of vengeance.

It is perhaps indicative of her complex character that, at the end of her life, Gudhrun had the following rather cryptic exchange with her son Bolli (named for his murdered father): "Then Bolli said, 'Will you tell me, mother, what I want very much to know? Who is the man you have loved the most?' Gudrun answered, 'Thorkell was the mightiest man and the greatest chief, but no man was more shapely or better endowed all round than Bolli. Thord, son of Ingun, was the wisest of them all, and the greatest lawyer; Thorvald I take no account of.' Then said Bolli, 'I clearly understand that what you tell me shows how each of your husbands was endowed, but you have not told me yet whom you loved the best. Now there is no need for you to keep that hidden any longer.' Gudrun answered, 'You press me hard, my son, for this, but if I must needs tell it to any one, you are the one I should first choose thereto.' Bolli bade her do so.

Then Gudrun said, 'To him I was worst whom I loved best.' 'Now,' answered Bolli, 'I think the whole truth is told,' and said she had done well to tell him what he so much had yearned to know." [The quoted material above is from the 1899 Muriel Press translation of Laxdaela Saga, and is in the public domain.]

Answer: tricks her second husband into accepting an enemy's ultimately lethal advice

Hallgerdh Long-Coat (so-called for her height) was fair and clever, but also headstrong and hard-hearted. Her father betrothed her to one Thorvald Osvifsson without first consulting her; Thorvald's doom was essentially sealed that day. Indeed, the day Hallgerdh was told that she was to marry Thorvald, her foster father and manservant Thjostolf consoled her by saying, "Be of good cheer, for thou wilt be married a second time, and then they will ask thee what thou thinkest of the match; for I will do in all things as thou wishest..." (Prophetic words indeed, but then these Hebrideans all have a bit of the uncanny about them.) Within the first year of their marriage, Hallgerdh mocked Thorvald until he struck her in a rage, then stormed out to go fishing; Hallgerdh sent Thjostolf out with an axe to avenge the insult. Thorvald was unable to defend himself with just a fishing knife. Later, Hallgerdh was consulted when one Glum Olofsson (possibly known as Glum Ragisbrodhir) sought to woo her; she accepted the match.

When Glum was enraged by her argumentativeness such that she hit her, she actually was of a mind to accept the rebuke, but Thjostolf nevertheless killed Glum with his axe, against Hallgerdh's express order. When Hallgerdh learned of the killing, she laughed light-heartedly and sent Thjostolf to seek protection from her uncle. When Thjostolf arrived, Uncle Hrut understood that Hallgerdh had not desired Glum's slaying, and killed Thjostolf. Still later, against all advice, the brave, talented, handsome, somewhat less-than-brilliant Gunnar Hamondsson sought and won Hallgerdh's hand, with her consent. Much later, Hallgerdh stole food in an action which, by Hallgerdh's lights, was calculated to avenge her own slighted honor but which, by Gunnar's lights, dishonored his family. Gunnar struck Hallgerdh for it. Hallgerdh never forgot. Years later, when Gunnar was besieged within his home with many attackers outside, he defended himself ably with his bow, killing many men. When his bowstring broke, he asked Hallgerdh for cuttings of her long hair, so that he could quickly braid himself a new bowstring. The following exchange took place: "Then Gunnar said to Hallgerda, 'Give me two locks of thy hair, and ye two, my mother and thou, twist them together into a bowstring for me.' 'Does aught lie on it?' she says. 'My life lies on it;' he said; 'for they will never come to close quarters with me if I can keep them off with my bow.' 'Well!' she says, 'now I will call to thy mind that slap on the face which thou gavest me; and I care never a whit whether thou holdest out a long while or a short.'" She refused him her hair, and he died for want of the bowstring. [All quoted material above is from the 1861 DaSent translation of Njal's Saga, and is in the public domain. (I actually translated the part of the saga dealing with the death of Gunnar myself, once, some years ago, but I have since lost my translation and am not going to reconstruct it for purposes of this quiz! Sorry!)]

Answer: Bergthora Skarphedhinsdottir

The feud between Hallgerdh, Gunnar's wife, and Bergthora, wife of Gunnar's great friend Njal Thorgeirsson, is really the central action of the saga. It begins when Hallgerdh perceives Bergthora to have slighted her in a matter of precedence of seating at a feast.

It progresses from there to the sending of servants to slay one another's servants; Hallgerdh is ever the catalyst, but Bergthora is jealous of her own honor, and soon begins giving as good as she gets. Perhaps representative is this sequence, occurring immediately after Bergthora's new servant Atli slays Hallgerdh's faithful servant Koll: "Atli rode till he met some of Hallgerda's workmen, and said, 'Go ye up to the horse yonder, and look to Kol, for he has fallen off, and is dead.' 'Hast thou slain him?' say they. 'Well, 'twill seem to Hallgerda as though he has not fallen by his own hand.' After that Atli rode home and told Bergthora; she thanked him for this deed, and for the words which he had spoken about it." (Two things are worth explaining here: first, Atli is under obligation to report the killing to the first people he meets; to omit to do so would make a killing a murder. Second, to have reported the killing with a cold-blooded, cool one-liner is to have increased the insult to Hallgerdh and to have increased Bergthora's glory, since in an age before television and in a country with long winters, people would repeat these one-liners endlessly, so that the story of the insult to Hallgerdh would quickly become well-known to everyone in Iceland, and would never be forgotten.

Indeed, it is very likely that the saga-writer, three centuries after the fact, was able to draw upon an oral tradition that kept Atli's words very much alive with very little embellishment after all the saga personages themselves were long dead. That is why Bergthora thanks Atli in particular for his words.) The killings escalate until kinsmen start being killed, and Gunnar and Njal have trouble keeping their friendship alive. Killings beget killings, and ultimately honor demands that practically everyone be slain, for reasons too complicated to summarize here. Bergthora's innate personal strength and nobility -- qualities quite absent in her strong-willed but ultimately unsympathetic enemy -- are conclusively demonstrated when Njal's enemies are besieging Njal and his family in their home, and they give Bergthora an opportunity to leave the house unharmed before they burn it and its inhabitants to the ground: "Then Flosi said to Bergthora, 'Come thou out, housewife, for I will for no sake burn thee indoors.' 'I was given away to Njal young,' said Bergthora, 'and I have promised him this, that we would both share the same fate.'" She willingly dies with her husband. [All quoted material above is from the 1861 DaSent translation of Njal's Saga, and is in the public domain.]

Answer: his niece, Hildigunn Starkadhsdottir

It is often possible, in the sagas, to perceive a dynamic whereby men who are heads of families (and therefore quite comfortable with the status quo) to whom it falls to avenge the death of an often fairly distant kinsman, rather than put their lives very much on the line by exacting blood vengeance, will find that their honor permits them either to forgive and forget or to seek the weregild ("man-price") in a lawsuit or a negotiated settlement (not a dishonorable outcome, but not the outcome to be sought by a person interested in establishing a reputation for fierce adherence to the code of the blood feud). Operating on women is a quite different social dynamic: first, their lives are very rarely (if ever) directly at risk from the violence of the blood feud; second, invariably the discreditable gossip which would not come to the attention of the male head of the family comes to the women's ears, so that it is they who really face the cutting edge of the community's scorn at a man's inaction: the women are in a better position than the men to weigh up the punctilios of honor and dishonor. Thus it is that the women are frequently seen deriding their men as cowards, or rousing them out of bed to take up arms against an enemy. And thus it is that saga men are frequently heard to complain that, "Cold are the counsels of women." The case of Hildigunn is very representative.

Her husband, Hoskuld, had been killed. She invited Flosi to her home and gave him a suspiciously conspicuous seat of honor. Then she dishonored him by giving him a torn rag instead of a proper hand-towel. Knowing what was coming, Flosi told her he did not want the massive violence blood vengeance would require, and that he would pursue her claims to the extent permitted by law. She then went to a chest and removed the cloak Hoskuld was wearing when he died, then threw the cloak over Flosi's head so that dried blood rained down on and around him. "She spoke then: 'This cloak you gave to Hoskuld, Flosi, and now will I give it back to you. In it he was murdered. I cry out to God and good men [to hear] that I call on you, by all Christ's power and by your manhood and bravery, to take vengeance for every wound Hoskuld had on his dead body or be a coward to every man.'" Strong words; Flosi said little in reply, beyond that what she asked would be the worst for everyone involved, but he went, in turns, "as red as blood, as ashen as grass, and as blue as death." (Saga men were expected to be very taciturn, and were especially expected to avoid talking about their emotions. As a modern psychologist might well predict, a strong taboo against expressing emotions verbally seems to have resulted in a far-reaching cultural tendency to somaticize emotional response; frequently saga men who are presented with hard choices or with evidence of their own dishonor develop spontaneous nose-bleeds, swell up, or change color. These details are often so vivid and so odd that it seems unlikely that they are fictional.) As related above, Flosi ultimately burned Njal and his family, to death, in their home. [All quoted material above is my own translation.]

Answer: tricks him into drinking milk

Late in Egil's life, he received the news that his favorite son had drowned. (As is quite customary in the sagas, Egil had never made any secret as to who of his offspring he liked and respected the most.) Egil took to his bed, with the intention of remaining there without food until he died.

When Thorgerdh heard this news, she immediately rushed to her father's side. Knowing that Egil was no less than a monster of orneriness, the only way she could bring him back to himself was indirectly. So after Egil had fasted for three days, she showed up at his house, loudly announcing that she wanted no supper.

She then went to Egil's "bed-closet" and called out, "Open up, father. . . I want us to go one road together." He was glad to have her in agreement with him, the morbid old coot, and let her in.

After a while, he heard her chewing something. She told him that it was dulse, or seaweed, and that it was making her feel sick to eat it. "'Is it bad for you?' asked Egil. 'Terrible,' she replied. 'Would you like to try some?'" Then Audh feigned a great thirst, and called for water. Egil pointed out that eating seaweed could be expected to make one thirsty.

When the water was brought, Audh offered some to her father, who was only avoiding food, not water. "He took hold of the horn she had, and drank great draughts. Then she said, 'We've been tricked, it's milk.' He bit off a part of the horn as big as his teeth could take, then threw the horn down." Then, so long as Egil had been cheated of death by starvation for the time being, having drunk the milk, Audh pointed out that it would be a good use of the borrowed time for Egil to compose a poem to honor his dead son Bodhvar: "I think it will be a long time before your [less favorite] son Thorstein makes a poem in memory of Bodhvar" Audh added sunningly. Egil ended up coming back to himself in the course of writing and then reciting a long poem in memory of both the sons he had lost; after the poem was done, he had the customary funeral feast, and life returned to normal. [All quoted material above is from the 1976 Palsson and Edwards translation, and is protected by their copyright, appearing here under a presumed "fair use" exception.]

Answer: ends the fight by stepping in and tangling the men's weapons with cloth

Thorbjorn Ormsson "the Thick" brought men to the home of Thorarin the Black (Audh's husband) in order to conduct an illegal search for stolen horses. Thorarin resisted, and armed combat ensued. Audh did not hesitate, but called her women to her and stepped right into the thick of the melee, throwing cloth over the men's weapons to entangle them and stepping between the combatants.

The fight ended, and Thorbjorn and his men departed with a few "unimportant" men killed, but without the wholesale slaughter that would otherwise have taken place.

After the fight was broken up, the saga-writer relates the following: "In the yard at Mavahlidh was found a hand, there where they had fought, and it was shown to Thorarin. He saw that it was the hand of a woman.

He asked where Audh was. To him was it told that she lay in her bed. Then he went to her and asked if she were wounded. Audh told him to pay that no heed, but he could see that he hand had been hacked off." Thorarin called his mother to bind Audh's wound, then went off with his men to catch up with Thorbjorn, to avenge the loss of Audh's hand by slaying them all.

The saga-writer treats Audh's courage only elliptically, permitting the bare events to speak for themselves; indeed, her courage in risking death or maiming by breaking up the fight as she did is one thing, but her bravery in dismissing her grievous wound as unimportant is simply unspeakable. [The quoted material above is my own translation.]

Answer: she was a sorceress

Katla was a notorious witch. The use of magic is peculiarly the province of the female in the sagas (with the exception of the knowledge of runes, which partakes of the magical, and which is orthogonal to gender). Magic is not just creepy and dangerous in saga Iceland; it also smacks of the dishonorable, indeed of honorlessness. Women, children, and the old are not subject to the rigors, responsibilities or rewards of the honor system; neither are those men who profit from the magical wiles of a witch. Thus the case of Odd Kotluson ("son of Katla"). (A preliminary word about Odd's "matronymic" is in order; Odd is the only person I know of in the saga corpus to bear the name of his mother rather than his father.

This may reflect a mystery as to the identity of Odd's father (which is surely dishonorable to some degree in medieval Icelandic society), or it may reflect Katla's peculiar status in the culture as a witch, or it may be some combination of those two.

In any event, it is noteworthy that, while characteristically elliptical, the saga-writer does indicate that there is some significance to the matronymic, by referring to Odd as "Odd Kotluson" not merely when he is first introduced but in every chapter in which Odd is mentioned.) Odd had been among the men Thorbjorn brought with him to seek stolen horses at Thorarin's homestead [see question 7]; indeed, it was Odd who had hacked off the hand of Thorbjorn's wife Audh when she sought to break up the fight there. Odd boasted later about the deed, implying that he did it intentionally.

In any event, both at the fight in Thorarin's yard and later when Thorarin and his men caught up to Thorbjorn's band to take vengeance for Audh's hand, alone among Thorbjorn's men, Odd was impervious to the bite of any weapon. The reason for this was that Katla had given him magic protection against wounding. Thorarin sought Odd at katla's home several times, and each time Katla used her magic to disguise Odd's appearance, making him appear to be a rock, or a goat, or a pig. However, the glamour Katla used to cloud the minds of Thorarin's men only worked temporarily, or not at a distance, so that each time they got a certain distance from Katla's house they would stop and ask (and I am paraphrasing here to heighten the comic effect to a modern audience), "Say... doesn't it seem to you that that rock back there was shaped a lot like Odd?" and go back to look again. At one point, after Katla has made Odd look like a goat instead of a rock, and the men have uselessly broken open the rock, Katla mocks them (and I am not paraphrasing any more): "Then spoke Katla: 'Now at home in the evening you will not have to say that you had no business at Holt, since you have slaughtered the rock.'" Finally the men bring another magic woman with them, who cannot be fooled by Katla's tricks. They find Odd and hang him, denying him a warrior's or even an outlaw's death. A hood is placed over Katla's head, presumably to ward off the "evil eye," but this does not stop Katla from cursing them all verbally, with particular attention to parentage: "And as he worked the gallows, Arnkel said to him [Odd]: 'An ill lot you had from your mother. And it can be seen that it was truly an ill mother that you had.' Katla said: 'Perhaps it may be seen that he had no good mother, but no lot he had from me was ill by my will. But it is my will that all of you shall have an ill lot from me. And I hope that it will be so. . . . Now you, Arnkel,' she said, 'may have no ill lot of your mother, because you have none alive, but in this I will that my magic will stand, that from your father you shall get a lot worse than that Odd has gotten from me, for you have more to lose than Odd ever did. And I hope it may be said before the end that you had an ill father.'" Then they stoned the hooded Katla to death. [All quoted material above is my own translation.]

Answer: with a magical curse

Old Thuridh is another example of a woman who draws upon unwholesome, suspect sources of power and knowledge. Thorbjorn's foster mother had been a famous sorceress in her youth, when heathen practices had been acceptable; with the dominance of Christianity after the year 1000, she had taken her morally questionable skills underground. Nevertheless, when Thorbjorn asked her to help him in his quarrel with Grettir, she was willing to help.

Her willingness turned to passionate commitment after she accompanied Thorbjorn to parley with Grettir. On this parley mission, she had hidden herself under some cloth in a boat, wanting to overhear Grettir's responses to Thorbjorn in order to learn his mind.

When Grettir realized she was there, he threw a stone a prodigious distance into the boat, breaking the old woman's thigh.

After receiving this wound, she declared, "This is the beginning of [Grettir and Illugi's] destruction; I say that from this time onwards they will go downwards. I care not whether I live or not, if I do not have vengeance for the injury they have done me." She cut runes onto a log, cursing it, and then set it adrift.

The log drifted to where Grettir's servant found it when looking for firewood. Twice the boy tried to bring the log to Grettir, and twice Grettir recognized it as cursed and refused it. A third time the boy presented the log, after dark, and the third time Grettir failed to recognize it. When Grettir sought to chop the log down with his ax, the ax slipped and he wounded himself in the thigh. The wound festered, and ultimately weakened Grettir so much that his enemies were able to kill him: "Illugi defended himself and Grettir courageously, but Grettir was unfit for fighting, partly from his wounds, partly from his illness [caused by the poisons from his thigh-wound]. Angle then ordered them to bear Illugi down with their shields, saying he had never met with his like amongst older men than he. They did so, and pressed upon him with a wall of armour against which resistance was impossible. They took him prisoner and kept him. He had wounded most of those who were attacking him and killed three. Then they went for Grettir, who had fallen forward on his face. There was no resistance in him for he was already dead from his wounded leg; his thigh was all mortified up to the rectum. Many more wounds they gave him, but little or no blood flowed." [All quoted material above is from the 1914 Hight translation of Grettir's Saga, and is in the public domain.]

Answer: she pretends to accept the money, then breaks Eyjolf's nose with it

Audh was loyal to her husband, and didn't take kindly Eyjolf's implication that she would betray him for a bag of silver. She took the bag, then smashed Eyjolf's nose with it, saying, "Take this now for your loose faith, and may it bring you harm! Never would I sell my man out to you, you dastard. Take this now, and shame and disgrace with it! You shall remember it, worthless man, throughout your life, that a woman struck you []." Eyjolf, enraged, cried out to his eleven men, "Grab hold of this dog and kill it, though it be a bitch!" But one of Eyjolf's men, one Harvardh, "took it upon himself to speak: 'This work has gone ill enough without this cowardly deed; stand up, men, and don't let him do this.'" Enough of the men agreed with Havardh that Eyjolf was forced to back down and let Audh live. [All quoted material above is my own translation.]