Grettis saga

Icelandic saga

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Grettis saga, (c. 1320), latest and one of the finest of Icelandic family sagas. Its distinction rests on the complex, problematic character of its outlaw hero, Grettir, and on its skillful incorporation into the narrative of numerous motifs from folklore. Its theme is summed up in the gnomic style of the sagas: “Good gifts and good luck are often worlds apart.”

Wellborn, brave, and generous but headstrong and trouble-prone, Grettir, at age 14, kills a man in a quarrel and is outlawed for three years. He spends these years in Norway performing many brave deeds. On his return to Iceland he saves the people from the malicious ghost of Glam the shepherd, who is ravaging the countryside. The dying fiend imposes a curse on Grettir, predicting he will grow afraid of the dark. Later, on an errand of mercy, Grettir accidentally sets fire to a hall in which a chieftain’s son burns to death and so is outlawed again. During his long outlawry, Grettir is pursued by kinsmen of men he has wronged, by other outlaws for the price on his head, and by trolls and other magic beings. Though his life depends on solitary hiding, his growing fear of the dark compels him to seek centres of human society. At last his enemies overwhelm him with the aid of witchcraft. His death is avenged, according to the code of the time, by his brother; but the far-fetched story of this vengeance, which takes place in Byzantium, is considered a blemish on the narrative. The best English translation is by D. Fox and H. Pálsson in 1974.

Icelanders’ sagas

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Icelanders’ sagas

medieval literature

Also known as: family sagas

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Also called:: family sagas

Related Topics:: Icelandic literature; saga

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Icelanders’ sagas, the class of heroic prose narratives written during 1200–20 about the great families who lived in Iceland from 930 to 1030. Among the most important such works are the Njáls saga and the Gísla saga.

The family sagas are a unique contribution to Western literature and a central pillar of Icelandic literature. They are notable for their realism, their controlled objective style, their powers of character delineation, and their overwhelming tragic dignity, and they represent the highest development of the classical age of Icelandic saga writing. Some scholars have argued that the artistic unity, length, and complexity of the sagas prove that they are works written about Icelandic history by individual authors of the 13th century. Others have argued that the sagas were composed orally at about the time of the events they describe and then passed down as oral tradition until, centuries later, they were transcribed. The historicity of the sagas has also been the subject of a long-running debate, often tied to questions about who created the sagas and for what purpose. Regardless of whether the family sagas are true to history, they are true to the grim ethos of a vanished way of life, which they portray with dramatic power and laconic eloquence.

This article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.