thematic thread
Sons, Fathers & the Bloodline
The rawest grief in the sagas: Egil, having lost his sons to the sea and to fever, shuts himself away to die — until his daughter coaxes him into composing Sonatorrek, the lament that channels a father's unbearable loss into the greatest of poems.
Sonatorrek
Egil grew old at Borg, rich and feared, outliving his enemies. And then the sea, which had spared him in York, took from him the thing he could not ransom back: his beloved son Böðvarr drowned in the firth. Egil bore the body home, laid it in the family howe — and then shut himself in his bed-closet to starve himself to death. He would not eat; he would not speak; he meant to follow his son.[1]
His daughter Þorgerðr — the same Þorgerðr who would marry Óláfr the Peacock and become the mother of Kjartan, the thread that ties this saga to the tragedy of Laxdæla — came and tricked her way in beside him, pretending to starve with him. Then she told him a daughter's lie that was also wisdom: that he could not die yet, because no one but he could compose the memorial poem his son deserved.[2]
It worked. Egil began the poem — Sonatorrek, 'the hard loss of sons' — and composing it brought him back from the grave's edge. It is the greatest poem in the sagas: a father raging at the sea-god Rán who took his boy, at Óðinn who gave him the gift of verse and then this grief, and arriving, exhausted, at the will to live out his days. The poet who once turned art into ransom now turns it into survival.[3]
The source text · 3
Bodvar Egil's son was just now growing up; he was a youth of great promise, handsome, tall and strong as had been Egil or Thorolf at his age. Egil loved him dearly, and Bodvar was very fond of his father. One summer it happened that there was a ship in White-river, and a great fair was held there. Egil had there bought much wood, which he was having conveyed home by water: for this his house-carles went, taking with them an eight-oared boat belonging to Egil. It chanced one time that Bodvar begged to go with them, and they allowed him so to do. So he went into the field with the house-carles. They were six in all on the eight-oared boat. And when they had to go out again, high-water was late in the day, and, as they must needs wait for the turn of tide, they did not start till late in the evening. Then came on a violent south-west gale, against which ran the stream of the ebb. This made a rough sea in the firth, as can often happen. The end was that the boat sank under them, and all were lost. The next day the bodies were cast up: Bodvar's body came on shore at Einars-ness, but some came in on the south shore of the firth, whither also the boat was driven, being found far in near Reykjarhamar.— egils saga
Böðvarr drowns; Egil shuts himself away to die (Green 1893).
Then spoke Thorgerdr: 'What counsel shall we take now? This our purpose is defeated. Now I would fain, father, that we should lengthen our lives, so that you may compose a funeral poem on Bodvar, and I will grave it on a wooden roller; after that we can die, if we like. Hardly, I think, can Thorstein your son compose a poem on Bodvar; but it were unseemly that he should not have funeral rites. Though I do not think that we two shall sit at the drinking when the funeral feast is held.' Egil said that it was not to be expected that he could now compose, though he were to attempt it. 'However, I will try this,' said he.— egils saga
Þorgerðr coaxes him to compose the memorial poem.
Egil began to cheer up as the composing of the poem went on; and when the poem was complete, he brought it before Asgerdr and Thorgerdr and his family. He rose from his bed, and took his place in the high-seat. This poem he called 'Loss of Sons.' And now Egil had the funeral feast of his son held after ancient custom. But when Thorgerdr went home, Egil enriched her with good gifts.— egils saga
Sonatorrek — the genuine poem in the source.
The famous brood: Ragnar and Áslaug's sons, the boneless Ívarr foremost, so renowned their father frets his own fame is eclipsed. The bloodline that overshadows even the hero who fathered it.
The brood of sons
Ragnar and Áslaug's sons became the most famous brood in the legendary North — and the eldest, Ívarr, was the strangest and the greatest. He was born boneless, with gristle where bone should be, so that he had to be carried; yet he was the wisest and most far-seeing of all of them, the strategist of the family.[1]
Around the sons the saga widens into war: against King Eysteinn of Sweden and his uncanny sacrificial cow Síbilja, in raids across the world, in feats that rival their father's. The sons grow so renowned that Ragnar, aging, frets that their fame is eclipsing his own — and that jealousy, the proud king's refusal to be outshone even by his own children, is what drives him to the reckless deed that kills him. In the sagas, a great man's undoing usually grows from his greatest quality; Ragnar's is pride.
The source text · 1
NOW time passed by, and in their marriage was much love and good-will. Kraka knew herself to be with child; she was delivered and gave birth to a boy who was sprinkled with water and named Ivar. But the boy was boneless; he had only the like of gristle where bones should have been. But while he was young his growth was so great that none was his equal. He was fairest of all men in looks and so wise that none other is known to have been wiser than he.— ragnars saga
Ívarr born boneless, yet wisest of the sons (Schlauch 1930).
Kjartan and Bolli, foster-brothers raised closer than kin — and the saga's tragedy is that fostering's bond is broken by love and pride. Chosen brotherhood, and its breaking.
Kjartan and Bolli
The two boys Gestr watched grew up inseparable. Kjartan, son of Óláfr the Peacock — himself the grandson of an Irish king's daughter, a strain of foreign nobility the saga is proud of — was the finest man in Iceland: strong, beautiful, generous, the best at every sport. Bolli, his foster-brother, was raised beside him at Hjarðarholt and loved like a brother in blood.[1]
Kjartan and Guðrún loved each other, and an understanding grew between them. When Kjartan resolved to sail to Norway, he asked her to wait three years for him; she wanted to go with him, and was hurt when he would not take her. He sailed with Bolli at his side. It was the last time the two foster-brothers would stand together as friends.
The source text · 1
At that time, as concerning the strife between Hrut and Thorliek, it was ever the greatest gossip throughout the Broadfirth-Dales how that Hrut had had to abide a heavy lot at the hands of Kotkell and his sons. Then Osvif spoke to Gudrun and her brothers, and bade them call to mind whether they thought now it would have been the best counsel aforetime then and there to have plunged into the danger of dealing with such "hell-men" (terrible people) as Kotkell and his were. Then said Gudrun, "He is not counsel-bereft, father, who has the help of thy counsel." Olaf now abode at his manor in much honour, and all his sons are at home there, as was Bolli, their kinsman and foster-brother. Kjartan was foremost of all the sons of Olaf. Kjartan and Bolli loved each other the most, and Kjartan went nowhere that Bolli did not follow. Often Kjartan would go to the Sælingdale-spring, and mostly it happened that Gudrun was at the spring too. Kjartan liked talking to Gudrun, for she was both a woman of wits and clever of speech. It was the talk of all folk that of all men who were growing up at the time Kjartan was the most even match for Gudrun. Between Olaf and Osvif there was also great friendship, and often they would invite one another, and not the less frequently so when fondness was growing up between the young folk. One day when Olaf was talking to Kjartan, he said: "I do not know why it is that I always take it to heart when you go to Laugar and talk to Gudrun. It is not because I do not consider Gudrun the foremost of all other women, for she is the one among womenkind whom I look upon as a thoroughly suitable match for you. But it is my foreboding, though I will not prophesy it, that we, my kinsmen and I, and the men of Laugar will not bring altogether good luck to bear on our dealings together." Kjartan said he would do nothing against his father's will where he could help himself, but he hoped things would turn out better than he made a guess to. Kjartan holds to his usual ways as to his visits (to Laugar), and Bolli always went with him, and so the next seasons passed.— laxdaela saga
Kjartan and Bolli's foster-brotherhood (Press 1899).
The line itself: Odin's sword in the Branstock founds the Völsungs, a bloodline descended from the god — and doomed by it. Descent from the divine is both glory and curse.
The sword in the tree
The Völsung line is marked from the start as half-divine and wholly doomed. At a great feast in King Völsung's hall, built around a living tree called the Branstock, a one-eyed stranger in a grey cloak strode in, drove a sword to the hilt into the trunk, and declared it the prize of whoever could pull it free. The stranger was Óðinn, and the sword was his gift and his test.[1]
One man after another tried and failed. Only Sigmundr, Völsung's son, drew it out — clean, as though it had waited for his hand alone. It is the deep root of a story the whole world half-knows: the god-given blade, the chosen man, the weapon that will pass down a bloodline of heroes. But a Völsung gift is never free. The same Óðinn who gave the sword would one day, in another battle, shatter it against his own spear — and Sigmundr would fall.
The source text · 1
The tale tells that great fires were made endlong the hall, and the great tree aforesaid stood midmost thereof; withal folk say that, whenas men sat by the fires in the evening, a certain man came into the hall unknown of aspect to all men; and suchlike array he had, that over him was a spotted cloak, and he was bare-foot, and had linen-breeches knit tight even unto the bone, and he had a sword in his hand as he went up to the Branstock, and a slouched hat upon his head: huge he was, and seeming-ancient, and one-eyed. (2) So he drew his sword and smote it into the tree-trunk so that it sank in up to the hilts; and all held back from greeting the man. Then he took up the word, and said—— volsunga saga
Óðinn drives the sword into the Branstock; only Sigmundr draws it (Morris & Magnússon 1870).
Why it all matters: Hyndluljóð is a goddess wresting a hero's genealogy from a giantess, because to know your descent is to know your worth. The bloodline as title-deed and identity.
The genealogy of heroes
Hyndluljóð turns from the origin of classes to the origin of persons — to lineage, which mattered enormously in a world where a man's worth and rights flowed from his ancestry. The goddess Freyja rides to the cave of the giantess Hyndla and wakes her, demanding she recite the forebears of Freyja's favourite, the young hero Ottar, whose inheritance depends on proving his descent.[1]
What follows is a torrent of names — Hyndla unspools a vast genealogy linking Ottar back through the great houses of legend to gods and heroes, a poem that doubles as a memory-bank of who was descended from whom. To modern eyes a recited family tree may seem dry, but in this culture it was power itself: genealogy was title-deed, claim, and identity. The same impulse drives the opening chapters of half the Icelandic sagas, which root their characters in long lines of named ancestors, and the great Landnámabók that records who settled where. Hyndluljóð shows that impulse raised to the mythic level — a goddess compelling a giantess to certify a hero's bloodline, because in the Norse world, to know your descent was to know who you were.
The source text · 1
Freyja spake: / "Maiden, awake! / wake thee, my friend, / My sister Hyndla, / in thy hollow cave! / Already comes darkness, / and ride must we / To Valhall to seek / the sacred hall.— eddic social poems
Freyja wakes the giantess Hyndla to recite Ottar's lineage (Bellows 1923).
And the bloodline as obligation: the feud after the Burning is carried by sons avenging fathers across the sea, the duty of kin running on generation after generation until it is finally laid to rest.
The last burner
One account still stood open. Kári ran down Kol Þorsteinsson — the last of the burners on his list — and killed him far away in Wales, paying out a market-stall debt with a sword-stroke, the body's head falling even as it counted its coins.[1] With that the long ledger of Flosi's dream was settled: nearly every man Irongrim named had fallen, in battle or by Kári's hand.
Kári had done what he told Skarphéðinn in the fire he would do. And now, the killing finished, the saga had one move left — the one that makes it more than a revenge tale.
The source text · 1
Kari Solmund's son told master Skeggi that he wished he would get him a ship. So master Skeggi gave Kari a long-ship, fully trimmed and manned, and on board it went Kari, and David the white, and Kolbein the black.— njals saga
Kári kills the last burner, Kol, in Wales.
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