Out-Thoring Thor in the Longest Saga of Óláfr Tryggvason: Akkerisfrakki, Rauðr innrammi, and Hit Rauða SkeggAuthor(s): Merrill KaplanReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 107, No. 4 (OCTOBER 2008), pp.472-489Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20722663 .Accessed: 08/04/2012 08:36

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Out-Thoring Thor in the

Longest Saga of ?l?fr Tryggvason: Akkerisfrakki, Rau?r inn rammi, and Hit Rauda Skegg1

Merrill Kaplan, The Ohio State University

?l?fr Tryggvason was not a friend to Thon Numerous passages in The Lon

gest Saga tell of the missionary king's antipathy towards the red-bearded

god. Several conversion pcettir pit the king against acolytes of Thor or

against the demonic spirit himself. At the Frostajring assembly, for exam

ple, the king smashes an elaborate statue of Thor inj?rnskeggi's temple

(chapter 167).2 The same episode is expanded in manuscripts where the

king is incensed at being called a servant of Thor and waxes eloquent at

great volume on just how ill disposed he is towards this evil spirit. The

antagonism portrayed between ?l?fr Tryggvason and Thor is not news, nor is it restricted to Mesta. Less remarked upon are the episodes in The

Longest Saga that show the king not only opposed to Thor but surpassing him on his own terms. ?l?fr both overcomes that which Thor could not and excels in the Thoronic sphere. In his dealings with Rau?r inn rammi of Go?eyjar the king does in an acolyte of Thor in a manner resonant

with Thor's end at Ragnarok. He meets Thor face-to-face and shows the old god up as a smiter of trolls and female monsters and as cleanser of the land. There and in the Akkerisfrakki episode earlier in the saga, we

find the missionary king outdoing Thor at his signature activities and

replacing him in the cosmic order. Some of these episodes appear in

other, earlier sagas of the king in forms more or less similar to those in

Mesta, but it is in The Longest Saga that old and new material is brought

together to highlight a special form of competition between Thor and

?l?fr. When the king is victorious, as of course he always is, that victory is meaningful not only in the context of the hagiographical tradition but

also against the background of the mythological narratives in which Thor was first at home.

1. Earlier versions of certain of these ideas were presented at the 13th International Saga Conference, Durham and York, 6th-12 th August 2006. An abbreviated form of the argument appears in the conference proceedings.

2. Olafs saga Trygguasonar en mesta, ed. Olafur Halld?rsson, 3 vols, Editiones Arnamag naeanae, Series A, 1-3 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1961), vol. 2, 134-42. All references are

based on the text in the AM 61 fol. redaction unless otherwise noted.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology?October ? 2008 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Out-Thoring Thor 473

AKKERISFRAKKI IN MESTA

The Akkerisfrakki episode appears in chapter 155 of the Longest Saga of Ol?fr Trygguason as it is recorded in AM 61 fol.;3 it has no equivalents in other sagas of Ol?fr, but it does appear in the independent Hallfredar saga. The short tale tells how the king in disguise saves a merchant ship from dangerous conditions in a fjord near Ag?arnes. The men aboard are pagans, among them Hallfre?r Ottarsson, who is soon to be dubbed vandrcedaskald (troublesome poet). They have just gotten news of the death of Jarl H?kon and of the missionary activity of Ol?fr Tryggvason. Eager to leave Norway for a country still heathen, they promise a sacrifice to Frey if they get a wind to Sweden, but to Odin and Thor if the wind blows to Iceland. They get no fair wind at all and instead find themselves among sharp skerries in stormy weather. King Ol?fr is sailing nearby, sees them, and decides to offer help. As he steers up alongside them their anchor cable snaps. The king leaps overboard and dives after it, grabs the cable as it shoots downward, and hauls the anchor back aboard.

This scene resonates with the story of Thor's fishing expedition in

Hymiskvida and especially in Gylfaginning 48: Thor drags upjormungandr from the depths of the sea only to have the beast sink back down when the giant Hymir cuts the line. Thor throws his hammer, but we are not certain whether it connects. Whether it does or not, the monster sinks out of sight when the line is cut, and Thor cannot raise it again.4 An an chor is not the World Serpent, but the image of a line parting?whether anchor cable or fishing line?and a great weight sinking rapidly into the

depths is a striking parallel. Viewed in light of that parallel, Thor's failure to retrieve the Serpent and King Ol?fr's success in retrieving the anchor becomes a

meaningful contrast.

Thor may or may not have killed the Mi?gar?sormr in that encounter. Snorri Sturluson acknowledges that there is some disagreement on this

point, but he reckons that the Serpent got away. Which version is repre sented in Hymiskvida is not entirely clear. Preben Meulengracht S0rensen

argues that Snorri's choice reflects his desire to fit the narrative into a

greater arc of history in which Thor must fight the Mi?gar?sormr at Ragn arok and further that the final showdown is secondary to the mythology.5

3- Olafs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, I, pp. 347-49. 4. Thor tries to lift the serpent on another occassion, in the hall of Utgar?a-Loki, where

the monster appears in the form of a cat (Qylfaginning, 46-47) . He fails there too, though without an element like the fishing line the parallel is weaker.

5. Preben Meulengracht S0rensen argues that the equivocal version in which the Serpent slips away is earlier and the one in which Thor kills it later, and he associates each version

with different understandings of time, reversible and irreversible respectively; see "Thor's

Fishing Expedition," Words and Objects: Towards a Dialogue Between Archaeology and History of Religion, ed. Gro Steinsland, Skrifter, Serie B, 71 (Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, 1986), pp. 257-78.

474 Kaplan

But whether or not the second agon is genuinely archaic, it is as integral to

Volusp?as to Snorri's account. In that age of typological thinking, it seems

unlikely that Snorri would have been the only one to have conceived of

that greater arc and connect the face-off on the field of Vigri?r with an

earlier unsuccessful day fishing. If Thor and the World Serpent mutually destruct at Ragnarok as Gylf

aginning 51 and Volusp? 55-56 describe, their prior encounter at sea

foreshadows that ultimate conflict. The king's feat of swimming points to his final battle at Svol?r. The king survives, as the compiler of Mesta

is at pains to prove in many later chapters; Thor does not. Without con

tradicting any of the meanings of the Akkerisfrakki illuminated by other

scholars, we can say that here ?l?fr Tryggvason outdoes Thor. In raising a sinking object from the sea and in surviving his ultimate conflict, Olafr

surpasses Thor.

AKKERISFRAKKI IN HALLFREDAR SAGA

The independent Hallfredar saga in MoSruvallabok also includes the tale

of Hallfre?r's encounter with the disguised King. The wording in Modru vallabok is different, but the action described does not diverge significantly from that in texts of Mesta. John Lindow has examined the Akkerisfrakki

episode in this other literary context.6 The danger faced by the sailors must also be spiritual danger. They are pagans, after all, and they have invoked the pagan gods. The anchor may have spiritual significance as an attribute of St. Clement.7 Ol?fr's retrieval of the anchor is an example of his athletic prowess and particularly the strong swimming that might have allowed him to escape a Clement-like grave on the seabed after the battle of Svol?r. Clemency, too, plays a large role in Ol?fr's relationship with Hallfre?r. The poet is troublesome on a spiritual level, though he

6. Lindow works from the text in Vatnsdoela saga, Hallfre?ar saga, Kormaks saga, Hromundar

p?ttrhalta, Hrafnsp?ttr Gu?r?narsonar, ed. Einar Ol. Sveinsson, Islenzk fornrit, 8 (Reykjavik: Hid islenzka fornritafelag, 1939), pp. 37-41, referring also to the verses as printed in Finnur

J?nsson's edition of skaldic poetry: Den norsk-islandsk Skjaldedigtning, A. Tekst efter h?nd skrifterne. I-II B., Rettet tekst. I.-II. (Copenhagen and Kristiana: Gyldendalske Boghandel og Nordisk Forlag, 1912-15). Einar Ol. Sveinsson presents the text of the independent

Hallfredar saga in M??ruvallab?k on the same page with that found in Mesta in AM 61, fol. in Hallfredar saga, ed. Einar Ol. Sveinsson, Rit, 15 (Reykjavik: Stofhun Arna Magn?ssonar ?

Islandi, 1977), p. 56. 7. John Lindow notes that that first church in Ni?ar?s was dedicated to Clement ("Ak

kerisfrakki: Traditions Concerning Ol?fr Tryggvason and Hallfre?r Ottarsson vandrae?ask?ld and the Problem of the Conversion," JEGP, 106 [2007], 74). According to Mesta, it was

founded and dedicated by Ol?fr Tryggvason not long after the Akkerisfrakki incident (chap ter 164).

Out-Thoring Thor 475

does repudiate the gods and take baptism, and the missionary king is

uncharacteristically patient with him. Later in the saga Hallfre?r is ac

cused of apostasy.8 The accusation proves false, but it is interesting that he should have been accused of carrying a figure of Thor in his pocket. Perhaps contemporary tradition had attributed to Hallfre?r a special rela

tionship with Thor. At this point it is impossible to know. If the composer of Hallfredar saga was familiar with such a tradition, he did not make it a

large part of the saga. The compiler of Mesta shows more interest in the pagan gods in gen

eral and in Thor in particular. He represents Hallfre?r and his pagan ism no differently, but significantly more attention is devoted to Thor in Mesta than in the independent Hallfredar saga. In Mesta, the saga of the troublesome poet is woven together with R?gnvalds p?ttr ok Rauds, in

which Rau?r invokes Thor. Though Thor is not named in chapter 155, he looms nearby. His idol is singled out for destruction in J?rnskeggi's hof in chapter 168?thirteen chapters away but only three leaves in AM 61 fol. (from 36r to 39r).9 These episodes are not part of the independent

Hallfredar saga. In Mesta they create a literary environment in which Thor casts a greater shadow. If the Akkerisfrakki episode resonates with Thor's

fishing expedition, it does so more loudly in Mesta.

RAUDR INN RAMMI AND RAUDR IN RAUDSEYJAR IN MESTA

Myth generates meaning also in the tale of Rau?r inn rammi. An obstinate

heathen, he proves more troublesome to the king even than Hallfre?r,

choosing to suffer a painful death at Ol?fr's hand rather than convert. The

parallels between his story and that of his namesake in R?gnvalds p?ttr ok Rauds make it difficult not to connect him with Thor, and the manner of his execution gains added significance against the background of Thor's end at Ragnar?k.

Rau?r inn rammi appears first in chapter 21 o, a "bl?tma?r mikill ok

allfj?lkunnigr" (a great practitioner of heathenism and most wise in things sorcerous) living in H?logaland with fighting men and Finns (i.e., S?mi) at his command. He and his men meet the king in battle at sea, but they suffer casualties and turn tail. Rau?r sails to Go?eyjar with a magical wind in his sail. By chapter 211 the king is in hot pursuit, but the weather is

always against him. Traveling from the south, he intends to sail up the

8. M??ruvallab?k, ch. 6; AM 61 fol. ch. 8. Einar ?l. Sveinsson, Hallfredar saga, p. 56. 9. Olafs saga Trygguasonar en mesta, vol. I, p. 378.

476 Kaplan

fjord, but high winds and storm prevent him entering from that direction. The weather holds for a full week, and the king makes no headway. In the outer fjord, however, the wind blows brisk for ships heading north, so the

king sails up the coast a ways and converts everyone there. When he turns

back south, he still cannot sail up the fjord for driving headwinds and

spray. Again the weather refuses to change. Only when Bishop Sigur?r offers prayers, lights incense, and sprinkles the ship with holy water from stem to stern do they overcome this deviltry and get sufficient calm to row

up the fjord to Go?eyjar. Rau?r is seized but refuses in strong language to convert. The king has him executed by the remarkable means of having a snake put down his throat.

The text is taken nearly unaltered from Snorri's Heimskringla,10 and the snake has an even longer genealogy, but here in Mesta the reader's experi ence of the same prose is conditioned by the presence of Rognvalds pdttr ok Rauds. Mesta does not make explicit that Rau?r inn rammi is an acolyte of Thor, but numerous details point to the compiler having understood him to be one and to have expected his audience to do the same. His name and cognomen both suggest connections with that god. Rau?r (red)

suggests Thor's red beard (an association Mesta returns to in chapter 213, where Thor calls himself "hit rauda skegg"11). The nickname "inn rammi" is also assigned to Thor by Hallfre?r vandrae?ask?ld himself in a verse in

chapter 171,12 Rau?r is a heathen and a sorcerer, and his sorcery consists of the raising of wind at sea: "hann haf?i jafhan byr hvert er hann vildi

sigla. Ok var J>at af fjolkynngi hans ok goldrum" (he had always a good wind wherever he wanted to sail, and that was because of his sorcery and

magic). As mentioned, Rau?r uses this ability to raise a storm to stop the

king's progress towards his island home in Go?eyjar. All this can only call to mind another Rau?r whom the reader has

already encountered: Rau?r in Rau?seyjar of Rognvalds pdttr ok Rauds.

FinnurJonsson reckoned the account of Rau?r inn rammi to be an expan

10. See ?lafur Halld?rsson, Text by Snorri Sturluson in Olafs saga Trygguasonar en mesta

(London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2001), pp. 128-30. Note Sveinbj?rn Rafns son's point that not all text in Heimskringla is necessarily original with Snorri, in Olafs sogar

Trygguasonar. Um ger?ir peirra, heimildir og h?funda (Reyjavik: H?sk?la?tg?fan, 2005), pp. 82-87. For the relationships among the various sagas of Olafr Tryggvason and their sources, see also Bjarni A?albjarnarson, Om de norske kongers sagaer, Skrifter II, Hist.-Filos. Klasse, 4 (Oslo: Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo, 1937), pp. 55-134; Fcereyinga saga. Olafs saga

Trygguasonar eftir Odd Snorrason, ed. ?lafur Halld?rsson, Islenzk fornrit, 25 (Reykjavik: Hi? islenzka fornritafelag, 2006), pp. lxxx-cii; and Heimskringla, I, ed. Bjarni A?albjarnarson, Islenzk fornrit, 26 (Reykjavik: Hi? islenzka fornritafelag, 1941), pp. xcix-cxl.

11. A reader familiar with a bit of dialogue attributed to the pagan I>?rhallr in Eiriks saga rauds, ch. 8, would know another example of Thor being referred to as "hinn Rau?skegg ja?i."

12. Olafs saga Trygguasonar en mesta, I, p. 360, v. 121.

Out-Thoring Thor 477

sion of Rognvalds pdttr,13 but whatever their historical relationship, their

similarity produces a literary effect here. This Rau?r is unequivocally an

acolyte of Thor. He tends a great temple consecrated to Thor ("mikit hof ok eignat I>6r") in which stands an idol. His sorcerous abilities are such that the Fiend speaks to him through the idol and even causes it to move.

Rau?r can be seen strolling around the island with his patron. Like his

namesake, Rau?r in Rau?eyjar is a blotmadr, fjolkunnigr, and likewise able to send bad weather against the king. When he does, he has the explicit aid of Thor.

In chapter 151 the king comes northward from Hla?ir?where he has

just burned another hof? and makes for Rau?seyjar in search of more

heathenism to wipe out. That same morning, a worried-seeming idol warns

Rau?r that Ol?fr and his men are coming and that this is not to his liking. Rau?r tells him to blow against them.14 Thor says it won't do any good but does so anyway, temporarily blowing the king back to port. This happens a number of times, but with God's help the king reaches the island and

arranges a meeting with Rau?r. They debate whose patron is the mightier, and the king agrees to test God's strength against the idol's in a tug-of-war across a bonfire. Thor rather hesitantly steps up to the flames, he and the

king lock grips, and the king pulls the wooden god into the blaze. It burns to cinders. Rau?r is not immediately so impressed by this demonstration, but?unlike Rau?r inn rammi?he converts to Christianity later in the narrative.

The greatest similarity between the two episodes lies in the sorcerers'

attempts to fend off the king. The winds each causes to blow suffice only temporarily. Needless to say, overcoming the winds is a victory of the king and Christ over Thor and Satan, given Thor's connection with wind rais

ing in Rognvalds pdttrand by analogy in the case of Rau?r inn rammi. The

doubling is actually a trebling, for the same structure occurs in Rau?r inn rammi's execution scene. When Rau?r refuses to convert, the king is

enraged and promises him "the worst possible death":

M let konungr taka lyngorm einn ok bera at munni honum. En ormrinn

vildi eigi inn 1 munninn ok hrpkktisk fr? 1 brott, pvi at Rau?r bles fast 1 m?ti honum. M let konungr taka hvannj?la trumbu ok setja 1 munn honum, en

13- Den oldnorske og oldislandske litteraturs Historie, 3 (Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad, 1902), p. 90. Dag Str?mb?ck notes that there "seems to be some connection" between R?gnvalds p?ttr and Snorri's version of the tale of Rau?r inn rammi, in The Arna-Magncean Manuscript 55 7 4to containing inter alia the History of the first Discovery of America, ed. Dag Str?mb?ck, Corpus Codicum Islandicorum Medii Aevi, 13 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1940), pp. 15-16.

14. This is very freely rendered considering the oddness of the text here. Richard Perkins's ideas about the proper interpretation of skeggrodd and skeggraust in "{>eyt p? \ m?ti f)eim skeggrodd Jrfna" and "bles I>orr fast 1 kampana ok f)eytti skeggraustina" will be discussed below. Clear, though, is that Thor blows (peytr or bles) against them ("1 m?ti J)eim").

47 8 Kaplan

sumir menn segja at konungr leti setja l??r sinn 1 munn Rau? ok bera f)ar \

orminn. Si?an let hann bera at utan sl?j?rn gl?anda. Hrokktisk f)? ormrinn

undan j?rninu 1 munn Rau?r ok si?an 1 brjostit til hjartans, ok skar ?t um

vinstri si?una. Let Rau?r sv? Kf sitt.

(Then the king had a snake taken and brought up to his mouth, but the snake wouldn't go in and it squirmed away because Rau?r blew against it.

Then the king had an angelica stalk put into his mouth, though some people say that the king had his trumpet put into Rau?r's mouth and the snake put into it. Then he had a glowing hot iron bar brought up to it. Then the snake

squirmed away from the iron into Rau?r's mouth, then into his chest to his heart, and it cut its way out of his left side. Then Rau?r died.)

Rau?r's death is not only gruesome but also fitting for a man so intimately connected to Thor. Rau?r is killed by a common snake just as his patron is done in by the World Serpent. The king turns a miniature version of

Thor's nemesis against his own acolyte?Thor's death is in the king's hands. He even has control over the other serpent in the chapter, the

ship. After dispatching Rau?r, the king seizes his longship, renames it Ormrinn (the serpent or dragon?with the sail unfurled, the ship looks like a dragon), and sails off into chapter 212.15 The ship is specifically identified as a dreki (dragon, a warship), the only one so called in the

chapter, and it is ornamented with a dragon head at the prow and a

snake's tail (spordr) at the stern. Ol?fr's mastery of serpents, then, is not

limited to common lyngormar. The king's control of the ship is stressed: he personally mans the steering oar: "I>ar t?k ?l?fr konung drekann er Rau?r hafti ?tt ok styr?i sj?lfr." Once again, the king demonstrates supe riority over Thor by demonstrating dominance over the type of being that had proved Thor's ultimate doom.

These references to Ragnarok may affect how the reader understands the theological implications of Rau?r's death. Dying a pagan as he does, Rau?r will not live on in the world after Doomsday, and the appearance of the snake reminds one that Thor does not live on after Ragnarok. The reader of Mesta may have understood that cataclysm to be identical with the coming of Christianity to the North.16 If so, therein lies another paral lel, but a more striking one in the present context is the snake's role in the

15. Finnur J?nsson mistakes this ship for Ormrinn langi in reference to a verse in ch. 212

(Den norsk-islandsk Skjaldedigtning, B, I, p. 169), but the Long Serpent has yet to be built at

this point in the saga. 16. The poet behind the Hauksbok redaction of Voluspa may have done so when he followed

up the description of cosmic destruction with two lines telling of the coming of "the power ful one from above, he who rules over everything"; st. 65: "M k0mr inn riki at regind?mi, oflugr, ofan, s? er pllu rae?r" (Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkm?lern,

5. verbesserte Auflage, ed. Gustav Neckel and Hans Kuhn, I. Text [Heidelberg: Carl Winter,

1983], p. 15).

Out-Thoring Thor 479

death of both Rau?r and Thor.17 The author behind this episode fits the

king into the pre-existing mythological narrative. Ol?fr does not assume

Thor's role here so much as rub his face in the tradition that confirms the old god's mortality and his less-than-divine nature.

Rau?r's attempt to escape his fate is also significant; huffing and puff ing is a Thoronic strategy. The king's first attempt to introduce the snake fails because Rau?r blows against it: "bles ? m?ti honum." Wind raising is Thor blowing; in Rognvalds pdttr Rau?r bids the idol blow against the

ships: "I>eyt pu 1 mot peim skeggrodd f)ina"; and he obliges: "Bles I>orr fast i kampana ok jDeytti skeggraustina." These are strange phrases; the words skeggrodd and skeggraust appear nowhere else in the corpus. Richard Perkins understands them to refer to a pre-Christian belief that Thor raised wind by sounding his beard as if it were a musical instrument. His

larger argument is for an interpretation of the Eyjarland image and other statuettes depicting male figures clutching their beards as cult objects connected to Thor as god of wind. We need not accept all of Perkins's thesis to find the parallel important here. Even without knowing what

skeggrodd and skeggraust are or what exactly it means for them to appear here in the accusative, subject and verb are clear: Thor blows against the king just as Rau?r blows against the snake.18 Wind raising is blowing.

Verbs of blowing?peyta and bldsa?suggest wind raising. Whatever the

significance of the Eyjarland figurine or the nature of pre-Christian belief, Mesta connects wind-raising with Thor and with the action of blowing, and that association makes Rau?r's failure to keep back the snake the failure of a Thoronic defense.19

17- The king's ships are also, one would suppose, drekar, a word frequently synonymous with ormar, but neither word appears in reference to ships in these passages. As nothing is made of the potential for play on words in the text, I would not make anything of it here.

18. For Perkins, blowing through the mouth is implicit too in Rau?r inn rammi's wind

raising, though he does not connect all the dots to support this idea. See Richard Perkins, Thor the Wind-Raiser and the Eyjarland Image, Viking Society for Northern Research, Text Series, 20 (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2001), p. 44.

19. If Perkins is correct that "J)eyta skeggrodd" and "J^eyta skeggraustina" means blowing through or sounding a beard as if it were a musical instrument, the king's use of a horn (l??r) or angelica stalk (hvannjolatrumba?literally "angelica trumpet") to conduct the serpent into Rau?r's mouth becomes interesting. There is no blowing or huffing on the part of the king (and no raising of winds), but the frequency of the verbs bl?sa and peyta with the nouns l??r and trumba in the Old Norse-Icelandic corpus (along with compounds like l??rbl?str,

l??rapytr, l??rpeytari, and trumbupytr?see Richard Cleasby and Gu?brandur Vigfusson, An

Icelandic-English Dictionary [Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1874; 2d ed., 1957] for citations) suggest that one might have called to mind the other. Correspondence of beard (skeggdiiid kampar) with /wcfrand trumba would provide another parallel: to bl?sa or peyta is a Thoronic

thing to do, though Rau?r and Rau?r's use of this strategy is insufficient against the king. The king's use of a tool one would normally bl?sa or peyta is, on the other hand, effective

against Thor's representative.

480 Kaplan

RAUDR INN RAMMI IN HEIMSKRINGLA AND ODDS SAGA M?NKS

As already mentioned, the tale of Rau?r inn rammi in this form can be traced to Heimskringla. It appears in chapters 78-80 in Snorri's saga of

Ol?fr Tryggvason in essentially identical form,20 but its affinities with things Thoronic are considerably stronger in Mesta than in Heimskringla. Snorri

includes the snake but omits Rognvalds pdttr ok Rauds or any equivalent. Without Rau?r of Rau?seyjar and his demonically animated idol of Thor,

only suspicious winds and the name Rau?r might connect this stubborn

pagan with Thor in the mind of the reader. In Snorri's hands, the applica tion of the snake is horrific but mundane.

The trail of the snake extends further back to Oddr Snorrason's saga of Ol?fr. There, too, it serves as an especially fitting means of execution, but for entirely different reasons. The victim of the king's wrath (S 48/A 43) is a nameless loud-mouth who speaks against Ol?fr while he preaches at an assembly. He is not identified as a blotmadr or anything of the kind. The

king's choice of method is probably to do with the man's sharp tongue. He is mdlsnjallr (eloquent), and he answers back in manuscript A with

"morgum or?um h??ulegum ok ?vir?ilegum" (many insulting and disre

spectful words) .21 This is the sort of behavior that can land a person with a

nickname like serpent-tongue or ormstunga, as happened with Gunnlaugr Illugason. Gunnlaugs saga 4 tells us that he was "heldr m?sk?r" (given to

composing calumnious verse) and (thus) called ormstunga.22 Ol?fr inflicts a sort of homeopathic torture: if the serpent-tongued fellow cannot hold his own tongue, the king will have a serpent do it for him. Oddr's version differs also with regard to the other serpent. The king does not acquire the magnificent longship or dreki by seizing it from Rau?r but instead has it built for himself later in the saga (A 38/S 47)

23 None of the resonances

involving Thor and the World Serpent appear in Oddr's saga of Ol?fr.

Storm raising appears in Oddr's saga as well in a pair of nearly identi

20. Heimskringla, I, Islenzk fornrit, 26, pp. 324-28. See ?lafur Halld?rsson, Text by Snorri

Sturluson in Olafs saga Trygguasonar en mesta, pp. 128-30, for specifics. 21. Fcereyinga Saga, Olafs saga Trygguasonar, Islenzk fornrit, 25, p. 282. 22. He is also "very turbulent in all his moods, ambitious while young, unreasonable in all

things, an unyielding man, and a great poet" (h?va?ama?r mikill 1 ollu skaplyndi ok fram

gjarn snimmendis ok vi? allt ?vaeginn ok har?r ok skald mikit). As noted in Sigur?ur Nordal

and Gu?nij?nsson's edition, Gunnlaugr's great-grandfather was also called ormstunga, and

nicknames are sometimes passed down (see Vatnsdcela saga, Hallfredar saga, Islenzk fornrit

8, p. 59, n. 2), but I agree that the name must also have to do with Gunnlaugr's own verbal

combativeness.

23. Bjarni A?albjarnarson credits Gunnlaugr Leifsson, the author of a lost Latin saga of

King ?l?fr, with connecting Rau?r to Ormrin skammi. See Om de norske kongers sagaer, p.

129.

Out-Thoring Thor 481

cal chapters about pagans named Hr?aldr: Hr?aldr 1 Go?eyjar (S 33/A 39) and Hr?aldr 1 Moldafir?i (S 47/A 57) .24 Their similarity must reflect the variations one would expect to find in oral tradition about the king's doings in the north. Oddr makes no attempt to combine them.25 Both fellows Hr?aldr attempt to halt the king's approach: one raises heavy seas

and dangerous reefs, and the other raises winds. Both are serious pagans? their paganism is the sole point of their inclusion in the saga?but they venerate nonspecific heathen god rather than Thor. We are not told that the king has them killed in any particularly striking way. These episodes

may or may not be the immediate source for Rau?r's wind-raising activities in Heimskringla^ but they are certainly not the source of his association

with Thor. The details of Rau?r inn rammi's tale that suggest an association with

Thor come to Mesta not from Oddr's saga but from Heimskringla, and they come as a neat package. Still, Snorri had not chosen to bring those details into high relief. The compiler of Mesta, on the other hand, chooses to include Snorri's version of the tale of an island-dwelling sorcerer and ar

ranges for Rau?r inn rammi, the ship Ormrinn, serpent and all to appear in a greater narrative also containing the Akkerisfrakki episode, Rognvalds pdttr ok Rauds, and an encounter in chapter 213 with the red-bearded one himself. Snorri includes none of these, and some we know he omitted

purposefully. In fact it is exactly here in chapter 80, immediately after Rau?r inn rammi's end, that Snorri tells us that he has left out certain accounts in which trolls and evil spirits contended directly with the king and his men. He would rather write about events connected to Ol?fr's conversion of the North.27 It is clear he knew these other episodes.

It is impossible to contend that Snorri was uninterested in the mythol ogy or even that he was uninterested in dealing with mythology in the context of the famously rational Heimskringla, but the mythological Thor is

conspicuously absent. The historical Thor is mentioned twice in Ynglinga saga and only in passing. Inanimate (or unanimated) idols of Thor appear

24. The doubling has been widely noted: Theodore Andersson, The Saga of Olaf Tryggva son. Oddr Snorrason, Islandica, 52 (Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 2003), p. 146; Bjarni A?albjarnarson, Om de norske kongers sagaer, p. 129; Saga Olafs Konungs Trygguasonar, ed. P. A. Munch (Christiania: Br0gger & Christie, 1853), p. 95.

25. ?lafur Halld?rsson points out the difficulty of reconciling the geography: the distance between Moldarfjor?ur and Go?eyjar is significant (Islenzk fornrit, 25, p. cxvi). Munch would have had no such qualms and takes the chapters to be accounts of one, ostensibly historical individual (Saga Olafs Konungs Trygguasonar, p. 95).

26. Fcereyinga Saga, Olafs saga Trygguasonar, Islenzk fornrit, 25, p. cxvi.

27. "... ok var 1 peiri fer? mart pat, er 1 fr?sogn er fcert, er troll ok illar vettir glettusk vi? menn hans og stundum vi? hann sj?lfan. En ver viljum heldr rita urn pa. atbur?i, er ?l?fr

konungr kristna?i N?reg e?a onnur pau lond, er hann kom kristni ?" (Heimskringla, I, Islenzk

fornrit, 26, p. 328).

482 Kaplan

once in Olafs saga Trygguasonar in chapter 69 and again in Olafs saga helga 112 (II, 84, 87). Thor is passive throughout, a wooden figure awaiting destruction or a name in a genealogy. The only detail that might make him more than a purely generic idol is the hamarsmark King H?kon is said to have made over a horn in place of the sign of the cross in H?konar

saga goda 17 (I, 171). His exact nature, whether protector of men, smiter of trolls, or raiser of winds, on the other hand, is of no importance in

Heimskringla and never described. To the compiler of Mesta, in contrast, the exact nature of Thor is of very great interest indeed. This is apparent in the texts discussed above and even clearer in the one treated next.

THE RED BEARD

Snorri will not repeat tales of the harassment visited upon the king and his men by trolls, but the Mesta compiler will. The first section of AM 61, fol., chapter 213 describes the king's encounter with Thor himself. He is never identified by name in the main text, but there is no mistaking him. AM 61, fol., characteristically, has no heading here, but AM 54, fol. heads the section with "fra J)or" (concerning Thor), and AM 62, fol. with "ol

konungr hitti ]3or" (King Olafr met Thor). As elsewhere, the compiler/ author understands this being as a demonic entity, but he is also recog nizable as the Thor we are familiar with from eddic poetry and Snorri's

writings.28 King Olafr is sailing off H?logaland when his ship is hailed from shore by a man standing on a bluff (in fact a hamarr, a word closely associ ated with Thor29) and hoping to hitch a ride south. The king takes him aboard. The fellow is young-seeming, powerfully built, and red-bearded. He roughhouses with the king's men, thumping them quite hard at times, to all appearances enjoying himself immensely. He and the men trade

insulting words, and he says that they are weaklings unworthy of follow

ing so worthy a king and crewing such a magnificent ship. The ship is the

ornately-decorated Ormrinn, later Ormrinn skammi, which the king had liberated from Rau?r inn rammi two chapters previously. Furthermore, the red-bearded man goes on, the ship had been more fearsomely crewed

when Rau?r inn rammi owned it, so well-crewed that Rau?r had not needed to call upon the strength of such as he was for any military purposes but

more for entertainment and counsel (skemtanar ok r?duneytis). But you, he

concludes, you are all miserable weaklings (olmosur). When the king's men ask him whether they can tell them anything of

28. Compare the depiction of pagan gods in saints' lives discussed in Lindow, "Norse

Mythology and the Lives of the Saints," Scandinavian Studies, 73 (2001), 437-55. 29. Lindow, "Thor's hamarr," JEGP, 93 (1994), 485-503.

Out-Thoring Thor 483

interest, whether of recent events or past ones, he boasts that he reckons there is little they could ask him that he could not answer. They bring him before the king, who asks him if he knows any "forn frce?i." He replies with the story of how the area they were sailing by had long ago been inhabited by giants, nearly all of whom perished in some catastrophe, but two giantesses had survived. These women had caused great trouble to the humans who then settled the region until they learned to call upon "The Red Beard" for aid: "J)ar til landsmenn t?ku f>at r?? at heita ? J^etta hit rau?a skegg til hj?lpar ser." Then he seized his hammer and smote the giantesses, killing them, and ever since then the people of this region have called on him when they were in need. But now the king has driven out so many of his friends that it is a thing worth avenging.30 At this he looks back towards the king, grins, and flips himself overboard. He sinks into the water and is never seen again.

This passage attaches numerous familiar characteristics of the mytho logical Thor to the red-bearded speaker. Apart from his physical appear ance and the wielding of a hammer as a weapon, he is a brawler of great physical strength. This accords well with the Thor of the mythology, who is the sort of brute-force fellow who might crush his enemies against the floor (Sk?ldskaparm?l, 18) or tear the head off an ox (Hymiskvida, 19). This Red-Beard is a slayer of giantesses, which is a speciality of Thor over and above his function as a destroyer of trolls generally:31 Thor does in

Geirr0<3r's daughters Gj?lp and Greip, Erymr's sister in the last lines of

Prymskvida; in H?rbar?slj?? he boasts of having killed "br??ir bolvisar" and "br??ir berserkja" (evil women and the brides of berserks); and he is credited with the deaths of otherwise unknown giantesses whose names

appear in skaldic verse by Vetrli?i Sumarli?ason and Eorbjorn dfsarskald.32

30. One of these friends is doubtless the mysterious fellow in the rowboat? "Nokkvama?rinn"?who finds himself unable to out-row the king in the immediately previous chapter. This fellow is not eager to meet the king's closer acquaintance, unhappy that his brother is too far away to help him. Were they both there, he says, they would not flee. He too flips himself overboard and vanishes. Finnur J?nsson categorizes his two lausavisur among the anonymous verse of the tenth century and identifies the man as "en nordmand" (Skjaldedigtning, A,I, 179-80; B, I, 169-70; Lexicon Poeticum 247), but Kate

Heslop's suggestion that he is some manner of giant or troll is clearly correct ("Assembling the Olaf-archive? Verses in Olafs saga Trygguasonar en mesta" [paper presented at the 13th International Saga Conference, Durham and York, 6th-i2th August 2006, pp. 381-89]). The context strongly suggests that his brother or friend is The Red Beard himself. Richard

Cleasby and Gudbrandur Vigfusson remark on both these chapters as depictions of "giants and trolls as the older dwellers on the earth." See Cleasby and Vigfusson, An Icelandic

English Dictionary, p. 641. 31. Noted by Lindow, "Addressing Thor," Scandinavian Studies, 60 (1988), 119-36, and

McKinnell, Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), pp. 109-25.

32. On skaldic verse involving Thor, see especially Lindow, "Addressing Thor."

484 Kaplan

It seems clear that the author of this passage has the mythological Thor in mind even though he understands Red Beard to be some manner of demonic spirit, and knowing that helps us make sense of the balance of the chapter. The abrupt exit and the use of a pseudonym are admittedly not particularly typical of Thor, though Thor travels in disguise as a young

boy in Snorri's version of his journey to Hymir (Gylfaginning, 48). "Forn

frce?i," also, is generally more Odin's line than Thor's, but there is no

climactic revelation of the identity of the knowledgeable stranger as in

Vafprudnism?l, Grimnismdl, Baldrs draumar, and the Gestumblindi episode in Heidreks saga. The scene is not a contest of wisdom but a quick review of the things Thor tends to do, helpfully provided so that we can compare them to the king's own feats in the text that follows.

The rest of the chapter describes the poor treatment friends of The Red Beard have suffered at the king's hands. Charmingly, it makes us privy to the complaints of three very put-upon trolls: all three have tangled with

King Ol?fr and come out the worse for it. After the disappearance of the

grinning Red Beard, the king and his retinue continue along the coast.

They put in for a while, and the men hear rumors circulating that nearby Naumadalr is experiencing much trgllagangr (troll-related activity) since the death of Jarl H?kon. Two of the king's men are seized with curiosity and sneak off inland in the middle of the night to see if the rumors are true. They come upon a cave in which a group of trolls and evil spirits is

having a

meeting. The men hide themselves and listen. The chief troll

asks the assembly whether they know that Ol?fr Tryggvason has moved in. The trolls are well aware of their new neighbor and have received bad treatment at his hands. The troll chieftain wants details.

The first troll to tell his tale is a refugee from Gaulardalr and an old friend of Jarl H?kon, the last pagan ruler of Norway's northwestern coast. He was displeased when Ol?fr moved in?the troll calls him "]Dessi hinn

grimmi ma?r" (that cruel man)?and when ?l?fr's men started organiz ing games near his residence, he decided to take action. Twice, having taken on human form, the troll infiltrated the game and broke a few fellows' arms and legs. When the troll tried this gambit a third time, he

happened to catch hold of the king. The king in turn caught hold of him and pressed his arms to his sides with a grip like glowing iron, crushing him so hard he cried out. The troll got away, but only barely, and he was

badly burned. He thought it best to move house to Naumadalr. Games are a commonplace of saga, but the troll's complaint brings to

mind the game Geirr0?r invited Thor to play with him, one meant to be fatal to the god. Not only was that combat with a giant framed as a leikrby Snorri (Skdldskaparmdl, 26), the same word the troll in Mesta uses of the men's games, but Geirr0?r got the worst of it after being burned badly

Out-Thoring Thor 485

when Thor tosses back the lump of glowing iron the giant has thrown at him. The detail of the glowing iron might be coincidence, but in both cases a giant or troll enters a game, intends to harm a god or human with an element of the game itself. At Gaulardalr that element is gripping and

grappling; at Geirra?argar?r it is a kind of ball. The giant/ troll is defeated when that element is turned back upon him. Geirr0?r is struck by the ball thrown back by Thor, and the Gaulardalr troll is overpowered by the

king's grip. If the parallel involving Geirr0<3r is not too strained, then we see the king dealing with a troll in a way Thor might do, and in doing so

he is at least as effective at Thor. The king's crushing grip also sounds like a wresding move, which recalls

Thor's wrestling match with Elli, another match he did not win (Gylfaginn ing, 46). Olafr, on the other hand, bests his opponent. Even without reach

ing for such specific parallels from the wider mythology, such violent play is identified with Thor in this very chapter. When The Red Beard knocks the

king's men about, it was not enough to drive off the king. The king's rough treatment of the disguised troll, however, causes him to pick up and move.

As a grappler and cleanser of the land, then, King Olafr outdoes Thor. The second troll to recount his woes took another approach. He dis

guised himself as a beautiful woman and appeared at a feast held by the

king. The troll brought along a drinking horn, and the drink in this horn had been mixed with poison and many other bad things besides. In due course the king called her over to pour for him, and the troll's heart leapt at the thought that Olafr would drink the noxious stuff and die. Instead the king took the horn, up-ended it over the troll?who then suffered the evil and poison it contained?and then bashed it into the troll's head, wounding it severely.

The most Thor-like aspect of the king's actions here is simply that he strikes and defeats a female monster, in any event a monster that appears female. As already mentioned, dispatching female monsters is a peculiar speciality of Thor, and if the reader does not recall any of the numerous

examples from H?rbardsljod, Porsdrapa, or other sources on the mythology, he will have been reminded that the red-bearded god kills giantesses in the earlier part of the chapter by The Red Beard himself.

The woman/troll defeated here by the king threatens him with a nox ious liquid. There may be another Thoronic parallel here, for Thor is threatened by a giantess with noxious liquid at least once. On his journey to Geirr0?r, Thor struggles to cross the dangerous waters of the river

Vimur, waters made more dangerous by the giantess Gj?lp who urinates into the flow upstream (Sk?ldskaparm?l, 18). Thor makes a habit of wading through rivers (Gylfaginning, 15, Grimnism?l, 29). Margaret Clunies Ross and John McKinnell have argued that the mythology conceived of rivers,

486 Kaplan

waves, and bodies of water as inimical feminine forces and that they were

personified as giantesses,33 and so we might understand any or all of these

crossings as combats between Thor and giantesses wielding dangerous liquids.34 King Ol?fr does not cross a river in chapter 213 of Mesta. He is

merely handed a drinking horn, and a drinking horn and its contents is not a river. Then again, a drinking horn is not the sea either, except in

Utgar?a-Loki's hall, where Thor is challenged to drain a horn containing the ocean and finds he cannot (Gylfaginning, 36). The king, unlike Thor in

Utgar?r, understands that the drink is not what it seems, and he does not

drain his horn by drinking it but instead wisely dumps it over his would be attacker, so defeating her. King Ol?fr is at least more perceptive than Thor. Beyond that, the associations among giantesses, bodies of water, and drinking horns may add further depth to the king's resemblance to Thor in this moment. Even without them, the king is shown to be at least the equal of The Red Beard as he is depicted in chapter 213 of Mesta in

vanquishing an inimical female. The third troll's account of his woes is similar to that of the second.

This one says he also took on the shape of a beautiful woman. He then entered the king's quarters late in the evening, when the king was prepar

ing for sleep. Ol?fr was dressed in his linen pajama bottoms with his bare feet sticking out. By magic the troll caused the king's foot to itch. Seeing the attractive woman, the king called her over to scratch his foot, and as she did so, he drifted off to sleep. Seeing his chance, the troll prepared to do the king in, but the king suddenly awoke and struck the troll in the head with a book (presumably a prayerbook). The troll fled, and now, he

complains to his fellow trolls, he is maimed for life.

Having heard all this, Ol?fr's eavesdropping hirdmenn sneak away from the troll assembly and return to the ships. The next day they report every

thing to the king, who confirms that it is all true, even pointing to the spot on his foot where the troll had touched him. Soon after, the king and the

bishop travel from settlement to settlement all over the region, sprinkling holy water on stone, hill, and dale ("urn bjorg ok hamra, dali ok hola"),

driving out "illar vaettir" and "?hreinar andir," freeing the populace from their tyranny. In the fall, the king travels south to Trondheim. So ends the

chapter.

33- Clunies Ross, "An interpretation of the myth of E?rr's encounter with Geirro?r and

his daughters," in Specvlvm Norroenvm. Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre, eds.

Ursula Dronke, Guortin R Helgad?ttir, Gerd Wolfgang Weber and Hans Bekker-Nielsen

(Odense: Odense Univ. Press, 1981) p. 373; McKinnell, Meeting the Other, pp. 110-11.

34. Note also the giantesses who urinate in Njor?r's mouth, reported in Lokasenna, 34. The reference is obscure, but it is clearly an agonistic moment between a god and female monsters cum noxious liquid. At the risk of drifting into Nature Mythology, one wonders

whether the image could be one of rivers emptying into the sea.

Out-Thoring Thor 487

The third troll, like the second, is in female form, and thus the en counter is another defeat of a female monster and typically Thoronic as such. Much as it would be pleasing to find another parallel with Thor's encounter with Geirr0?r and his daughters in the king's defeat of the third troll, I do not see one. But a perfect parallel with a specific myth of Thor is unnecessary for the present argument, for the narrative of Thor that provides the closest parallel to the accounts of King Ol?fr's dealings

with the trolls of Naumadalr is the first half of the same chapter. The cor

respondence becomes clear when the events are summarized. In the first half of chapter 213, Red Beard appears, 1) roughs up the king's men, and 2) boasts of having slain two female monsters, thus 3) ending their

tyranny ("yfirgangr ok ?maki"). In this way he makes the region safe for human habitation. He also makes explicit his intent to do the king harm. In the second half of the chapter, we hear how the king had 1) physically overpowered a troll who was roughing up his men, and 2) defeated two monsters in female form. We then see him drive all the evil beings from the area, thus 3) freeing the locals from their tyranny ("?nau?r ok yfir gangr") , and making the region safe for human habitation. Furthermore, Thor has failed to do the king the harm he promised to visit upon him. All the manuscripts of the Longest Saga but Flateyjarbok pair the encounter with Red Beard with the narratives of the trolls. They are best understood

together, not just as King Ol?fr's defeat of Thor?whose promised revenge never comes to fruition, after all?but as an assumption of Thor's cosmic role as destroyer of trolls, especially female ones, cleanser of the land, and protector of humans. King Olafr is not only the enemy of and victor over Thor, he is also Thor's replacement.

HIT RAUDA SKEGG IN ODDS SAGA M?NKS

Though the king's adventures with The Red Beard and the aggrieved trolls of Naumadalr appear in Oddr Snorrason's saga of ?l?fr Tryggvason as well (A 51-52 / S 601-62),35 the material is presented differently. Both versions of the encounter with Red Beard are, of course, about Thor, but the Mesta compiler binds that encounter more closely to that of the Naumadalr trolls, bringing them into the interpretive ambit of the god best known for troll killing. In Mesta the Red Beard and the supernatural residents of Naumadalr enjoy a single chapter and are part of the same

expedition. The compiler bridges the two events with a non-disruptive transitional sentence: "For ?l?fr konungr pi lei? sina par til er hann

35- Islenzk fornrit, 25, pp. 289-94.

488 Kaplan

kom 1 Naumdcela fylki" (Then King Ol?fr continued on his way until he came to the district of the people of Naumadalr). Oddr had placed the two events each in its own chapter. Instead of tying them together, he

separates them with a formula suggesting the opening of a new narra

tive: A: "Ok pat er sagt eitt sinn at" (And once, it is said that?); S: "Eat er sagt at" (It is said that?) .36 The Mesta compiler further connects the two by having Red Beard promise to extract revenge. The chronology

makes it impossible to understand the trolls' attacks as attempts at that

revenge, but the apparent cliffhanger still invites the reader to interpret

subsequent events in light of the stranger's words. No equivalent appears in Odds saga. Red Beard relates how he killed the two giant women and,

having said that (A: "Ok pa er par var komit"; S: "Ok er hann haf?i f>etta

sagt"), disappears over the side. In Odds saga the tale is not woven in with the story of how the king acquired a ship from Rau?r inn rammi, as Rau?r inn rammi is not here. We see only a light revision of Oddr's tale here in Mesta, chiefly the

linking of one event to another of the sort that Theodore Andersson notes

in Snorri's revision of other parts of Oddr's text. Little revision would have been needed for a redactor interested in things Thoronic: The Red Beard's true identity was already perfectly clear when the Mesta compiler came upon him. He ties him ever so slighdy more securely to the trolls

of Naumadalr and their complaints. On the other end he binds him to the tale of Rau?r inn rammi using the device of the ship Ormrinn. He sets them both in a larger context together with Rognvalds pdttr ok Rauds, which brings Rau?r inn rammi's characteristics into high relief. The story of the king as Akkerisfrakki diving and anchor-raising rounds out the

group. The result is a text that shows interest in Thor and in a specific form of contest between Thor and Ol?fr Tryggvason.

* * *

In these chapters of Mesta?in Naumadalr, off Ag?anes, in Go?eyjar and

Rau?seyjar?we find Ol?fr Tryggvason sailing against the wind, steering

serpents, grappling with trolls, killing female monsters, and performing a

feat of strength involving a great weight that sinks suddenly into the depths of the ocean. In these chapters we find him outdoing Thor at his signature activities and replacing him in the cosmic order of things. We see that the

compiler responsible for the Longest Saga and its overall hagiographical

project knew enough about the characteristics and specific roles attributed to such figures in an archaic mythology that had portrayed them as the

allies of mankind to make literary use of those characteristics. Though

36. The same is true of the Flateyjarbok redaction.

Out-Thoring Thor 489

he clearly understood figures like Thor to be evil spirits rather than gods or magically-gifted humans, he could present the wiles of those demons in a fashion consonant with the mythology. That such knowledge was in

circulation at the time is no more news than is the enmity between Thor and ?l?fr. Lindow, as mentioned, has shown that similar mythological competence was demonstrated in other saints' lives. Nevertheless, the

Mesta compiler is notable for how he distinguishes himself from the au

thors of his source material, Snorri and Oddr munkr, and from others, like the author/redactor of Hallfredar saga, who turned these episodes to different literary ends. The compiler of Mesta arranged material from

disparate sources revised to varying degrees to create a text in which tales of the king are meaningful not only in relation to standard hagiographical tropes but in their resonances with mythological narratives. He shows us

the missionary king stepping into the role of the ogress-slayer, serpent

wrangler, and protector of mankind. His version of Olafr Tryggvason can not only burn down temples, smash idols, and chase out evil spirits but out-Thor the Thunder God as well.