Land of Fire & Ice

Major Volcanoes in Iceland

Iceland is clearly an odd place for settlement considering the entire island is more or less a series of active volcanoes. And what is not fire, is mostly ice. Since the settlement of Iceland in 874 C.E., about eighteen of the one-hundred and thirty volcanoes have erupted. The most active volcano on the island is Grímsvötn. The 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull caused major delays in travel between Europe and North America, but what was funnier still was the differences in the news-casts. Icelanders hilariously watched the news coverage of the eruption: meteorologists in England would attempt to pronounce the name "Eyjafjallajökull" to no avail, while new-casters in the U.S. would just refer to it as "The volcano in Iceland".

Iceland Volcanic Landscape

The volcanism of Iceland is one of the major features which people associate with the country in the modern era. Many people travel to Iceland to see the severe dichotomy of the land of "fire and ice". National Geographic & other major sources of photography of the natural world revel in the beauty of Iceland's environmental contradictions. Geologists and natural scientists are fascinated with the continual separation of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and volcanic activity around the entire island. In Reykjavík alone, a fabulously Icelandic pastime is enjoying time in the natural hot-springs - of which many attest to the beautiful complexion of Icelanders...

Then why is there little to no reference to volcanic activity in the Icelandic sagas? I highly admire the scholarship of Oren Falk, a fantastic scholar of Old Norse & Viking Age studies generally, and constantly pushes the boundaries of scholarship in the area. I was desperately searching for an article he wrote (but because I have graduated & maintain no access to the academic world - my anxieties are unusually high. Academic journals really should be open to the public. For example, "Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research." - when academic journals are open to the public it facilitates and expands education and research, and does not confine that privilege to an erudite few...)

So I finally got my hands on it - "The Vanishing Volcanoes: Fragments of Fourteenth-century Icelandic Folklore."  In this article, Falk addresses a question which really has not been properly dealt with. As stated above, why and how, in a country so consumed by its volcanic identity could there be an absence of volcanic mention in the entire corpus of Medieval Icelandic literature. Oren Falk does not attempt to answer this question, but merely proposes thoughts and ideas as to why this is the case. He states that the lack of discussion of volcanoes in the sagas began as a footnote in his PhD dissertation; a question which he continually goes back to. Falk shows through a variety of sources that it was very much known across the Medieval world that Iceland was volcanic; the Chronicum Scottorum contains an Irish annal entry for the year 938, shortly after the land-take (landnám) period in Iceland, stating that "the sun was of the colour of blood...for a day and a half." Landnámabók [The Book of Settlements] c. 1100, also contains small traces of volcanic discussion. Additionally, an entry for Hrafn Hafanarlykill suggests that he removed his farmstead at Lágey because of a foretold "volcanic eruption" (eldsuppkváma).

Small instances of this kind only hint at an awareness of geologic activity which had the ability to affect living conditions, but what Oren Falk is intrigued by is the absence of a folkloric tradition. Oftentimes the natural environment is the foundation for folklore, stories and traditions which the Icelanders were highly keen on creating. Even in Norse Mythology, reference to lands of fire and destruction are highly commonplace. As Falk notes, the oddity really is because the Icelandic sagas are noted and revered by many scholars for their realism, (See Jakobsson, Ármann. "Beast and Man: Realism and the Occult in Egils Saga," Scandinavian Studies 83.1 (2011): 29-44) yet the absence of a very real occurrence in Iceland, is just missing.

Falk underlines a very small bit of literary evidence from Grettis Saga. Grettir is in Norway (a non-volcanic land) when he sees in the distance a burning fire. He inquires to a fellow Norwegian what he has witnessed, Grettir states,

"It would be declared," said Grettir, "if such a thing were to be seen in our country [Iceland], that it's treasure [that] is burning there," ("Þat myndi mælt," sagði Grettir, "ef slíkt sæisk á váru landi, at þar brynni af fé;" Grettis saga Ch18).

 The intriguing point is that Grettir claims that fire coming out of the ground indicates buried treasure. There are many motifs which fill the sagas of buried treasure in either hard-to-find, or fire-ridden locations. Egils saga is a great example. An older Egil toward the end of the saga tosses the box of gold which King Æthelstan of England had given him in friendship into what many translations of the text is either in an fire-ridden location. No one could ever locate the treasure again.

As stated, Oren Falk does not actually have a theory for this. The total absence of a folkloric tradition surrounding volcanic activity in the Icelandic literary corpus is too convoluted to explain. Yet, this is certainly a place for further research. I'm in.

The Saga of Biorn

Although not historically or literately accurate, this video The Saga of Biorn, is undoubtedly quite funny & worth taking a look at. The video shows a Viking warrior who is desperately attempting to reach Valhalla (Old Norse: Valhöll or "Hall of the Slain"), the Norse destination for heroic warriors who die in battle. In Valhalla these fallen warriors join Oðin, drinking and training for the approaching apocalypse, Ragnarǫk. Yet for Biorn - reaching Valhalla is much more difficult than previously thought.

Íslendingasögur, Þættir & Nasty Old Men

I just finished reading an article by Ármann Jakobsson, "The Specter of Old Age: Nasty Old Men in the Sagas of Icelanders."Jakobsson argues that the depiction of old age, especially that of men, is predominately negative in the Middle Ages. The scholarship written on old age specific to Medieval Icelandic, or Scandinavian texts is highly limited, and Jakobsson's contribution is widely useful.

Eyrbyggja Saga

Ármann Jakobsson is an excellent scholar; I have followed his work since I became interested in Medieval Iceland and it has always proved insightful and eloquent. Yet, this is one of the funnier articles I have read - largely due to his concentration on Þórólfr Twist-Foot (Jakobsson uses the nickname "Lame-Foot"; but I remain using "Twist-Foot" because that is how I first read it so it is more or less ingrained in my mind). Þórólfr Twist-Foot is the "nasty old man" who figures in Eyrbyggja saga, a short but highly complex saga loosely translated as "The Saga of the People of Eyrr". Eyrbyggja saga belongs to the group of sagas known as Íslendingasögur, unlike the Fornaldarsögur previously discussed. Íslendingasögur are the "Sagas of the Icelanders" or "Family Sagas" which most people are familiar with, and Eyrbyggja saga is one of the greatest family sagas written. It also features the prolific chieftan Snorri Goði (Snorri Þorgrímsson by birth - his father was murdered by his uncle and prominent Icelandic hero Gisli in Gísla saga, of which Snorri Goði is constantly mocked for not avenging his fathers death against his uncle). Eyrbyggja saga was most likely written in the mid thirteenth century, but recounts events which took place at the time of Iceland's settlement. This is the main dating technique used when discussing sagas - there is the "Saga-Age" and the "Age of Saga Writing". The "Saga-Age" is the dating applied to the time of action within the story; while the "Age of Saga Written" is the dating referring to the time of writing in which the story was compiled.

Þórólfr Twist-Foot is not necessarily a main figure in Eyrbyggja saga, as he is only introduced in Chapter 8 through his successful landowning mother, and more or less disappears until Chapter 30 whereby he becomes angry, annoying, old and bitter. What a Medieval Icelandic audience would have known or learned about Þórólfr Twist-Foot is that he is an "ójafnaðarmaðr" - a trouble-maker, or literally an "uneven handed man". This type of personality trait was highly negative in Medieval Iceland. To be unevenly handed is unfair, unjust, and unheroic (See: Andersson, Theodore. "The Displacement of the Heroic Ideal in the Family Sagas," Speculum 45.4 (1970): 575-593.) The discussion which Jakobsson outlines is a continual decay and degeneration as Þórólfr Twist-Foot ages:

Hann tók nú at eldask fast ok gerðisk illr ok æfr við ellina ok mjǫk ójafnaðarfullr... [He began to age quickly, growing more ill-natured, violent, and unjust with the years...] (Jakobsson 298)

The decline in his years parallels the decline in his persona. Jakobsson points out that when Þórólfr Twist-Foot begins to haunt Fróðá (a farmstead), it is a reflection of himself in old age during life, instead of a reinvention of himself in death.

Jakobsson identifies another nasty old man, this time in the eponymous Þáttur (short-story) "Þorsteins Þáttur stangarhǫggs" or "Þorstein Staff-Struck". The idea which Jakobsson portrays here is that the Þórarinn, the nasty old father to Þorstein Staff-Struck, represents an 'ancient' decaying ideal - the heroic-warrior ideal most notable and admired in the Viking-Age. His son, Þorstein Staff-Struck is less quick to take up arms against people who do him wrong, he is much more level-headed than his father Þórarinn. This naturally makes Þórarinn incredibly angry and annoyed with his son, and resorts to using verbal abuse to instigate emotion from Þorstein. He states that he would rather his son Þorstein die, than for him to live without honor and the heroic ideal. The differences between father and son in Þorsteins Þáttur stangarhǫggs point to a growing tension with the warrior-code old Icelanders used to live by. In this way nasty old Þórarinn has been called a "fossilized relic of the viking past."

There are numerous instances in the sagas where old men, aging, anger and bitterness play subtle but fundamental roles. Yet these two men, Þórólfr Twist-Foot and Þórarinn are perhaps paragons of the "nasty old man" which Jakobsson seeks to illuminate. They certainly represent a feature of Icelandic society which too is dying, and perhaps their reactions and responses within a new societal framework are the reflective feelings of a tradition lost.

"I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates." T.S. Eliot

Jakobsson, Ármann. "The Specter of Old Age: Nasty Old Men in the Sagas of Icelanders," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104.3 (2005): 297-325.