The Saga of Grettir

* Werewolves (HS)
* The Journey To The West: Part X (LS)

***Legends Summarized: The Saga of Grettir*** is the eightieth episode of *Miscellaneous Myths* and the seventeenth episode of the *Legends Summarized* series by Red. It is also the eighth Halloween Special. In it, Red summarizes *The Saga of Grettir the Strong*, which recounts the life, times, and eventual doom of Grettir.

## Introduction

Red begins the episode by recounting her affections for the fall season and the spookiness of it, transitioning to her choice for this year's Halloween Special: *The Saga of Grettir the Strong*. She explains that a saga is an Icelandic or Scandinavian, somewhat fictional historical narrative that is written in prose, usually focusing on a family history. She then describes them as being very dry to read, since their purpose is to just give a series of events regarding some people's entire lives rather than tell a grand story of some of their adventures.

## Summary

### The Beginning

Red begins the story by saying that the story begins at Grettir's birth, at least, that is, if one ignores the first thirteen chapters that have nothing to do with him. His mother exclaims that the baby is a protagonist. As a child, Grettir was already very strong but often got into fights, which prompted his father Asmund Longhair to send him to a Thing, or meeting, in his place since, as Red notes, Grettir was generally useless on the farm.

#### Grettir's First Murder

As Grettir is traveling to the Thing with a group of other guys, they one day wake up to find their horses routed and their food gone. Grettir accuses another member of the group, Skeggi, of stealing, who then responds with an axe. This prompts Grettir to kill him, Red remarking how they grow up so fast. Grettir then tells the group that Skeggi was killed by a troll. The group doesn't believe him, with one guy noting how Grettir is saying this happened in broad daylight, and Grettir eventually owns up to the murder and is banished for three years. His mother gives him a sword that belonged to his grandfather, and Grettir sets sail for his exile.

#### Voyage, a Haunted Hill, and Ghost Wrestling

Grettir proceeds to do absolutely nothing once on board the ship, until it springs a leak. He then fixes the situation singlehandedly only to impress a lady and saves the ship. However, it then hits a rock and sinks anyways.

Whoops.

The crew manages to get to a nearby island off the coast of Norway, where a rich dude named Thorfinn lives, who then helps them out. The rest of the crew leaves but Grettir stays, mainly because Thorfinn is too nice to kick him out, and again does nothing and is generally unhelpful. One day, he spots a fire in the distance, and is informed that it is the result of Thorfinn's father, Kar the Old, haunting his burial mound. Gretir then digs into the burial mound, finding many riches and goods, before he is attacked by the remains of Kar the Old. In Round One of Ghost Wrestling, the two fight and smash up the burial mound. Grettir wins by decapitating Kar. He then returns with the treasure and informs Thorfinn that the burial mound is no longer haunted, which Red notes that he is suprisingly okay with this. Grettir asks if he can have a shiny sword from the burial mound, to which Thorfinn says he'll have to...

PROVE HIMSELF!

#### Outlaw Revenge and a Shinier Sword

An opportunity comes for Grettir to prove himself when a group of men steal Thorfinn's boat while he is away on business and tell Grettir that they are outlaws intent on getting revenge on Thorfinn. Grettir then invites them to the house to party, acts as host, and gets the group extremely drunk. He then leads them to an outhouse and slams and barricades the door. He then asks the lady of the house if there are any weapons, and she catches on that this was a ploy to kill them. She gives Grettir the weapons and armor of Kar the Old and he goes to fight. Despite being outnumbered and all the outlaws being berserkers, Grettir kills all of them and returns to the house. The lady of the house and Thorfinn, when he returns, praise Grettir for his valiant works and for saving them, and then give him the shiny sword. Grettir's grandfather's sword is then prompty forgotten about.

#### A Bear and Bjorn

Thanks to his spreading fame, Grettir is able to always find somewhere to stay when he leaves Thorfinn in the spring, and then wanders around a bit.

He kills a bear to spite a man named Bjorn, exclaiming that he the greatest threat to bearkind, second only to global warming, and wanders some more.

Grettir then runs into Bjorn again, challenges him to a duel while threatening to call him a chicken if he doesn't fight, and then kills Bjorn. However, Bjorn's brother, Hjarrandi, demands compensation for the killing, even refusing wergild, which Red explains is the calculated compensation for killing someone based on rank that was payed to the family or lord the killed person was from. Since Hjarrandi has the local jarl, or chief, on his side, Grettir is kicked out of the area, and returns home since his three year exile is over, where he is praised for his feats of strength.

### The Curse and Downfall

Red states how if this weren't an Icelandic Saga, then the story would end here. However, this is an Icelandic Saga that recounts Grettir's whole life, and we will see his life turn into a trainwreck.

#### Picking MORE fights and Another Saga

Since his return, Grettir began picking more fights about old grievances, Red remarking that he picked up some hubris journeys. He briefly runs into a man named Bardi, who was in another saga, *The Saga of the Heath-Slayings*. Bardi is gathering allies for his quest for vengeance, for which Grettir is eager to join. However, Bardi's foster father Thorarin tells him not to bring Grettir, since he is hot-headed and arrogant. Bardi and his crew then ditch Grettir and leave for their own saga without him, Red stating that he was basically left out of the Icelandic version of the Argonauts.

#### Nearby Ghost Story and Wrestling Match

Thorhall, a wealthy man, concluding that his field is haunted after finding some livestock dead, hires a guy named Glam to help. However, when Thorhall asks if he's up for it, Glam makes fun of the Christian God, which is a mistake according to Red due to this being a post-Christianized saga. He spends yuletide in the field while eating a sandwich instead of fasting and he is found the next day in the field dead having killed the monster. However, he then takes the monster's place, continuing to haunt the area and slaughter livestock. This causes the inhabitants to abandon the area, and Glam kills Thorhall's daughter and any livestock that were left behind.

Grettir is excited about another possible Ghost Wrestling Match, and heads off to deal with Glam despite being warned against it. On the first two nights, Glam only kills Grettir's horse, but on the third night, a giant, monstrous Glam breaks through the roof of and enters the hall. Grettir begins Round Two of Ghost Wrestling as he launches himself at Glam. They destroy the hall's interior during the fight, and Grettir successfully launches Glam out the door.

#### Glam's Curse

However, Glam puts a curse on Grettir with his dying breath: Grettir will never be stronger than he is now, and all his great deeds will turn sour and foster hatred and rejection. He will also be forever haunted by Glam's nightmarish eyes, and his live will be a downward spiral of torment and isolation until he dies alone.

Grettir manages to cut off Glam's head and receives fame and glory for his successes one final time. However, he feels his temper getting worse as a result of Glam's curse, and he becomes afraid of the dark, as Glam's eyes haunt him and he has hallucinations of specters and visions.

#### Immediate Downfall

Grettir hears that the new King Olaf is forming his own kind of roundtable from people with unique skills. Grettir believes he would be a good fit for the group, given his ghost-punching and super strength. However, he has to travel through the cold Scandinavian winter to get to King Olaf's court. As he does this, Grettir fords an icy river and breaks into a house, looking for fire. However, he is mistaken for a troll by the family living there in his iced-over state. They fight, and Grettir successfully gets out quickly with the fire, but the house is set ablaze, killing everyone inside.

Two of the people in the house were the sons of a guy named Thorir, an esteemed, well-respected man that people like. As he shouts to a crowd lamenting about what monster could have done such a thing, the crowd is sympathetic to his situation. Word of Grettir's manslaughter spreads quickly, overshadowing all of his other achievements. He tells one guy that recognized him that he doesn't give out autographs. When Grettir finally makes it to King Olaf's court, his temper ruins his chances to clear his name and to be taken into the King's service, with King Olaf pointing to the fact that Grettir just punched a child, and Grettir arguing that he punches a lot of things and the child isn't any more special. Grettir leaves and has a few more victories, but the consequences of his actions begin to come up on him.

#### A Tale of Two Thorbjorns

On the way to King Olaf's court, Grettir killed Thorbjorn Slowcoach for making fun of him, which angers his brother, Thorbjorn Oxmain. Red then takes a moment and talks how the saga is 50% legal battles, 40% guys named Thor, and 10% ghost-punching. Continuing, Red tells how Thorbjorn Oxmain goes out for revenge on Grettir and his family. He gets to the family farm, and at the door, exlaims that vengeace is his, while Grettir's brother, Atli, stands at the door confused. After a few scuffles, Atli is killed.

Thorir, at the year's Althing, or big meeting, petitions and successfully has Grettir exiled as an outlaw to pay for the death of his sons, despite Grettir not being present to defend himself. Meanwhile, Grettir returns home to find his house in disarray, with his brother and father dead, his mother facing eviction, and a price on his head. Grettir promises his mother vengeance. He then kills Thorbjorn Oxmain, but this doesn't help the fact that he's an outlaw. His brother avenged, Grettir then leaves his mother and goes out wandering again.

### The Great Couch Surf

Red describes the next twenty chapters as Grettir wandering around and crashing in old friends' and allies' homes, being taken in by random strangers, and sometimes camping in the wilderness. He also commits assorted banditry and growls at a wanted sign with a written bounty of "All of it!", since the banditry caused Thorir to raise the price on his head significantly because he really holds a grudge. During The Great Couch Surf, Thorir sends a great many paid assassins after Grettir, who just apathetically wonders why the assassins are still at this when they're on their seventeenth try. While being hunted, he bounces between his bandit layers, including a cabin he built, a very defensible mountain cave, and a valley in a glacier ruled by a friendly giant, also, rather confusingly, named Thorir.

The valley is idyllic, as it stays warm year round from a hot spring, is full of sheep, and completely hidden. Thorir the Giant also has three daughters that Grettir gets along with.

Then Grettir leaves because he's bored, Red saying she has no more sympathy for him.

#### A Disguise and Troll-Punching

Grettir begins traveling in disguise so that Thorir the Spiteful can't find him or send more assassins, wearing funny glasses to prevent recognition. At one point, he hears of an estate belonging to the lady Steinvor that had been attacked on two Yuletide by a troll, who took her husband and then a servant. He house sits for them and also carries lady Steinvor and her daughter across an icy river so that they can get to Yuletide mass on time. He gets back to the estate in time for a huge troll-woman to show up. They have a good Grettir Wrestling Match where he successfully cuts off the troll-woman's arm. He follows her as she dives into a waterfall and he finds another giant, this one a man, while the troll-woman is gone. He kills it, retrieves the bones of the two dead guys and some treasure, and returns to the estate. However, he lost his funny glasses in the fray, and he then spends the winter in peace until Thorir tracks him down and sends more assassins.

### The Beginning of the End

Grettir is told that he should hole up on the defensible island of Drangey, which is surrounded on all sides by cliffs and only accessible via one latter. However, Grettir is still haunted by Glam's eyes at night, so he doesn't want to be alone on the island. He then returns home to visit his mother, and his now fifteen-year-old brother, Illugi, volunteers to join him. Their mother then sends them off with some money, cheerfully hoping for them to have fun dying together in a prophecy of shared doom. They also pick up another dude named Glaum as they make their way to Drangey. However, the island, while uninhabited, is co-owned by about 20 people that hate each other, but hate Grettir more for taking their island with their stuff on it.

One man, Thorbjorn Angle, resolves to get Grettir off the island, and enacts his plan, which was to nicely ask him to leave, begging Grettir so that he could get a bunch of shares of the island. This obviously doesn't work, and Grettir responds by yelling that he was going to find a cow with his name on it and eat it whole. Meanwhile, at the Althing, they decree that Grettir can only be exiled for one more year in accordance with the law, giving Thorbjorn a deadline to kill Grettir and get his shares.

He goes to his foster-mother/deviously evil witch Thurid for help, who has a plan to kill Grettir. She first goes with Thorbjorn to the island and gives Grettir a curse, to which he responds by throwing a rock and breaking her leg. However, she then ensorcels a long to make it look like enticing firewood. Grettir is not fooled by this, but Glaum the Unimportant is, and collects it for firewood. Then, when Grettir goes to cut the firewood, his axe bounces back and hits him in the knee. Now with a nasty injury, Grettir gets weaker and weaker, and Thorbjorn and co. storm the island. Glaum, as it turns out, also forgot to bring the ladder back up. Illugi fights extremely valiantly against the invaders, getting compliments from them as he fought, but is defeated. When Thorbjorn and the others finally reach Grettir, they find that he had already died from his injuries. Thorbjorn cuts off Grettir's head to collect the bounty, and then kills Illugi to prevent more revenge. However, when Thorbjorn goes to collect the bounty from Thorir, Thorir doesn't give it to him, saying that he was killed by witchcraft.

### WE CAN STOP NOW

At this point, Red, frustrated and tired of the story, fully stops when Grettir dies, dreading the thought of reading another legal battle.

## Conclusion

Red encourages the viewer to celebrate the life of Grettir the Strong: "warrior, outlaw, ghost-puncher, and by far his own worst enemy."

## Credits

Red sings *Wanted Dead or Alive* by Bon Jovi.

## Characters Appearing

* Grettir the Strong
* Asmund Longhair
* Skeggi
* Thorfinn
* Kar the Old
* Bjorn
* Hjarrandi
* Bardi
* Thorarin
* Thorhall
* Glam
* King Olaf
* Thorir
* Thorbjorn Slowcoach
* Thorbjorn Oxmain
* Atli
* Thorir the Giant
* Illugi
* Glaum
* Thorbjorn Angle
* Thurid

## Trivia

* The Saga of Grettir is the last of Red's Patreon requests and was requested by Gudmundur H Ulfarsson in 2020.

## Links

* Legends Summarized: The Saga of Grettir