‘Transforming the Trolls: The Metamorphosis of the Troll-Woman in Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss’

Bárðar saga is an intriguing yet puzzling text, which chronicles the life of the blendingr (half-troll, half-giant) Bárðr Dumbsson and his family, from an exposition of his ancestry to the death of his son Gestr on the night of his conversion to Christianity. Beginning with the reign of Dumbr (Bárðr’s troll-king father) in Norway, the saga tracks Bárðr’s settlement at Snæfellsness in Iceland and his self-imposed exile following the disappearance of his daughter Helga. As he retreats into the mountains, Bárðr is cast in a new supernatural mould, embracing his giant heritage in order to become the guardian spirit of the district. Finally, the story turns to his son Gestr and his adventures at the court of King Óláfr Tryggvason. He converts to Christianity at the request of the king, but on the night of his baptism Bárðr appears, accusing Gestr of betraying his pagan ancestors before killing him. Bárðar saga follows many features of structure and plot typical to the Íslendingasögur (family sagas), the genre to which it is assigned, including the protagonists’ settlement of Iceland, district feuds and conversions to Christianity. However, the conventions of this socially realistic genre are fundamentally subverted when a pagan clan of monstrous descent takes centre stage as a set of unlikely protagonists. Consequently, Bárðar saga presents us with numerous difficulties in terms of its generic classification, thematic preoccupations and unusual characterisations. However, its rich manuscript transmission suggests continuing popularity almost to the present day, both in literary circles and in popular culture. Nevertheless, the saga’s unconventional design has baffled modern scholars, who have found it particularly difficult to reconstruct a ‘horizon of expectations’ upon which to base an understanding of the piece This paper is concerned primarily with the characterisation of Helga Bárðardóttir, the enigmatic daughter of Bárðr Dumbsson. It will concentrate on the metamorphosis of the conventional figure of the troll woman, particularly focussing on the saga motif of the love affair between a mortal hero and a giantess. In sagas that feature characters such as trolls in a more conventional form, the figures tend to be presented somewhat two-dimensionally, fulfilling the function of a ‘narrative-vehicle’ for the heroic protagonist in his early rites of passage. Thus, a troll-woman such as Helga would usually be a peripheral and underdeveloped figure in the saga, appearing briefly in the course of the hero’s adventures before disappearing when he continues on to further expeditions or returns to human society. Yet in Bárðar saga, Helga is the focal point of this particular narrative set piece. This seems to be an intentional part of the saga’s wider literary design, in which the shadowy figures who typically act along the dim edges of the saga stage are pushed into the spotlight, forcing more-orthodox protagonists out into the wings of the narrative. In her analysis of the relationships between heroes and giants, Riti Kroesen states, ‘Whether [the hero] goes out to meet the giants in order to serve the community or to serve his own ends […] the sympathies of the original audience must always have been on [his side]’. Yet Bárðar saga entirely overturns the accepted convention that such stories are written to enhance the glory of the heroic protagonist

Sailing the saga seas: narrative, cultural, and geographical perspectives in the North Atlantic voyages of the 'Íslendingasögur'

Given the geographical magnitude and cultural significance of the medieval Norse voyages across the North Atlantic, the Norse-Icelandic Íslendingasögur (Sagas of Icelanders) may seem to accord such crossings relatively limited dramatic intensity and narrative weight, at least at first glance. However, close analysis of the texts reveals how deeply ingrained these sea journeys were in the Norse cultural mentality. The following paper explores narrative descriptions of sea voyages in the sagas, focusing on three key areas of this North Atlantic diaspora: Norway, Iceland, and Greenland. By identifying the narrative patterns associated with these journeys and situating them within their wider literary, cultural, and geographical contexts, the aim is to demonstrate that the accounts of sea journeys in the sagas, however fictionalized and stylized, are closely aligned with the geographical reality of the voyages as well as with the medieval Icelandic perception of the wider Norse diaspora and their place within it. The sagas in themselves are a type of textuality that both reflected and helped to shape the “cognitive mapping” of the geographical region as it was perceived in Norse-Icelandic society (and often in the wider Norse diaspora), both at the time of saga writing and also all the way back to the earliest Norse voyages in the Atlantic. In the analysis that follows, I aim to move towards an understanding of how these narrative, cultural, and geographical impulses come together to shape the Norse textual imagination and the picture of North Atlantic voyages that emerges from the sagas

Der übernatürliche Norden: Konturen eines Forschungsfeldes

In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten hat sich die Forschung verstärkt mit der kulturellen Bedeutung von »Nördlich-keit« auseinandergesetzt. Wie wurden der Norden und seine Bewohner/innen konstruiert, wahrgenommen und beschrieben? Welche Stereotypen und Symbole wurden dem Norden zugeschrieben – in verschiedenen histori-schen Epochen, von verschiedenen Akteuren und in unterschiedlichen Diskursgenres? Als Beitrag zu dieser Dis-kussion widmet sich der vorliegende Beitrag dem Motiv des »übernatürlichen Nordens« aus europäischer und nordamerikanischer Perspektive. Seit der Antike wurde der Norden mit Hexen und Zauberern, mythischen Wesen, metaphysischen Kräften und verschiedensten übernatürlichen Qualitäten assoziiert – ein Motivkomplex, der die Wahrnehmung des Nordens in der Populärkultur bis heute prägt. = During the last decades, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the cultural meaning of Northernness. How have the North and its inhabitants been imagined, constructed and described? Which stereotypes and symbolisms have been ascribed to the North in different historical periods, by different actors and in different discourse genres? As a contribution to this debate, the paper intends to explore the notion of the North as a realm of the supernatural, focussing on Europe and North America. Since antiquity, the North has been associated with sorcerous inhabitants, mythical beings, metaphysical forces and all kinds of supernatural qualities and occurrences – a motif that continues to influence popular representations of Northernness up to the present day

Beyond the northlands: Viking voyages and the Old Norse sagas

An exploration of the Viking Age and the Global Middle Ages through the lens of the far-travelling Norse and their Icelandic saga storytelling culture. Stretching from North America and Greenland in the west to Russia in the east, Arctic Scandinavia in the north to the Islamic Caliphate in the south, what emerges is a fluid, fragmented, multidimensional picture that reveals how the world, its geographies and inhabitants were remembered and imagined by a unique culture from the edge of Europe

Transforming the trolls: the metamorphosis of the troll-woman in 'Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss'

Bárðar saga is an intriguing yet puzzling text, which chronicles the life of the blendingr (half-troll, half-giant) Bárðr Dumbsson and his family, from an exposition of his ancestry to the death of his son Gestr on the night of his conversion to Christianity. Beginning with the reign of Dumbr (Bárðr’s troll-king father) in Norway, the saga tracks Bárðr’s settlement at Snæfellsness in Iceland and his self-imposed exile following the disappearance of his daughter Helga. As he retreats into the mountains, Bárðr is cast in a new supernatural mould, embracing his giant heritage in order to become the guardian spirit of the district. Finally, the story turns to his son Gestr and his adventures at the court of King Óláfr Tryggvason. He converts to Christianity at the request of the king, but on the night of his baptism Bárðr appears, accusing Gestr of betraying his pagan ancestors before killing him. Bárðar saga follows many features of structure and plot typical to the Íslendingasögur (family sagas), the genre to which it is assigned, including the protagonists’ settlement of Iceland, district feuds and conversions to Christianity. However, the conventions of this socially realistic genre are fundamentally subverted when a pagan clan of monstrous descent takes centre stage as a set of unlikely protagonists. Consequently, Bárðar saga presents us with numerous difficulties in terms of its generic classification, thematic preoccupations and unusual characterisations. However, its rich manuscript transmission suggests continuing popularity almost to the present day, both in literary circles and in popular culture. Nevertheless, the saga’s unconventional design has baffled modern scholars, who have found it particularly difficult to reconstruct a ‘horizon of expectations’ upon which to base an understanding of the piece This paper is concerned primarily with the characterisation of Helga Bárðardóttir, the enigmatic daughter of Bárðr Dumbsson. It will concentrate on the metamorphosis of the conventional figure of the troll woman, particularly focussing on the saga motif of the love affair between a mortal hero and a giantess. In sagas that feature characters such as trolls in a more conventional form, the figures tend to be presented somewhat two-dimensionally, fulfilling the function of a ‘narrative-vehicle’ for the heroic protagonist in his early rites of passage. Thus, a troll-woman such as Helga would usually be a peripheral and underdeveloped figure in the saga, appearing briefly in the course of the hero’s adventures before disappearing when he continues on to further expeditions or returns to human society. Yet in Bárðar saga, Helga is the focal point of this particular narrative set piece. This seems to be an intentional part of the saga’s wider literary design, in which the shadowy figures who typically act along the dim edges of the saga stage are pushed into the spotlight, forcing more-orthodox protagonists out into the wings of the narrative. In her analysis of the relationships between heroes and giants, Riti Kroesen states, ‘Whether [the hero] goes out to meet the giants in order to serve the community or to serve his own ends […] the sympathies of the original audience must always have been on [his side]’. Yet Bárðar saga entirely overturns the accepted convention that such stories are written to enhance the glory of the heroic protagonist