Violence, robots and sorcery

Foreword:

Alright, what a long strange hiatus it's been. Forgot the password to my reddit account, but remained logged in on my phone. Deleted it, because why would I keep that now useless account. Anyway, fresh off the press: Robots! Sorcery! Sodomy! U L T R A V I O L E N C E

!





Text:

, from Flateyjarbók, end of the 14th century. About 0,38 Hrafnkels.



Location:

Iceland.



Preface and translation:

Basically, this þáttr is about the Þorleifr Ásgeirsson, who is a swell dude/poet, and who was taught much ancient knowledge. After slaying the troublesome berserk and revenant Klaufi, Þorleifr is declared an outlaw and becomes a merchant. He buys a ship and sets the course for Vík, Norway, looking to make some money. Unfortunately, the devilish and heathen earl Hákon Hlaðajarl is in Vík too, and he demands that Þorleifr trades with him alone! Þorleifr politely declines, and goes to the town alone the next day to make deals with the local merchants. While he is away, earl Hákon seizes Þorleifs men and wares, burns the ship and hangs the men on rafters put between the booths.



Þorleifr is not pleased by this.



After a short detour to serve king Sveinn in Denmark, Þorleifr travels to the court of Hákon disguised as a grumpy beggar. Using his wits, Þorleifr is allowed to perform a poem before earl Hákon. He also steals a lot of food. The poem causes a strong itch to spread from Hákons belly to his ass, and the earl first lets his ass get scratched with combs (by some unlucky servants presumeably), but that's no cure for the itch: Hákon resorts to having three knots tied on a cloth, which is then dragged back and forth between his ass-cheeks by two men.



The next part of the poem caused the hall to go dark, and the third and final part makes every weapon come to life, causing the death of many men. The earl faints, Þorleifr flees, and when darkness disappears from the hall, the hair and beard on half the earls face had fallen off, and would never grow back. Þorleifr returns to king Sveinn who gives him the name jarlaskáld (earls poet), and Þorleifr gains much renown by his poem, which became something of a smash hit.





"But now we must return to earl Hákon. Most of his disfigurements healed, but some men say that he was never the same man again. The earl wished to avenge the disgrace caused by Þorleifr, if he could, and summoned his patron gods, Þorgerðr Hörgabrúðr and her sister Irpa, to drive such a sorcery out to Iceland, that Þorleifr would be vanquished completely. He brought them great sacrifices and sought answers from them, and received one to his liking. He took a piece of driftwood and fashioned a treeman from it, and with the sorcery and incantations of the jarl, and witchcraft and devilry of the sisters, he let a man be slain, and his heart taken out and put into this treeman, clothed him and called him the name Þorgarðr. They strengthened him with so much demonic power, that he walked around and spoke with men. Then they put him aboard a ship, and sent him to Iceland with the purpose of slaying Þorleifr jarlaskáld. Hákon girdled him with a glaive he had taken from the sisters' temple, and which Hörgi had owned.

Þorgarðr arrived in Iceland during the time, when people were at the All-thing. Þorleifr jarlaskáld was at the thing. One day, Þorleifr went away from his booth, and saw a man cross the Ox-stream from the West. He was large and terrifying to behold. Þorleifr asked the man his name. He called himself Þorgarðr, and immediately began throwing insults at Þorleifr. When Þorleifr heard that, he intended to draw his sword he was girdled with, King's Gift, but in that instant, Þorgarðr thrust the glaive towards Þorleifs waist and pierced him. But when he received the blow, he struck at Þorgarðr, but he threw himself into the ground so only the footprints could be seen. Þorleifr tied his tunic around him and spoke this verse:





The battle-bold one

disappeared,

the slaughter-bold

vanished on secret paths on the plain

- what became of Þorgarðr?

The sorcerous Gautr [Óðinn] of the war-flame [sword = "the warrior"]

has gone into the ground

He will linger hereafter

in Hel for a while and a bit.





Then Þorleifr went home to his booth, and told people what had happened, and they all thought much of this event. Then Þorleifr threw off his tunic, and his entrails fell out. And then Þorleifr gave up his life with much reputation, and people thought this as the greatest loss. They all regarded it as certain, that this Þorgarðr had been no less than the sorcery and witchcraft of Hákon jarl."





Hákon the villain



Alright, robbing Þorleifr of his belongings, slaying his men, slaying another man and constructing some sort of sorcerous golem to get your revenge on someone who made your ass itch uncontrollably? How come Hákon is depicted like such a massive douche?





Essentially, Hákon got Jed Mosely'd . He literally is the cartoonishly evil butt of the joke. Hákon belonged to the

dynasty of the earls of Hlaðir, who were the

most powerful rulers in Viking Age Norway, second only to the

Hárfagri-dynasty. A struggle for power played out between the two, ending in the triumph of the

Hárfagri-dynasty. A common platitude is that history is written by the victors. In this case, it holds true.

Medieval historiographers credit Haraldr hárfagri with uniting and Norway, and according to the sagas, his descendants reigned as kings throughout the following centuries. Amongst his (imagined) descendants are great Christian converters like Ólafr Haraldsson, who was canonized and widely revered in Norway.

Guess how fair the medieval historiographers treated the adversaries of their saint-king, t

he earls of Hlaðir, commonly depicted as paganism’s last bastion in Norway?





Yep.









Hákon waking up, pondering what devilish deeds to do today.

Motivation for vengeance

Even though earl Hákon clearly drew first blood,

between them. The text never outright says Þorleifr is using magic, but summoning forth darkness and supernatural itches, and causing weapons to fly around killing people sounds pretty sorcerous to me. Now, Þorleifr

taught "ancient knowledge" (fræðum fornligum), which, come on, is magic, but the text remains neutral and even positive in both depiction of Þorleifr and wording. Which sounds worse - ancient knowledge or sorcery (galdr), black arts (fjölkyngi) and witchcraft (tröllskap)?





Like Eldar Heide, I believe Þorleifr is in fact using seiðr against the earl. The poem performed by Þorleifr is called Jarlsníð - the earls abuse, though abuse doesn't quite cover it. Níð is extremely offensive and emasculating, a deadly insult to the victims manliness and a legal reason to kill someone in retaliation.





Part of the attack on the earls masculinity is somewhat transparent to us: his manly beard rots away. The episode with the itch, while hilarious, is less transparent. The itch should be viewed as a penetrative injury to the buttocks, which symbolically turns Hákon into a woman. Other examples of seiðr targetting the butts of the victims can be seen in Gunnars saga Keldugnúpsfíﬂs and Egils saga. The cure for the itch, the cloth with the knots, is a clever reference by the narrator, since a womans wantonness could be called lendakláði ("loin-itching"), which could be cured by the slap of a mans sword (the innuendo was clear to medieval Icelanders too) across her buttocks. The audience of this story would have recognized the knots on the cloth as a reference to Þorleifs magic, and also understood that, in a way, the knots represented Þorleifs penis, making the earl unmanly in the most fundamental way. Old Norse society has been described as "phallic aggressive", meaning that the penetrator is stronger than the penetrated. Thus, by symbolically sodomizing Hákon, Þorleifr proves himself superior to his unmanly and honourless opponent.



No wonder Hákon desires to avenge this insult by constructing his sorcerous golem.





Kein Mensch glaubt wirklich , dass der " Þorgar ð r " ein Golem ist.

Iron Age figure from Rude Eskildstrup.





The creation of Þorgarðr is a spectacular triple-whammy of Pagan belief, idolatry and magic. Hákons relationship to Þorgerðr Hörgabrúðr and her sister Irpa is attested in a number of texts. I will not dig into this theme much further. Suffice to say, Hákon with his cult of Þorgerðr Hörgabrúðr and Irpa personifies paganism. Their answer to his problems, is to take a piece of driftwood (or rather a drift-log, "rekabútr") and fashion a man out of it. This closely mimics the pre-Christian Old Norse anthropogony:

In Vǫluspá, Óðinn, Hœnir and Lóðurr finds Askr and Embla on the shore ("á landi"), and proceed to imbue them with life, mind etc.

Snorris account of the anthropogony is, unsurprisingly, close to this: Óðinn, Víli and Vé walk along the sea-shore ("sævarstrǫndu"), finds two logs ("tré tvau"), take them up and create human beings from them ("tóku upp tréin ok skǫpuðu af menn"). They then bestow almost the same qualities upon them as in Vǫluspá, and also clothe and name them.

In Hávamal 49, Óðinn mentions coming across two naked tree-men on a field, clothing them and giving them the appearance of mighty warriors.

There's much that suggests that the narrator of Þáttr Þorleifs jarlaskálds intentionally referenced the pre-Christian anthropogony:

The drift-log suggests a maritime environment, like in Vǫluspá and Snorris Edda.

The presence of three Pagan representatives: Óðinn, Hœnir and Lóðurr (Vǫluspá), Óðinn, Víli and Vé (Snorris Edda) & Hákon, Irpa and Þorgerðr Hörgabrúðr (Þáttr Þorleifs jarlaskálds).

Hákon clothes the tree-man, which resembles the accounts in Snorris Edda and Hávamál. The idol in Ögmundar þáttr dytts ok Gunnars helmings was also clothed, and the tree-god in Ragnars saga loðbrókar ok sona hans lamented its lack of clothing. Þorgerðr Hörgabrúðr herself appears as a clothed idol in Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar, also in the Flateyjarbók

Hákon grants the tree-man a name, like Óðinn et al. in Snorris Edda. It's interesting that the tree-mans name, Þorgarðr, is the masculine form of that of one of his creators, Þorgerðr. It carries with it a hint of hieros gamos between Hákon and Þorgerðr, This could be a nod from the author to the possible theme of hieros gamos in the Háleygatal, (explored by Steinsland in her article; Ross rejects this view).

Something that isn't mentioned in the other texts, is murdering a man, ripping his heart out and putting it into the tree-man. In contemporary medieval physiological theory, the heart was the center of respiration, which created spiritus ("breath"). Spiritus was understood as an important physical substance created inside the heart, and transmitted around the body via the arteries. I think the meaning of the passage is still transparent to modern readers. Hell, the robot boss in Commander Keen 3 can only be defeated by shooting its living, beating heart.









Commander Keen is still a current cultural reference right? Right?



90's nostalgia aside, it's no coincidence that I choose to show a picture of a robot. Like McKinnell, I see Þorgarðr as an automaton. In medieval romances, automata could be created by various means, most often involving knowledge of celestial bodies, but also by demonic assistance. Because of this, creators of automata were often viewed with suspicion. You don't have to be a master detective to figure out that Þorgarðr was inhabited by some sort of demon, the text is pretty much on the nose about it. He was literally animated by demonic power ("fjandans krapti"), and disappeared into the ground, presumeably to Hell where he came from, as Þorleifr suggested. According to good old Augustine, a demon bound to an idol by a man is a god to the man who made him, making Hákon into a vile idolater. Well, he already was, but you know.. Anyway, thus the creation of Þorgarðr is connected to magic, Pagan beliefs and idolatry.





Þorgarðr was large and terrifying to behold ("mikill vexti ok illsligr í bragði"). Probably a far cry from the 40 ells in Ragnars saga loðbrókar ok sona hans , but still an imposing figure. He was armed with a weapon called an atgeirr, which is sometimes translated to halberd, but probably was closer to a bill or a glaive (if it even existed at the time - it very much seems like an anachronism). The glaive was taken from the temple ("hof") belonging to Þorgerðr Hörgabrúðr and Irpa, and belonged to a man named Hörgi. This Hörgi, derived from hörgr, is probably the result of the narrator trying to make sense of the name of Hörgabrúðr, "bride of Hörgi". Hörgr is usually translated to "holy place" or "mound", and Þorgerðr is named a variety of names with "Hörg-" in the texts: Hörgatroll ("Mound-troll") in Ketils saga hængs, and Hörgabrúðr in this þáttr, Harðar saga ok Hólmverja and Njáls saga. The original form of the name was likely Hölgabrúðr, "bride of Hölgi", who is mentioned in Skáldskaparmál, and might be the mythical founder of the Háleygjar, the dynasty Hákon belonged to. Þorgarðr is essentially armed with the weapon of Hákons ancestor.



I believe that the encounter between Þorgarðr and Þorleifr mirrors the encounter between Hákon and Þorleifr in the hall, and that it's an example of symmetrical violence:

Time and place. Both instances of violence occur at special times of great social importance, where many men would be gathered at certain places. Þorleifr seeks out Hákon at the Yule feast in his hall; Þorgardr seeks out Þorleifr at the national assembly in Iceland.

Verbal violence: Þorleifs níð against earl Hákon; Þorgarðr hurling insults ("kaldyrðum", literally cold-words) at Þorleifr. While the text doesn't use the word níð, whatever Þorgarðr said was insulting enough to make Þorleifr reach for his sword, so we can assume the insults were strong enough to demand a violent response

Magical bladed violence: Þorleifr setting every weapon "in motion" at the feast, slaying many men; Þorgarðr wielding the glaive (animated by magic via Þorgarðr), slaying Þorleifr.

Phallic aggression: Þorleifr injuring the buttocks of the earl, symbolically penetrating him with the knotted cloth; Þorgarðr thrusting his glaive at Þorleifs waist, penetrating him.

Sudden disappearance: Þorleifr slips away in the carnage and confusion; Þorleifr disappears into the ground on secret paths ("refílstiga").

After his death, Þorleifr is buried in a mound, and in his afterlife helps a sucky poet turn into a great poet. What a stand up ghost.



The next instalment will be an excerpt from one of the sagas of Ólafs Tryggvason, with a neat little closer look on hofs and hörgs.

Heide, Eldar - "Spinning sei

ðr" in:

Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert & Catharina Raudvere (eds), Old Norse religion in long-term perspectives. Origins, changes, and interactions, 2006.

McKinnell, John - "Personae of the Performer in Hávamál", Finlay, Alison et al (eds): Saga-book vol. XXXVII, 2013.

Ross, Margaret Clunies - "Royal Ideology in Early Scandinavia: A Theory Versus the Texts" in: Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Volume 113, Number 1, 2014.

Steinsland, Gro - "Origin Myths and Rulership. From the Viking Age Ruler to the Ruler of Medieval Historiography: Continuity, Transformations and Innovations " in: , Gro Steinsland, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Jan Erik Rekdal and Ian Beuermann (eds):

2011.

Truitt, Elly R. - Medieval Robots. Mechanism, Magic, Nature and Art, 2015.