All weather is bad weather when you're naked









Foreword:





Second installment of the series, in which a naked god laments his lack of clothing. Also, a short digression about drowning missionaries.





The text:





Ragnars saga loðbrókar ok sona hans, 13th century.





Location:





Samsø, Denmark.





Translation:





"A man was named Ögmundr, and called Ögmundr the Dane. He once sailed with five ships, and laid at Munarvig on Samsø. It is said that the chefs went ashore to prepare the food, but other men went to the forest to pass time. There they found an old tree-man, who was 40 ells tall, and moss-grown. They looked at all parts of him, and discussed amongst themselves who might have sacrificed to this mighty god. Then the tree-man spoke:





"It was long ago

when Hæklings

mighty army

went in longships

across the sea.

Then I became

the ruler

of this lot.





And so they placed me,

the warriors,

South by the sea,

the sons of Lo ð brók;

Then was sacrificed to me,

to the bane of men,

at the southern shore

of Samsø.





There they bade me stand,

while the strand endures

the mossgrown man

by the thorn-bush.

Now fall upon me

the teardrops of the clouds,

neither flesh nor cloth

warms me."





And the men thought this was wondrous, and later told it to the rest of the men."





Interesting stuff:





O nce again, location. Samsø is a small Danish island in Kattegat (which is not a town in Norway, god that show is bad). It's here that Óðinn worked seiðr according to Loki in Lokasenna (24), here that Hjalmar and Örvar-Oddr fought the 12 sons of Arngrim in Gesta Danorum, here that Hervör woke her dead father Angantyr from the mound and received the cursed sword Tyrfing in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks . Pretty heavy stuff for an island where the only pizza place is closed on Wednesdays. What the fuck Samsø.





The precise location of Munarvig (Munarvági) is unknown. Maybe near the Kanhave-channel dug sometime in the 8th century, maybe near the holy spring Ilsemade Helligkilde, maybe it's just a kenning for the sea, no one knows. And since the holy spring has been mentioned, let's dwell on that for a moment.







Behold, the holy spring of Ilsemade.





The spring was dug out during the Bronze Age, and a hollowed out oaken trunk was placed down there, in the year of 940 BCE. Jesus, that's a long time ago. Anyway, here's how the locals welcomed the first Christian missionary, who came to the island sailing on a big damn rock #justmissionarythings:





"According to local legend, the Samsings were baptized by a holy man, who came to the island sailing on the Sail-stone, that lies at the water's edge 1,3 km south of the spring. When the Samsings had been baptized in the spring, they said to the man: "You have baptized us in the fresh water, now we'll baptize you in the salty", then took the man and drowned him in the sea".





You came sailing to the wrong island, motherfucker.



The first stanza of the tree-man's poem is almost identical to a poem in the later saga Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka from the early 14th century. The context is vastly different though. The king of Rogaland, Ögvaldr, battled with the viking warlord Hæklingr. Ögvaldr was slain and buried on the aptly named Ögvalds Isthmus. Some time pass, probably a long time, before Finnr the Rich comes sailing by, wondering out loud when Ögvaldr was slain. A voice recites the poem from the mound. Finnr is apparently satisfied by this answer from beyond and fucks off to Iceland to become a landtaker. Maybe the author of Hálfs saga thought the similarity between the names Ögmundr and Ögvaldr was sufficient reason to sample some bars.



As anyone who's ever done it knows, translating skaldic poetry sucks. One of the best and brightest I know do it by writing each word on a post-it, rearranging them until the poem makes sense. It works, sometimes. That last stanza though, I really, really like it. Though I've chosen to write "fall upon me", the word used is skýtr, which means shoot. I find it very evocative - the cold raindrops piercing the naked, lonely and forgotten god.





Seems like a good place stand around and complain about rain. Forever.





Anyway, let's get to it. Unlike the idol of Freyr that was worshipped in the present of its narrative, the tree-man was worshipped long time ago. In the narrative, the time of the sons of Ragnarr has already passed. Their father is dead, and they themselves are dead. This is not a particularly stunning analysis, since the first line in the poem literally says "It was long ago". There are other temporal markers though. Who the hell the sons of Hækling is, I have no idea. It seems that Hæklingr is just a heiti for a Viking, though apparently unknown by Snorri since he doesn't mention the name in his list of sea-kings. It's pretty clear who the "sons of the Viking" are as well, especially because the poem helps the analytically weak by explicitly saying it's the sons of goddamned Ragnarr Lo ð brók, probably the most famous Viking in pop culture, that bald bastard. In the narrative, the time of the sons of Ragnarr has already passed, and now poor ol' Treebeard stands at the beach by himself.





For once, the height of the idol is explicitly mentioned - 40 ells. Wikipedia tells me that the "Viking" (lol) ell was 18 inches, which makes the tree-man over 18 metres (exactly 60 ft) tall. It's only the second installment of this series, but the size of this behemoth will never be surpassed.





For once, no one knocks this effigy down or breaks it asunder. Because of this, we don't know if it's hollow, or what dwells within, though it's probably some sort of moody and weather-beaten devil.



