Heathen Storytelling Podcast

by Rodney Basler of Hallowed Horn Kindred

Halldor Laxness, the Icelandic Nobel laureate for Literature, is said to have jokingly summed up medieval Icelandic literature in two words: “Farmers fought.” What this joke glosses over is what a truly remarkable contribution the Icelanders made to the history of world literature. In less than two hundred years between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, Iceland – a small, volcanic land and one of the poorest countries in Europe – produced an unprecedented explosion of writing. With a population that was less than 50 thousand people, they created unknown hundreds of works in their own language, many of them sadly lost to time and accident.

In their terse, simple style, the Eddas and Sagas describe a complex and violent world of shifting alliances and family relationships, where feuds can break out over petty disputes and rage for generations. With this detailed background, the sagas are dense with information, and can be confusing to the modern reader.

The podcast Saga Thing has been “putting the Sagas of the Icelanders on trial” for over five years now, and is an entertaining and informative look at these tales in all their quirky glory. The hosts, John Sexton and Andrew Pfrenger, are both professors of Medieval Literature, who in their grad school days spent far too many evenings discussing sagas over pizza and beer. They are the literature teachers we all wish we had when we were younger – engaging, funny, and if sometimes the pop-culture references fall a little flat, you are in on the joke, because they know, and you know they know, they might be a little too old for those jokes.

Each episode is split into two sections – first, they summarize the story and describe the characters, but they also put those characters into the larger context of Icelandic history and society, explaining their relations to major figures in other sagas or their connection to historical events. They then proceed to the Judgement section, where they rate the saga according to several categories: Best Bloodshed, Body Count, Notable Witticisms (the ability to die with an ironic joke on your lips was a prized trait to the Icelanders), and Best Nickname (and with nicknames like “Ketil Flatnose” or “Thorgrima Witch–face,” this particular category can be hotly contested.) They then vote on “Outlawry”: which character deserves to be banished from Iceland altogether, and “Thingmen”, where the two take turns choosing one character they would wish to have as a supporter. Finally, they each decide on a completely subjective overall Rating for the saga.

For the shorter stories, these two sections are both covered in the same episode, but for longer tales like Njal’s Saga, the Summary alone took 11 full episodes, plus a couple of side episodes where they discussed the Conversion in Iceland.

The very first episode is divided into three parts, and in it they describe the history and settlement of Iceland, the founding of the commonwealth, and its gradual collapse until the Icelanders accepted the rule of the Norwegian kings. They also describe the half-dozen different categories of saga, including the family sagas, the kings sagas, the tales of myths and legends, and even the “Þáttr” (‘Thattur), which were short stories, of which some 200 still remain.

The side episodes, called “Saga Briefs,” are shorter talks about single subjects, apart from the discussions of the sagas. They have ranged from explaining the customs and practices of dueling, to a history of the Vikings in Normandy under Rollo, to an interview with a professor of linguistics and runology discussing the history and uses of the runes.

The podcasts are very enjoyable and just the right length for a long commute. The format of “two funny guys chatting on a subject they are passionate about” is much more entertaining than one person lecturing at length. The website has extensive show notes for each episode, which can include things like illustrations, genealogies (terribly useful for understanding some of the more tangled family squabbles,) and Amazon links to a translation of the saga under discussion, so you can read it for yourself.