Otherworld Adventures in an Icelandic Saga

Author(s): Jacqueline Simpson

Source: Folklore, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Spring, 1966), pp. 1-20
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.
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FOLKLORE * VOLUME 77 - SPRING 1966

Otherworld Adventures in
an Icelandic Saga
by

JACQUELINE

SIMPSON

AMONGthe less-known sagas of Iceland is the short porsteins saga

bojarmagns,l which is richly varied in material and has affinities
with myth, folk-tale, and several works of medieval literature.
Among its episodes there is one, the longest, which is derived from
myths about Thor, and it is this episode alone which has hitherto
been considered in discussions of the saga. However, the work as a
whole is worth examination in its own right, and not merely as a
re-handling of older mythological material.
Its date cannot be fixed within narrow limits. It belongs to a
type (the so-called Lying Sagas) which in the fourteenth century
dominated Icelandic writing to the exclusion of the earlier, more
realistic types; it survives in forty-eight manuscripts, of which five
are vellums from the late fourteenth or the fifteenth centuries. Its
freshness and vigour of style seem to belong to the earlier part of
the fourteenth century rather than to its close.
The hero, Thorstein, is, as far as I know, a purely fictitious
character, though the saga claims that he was a courtier of king
Olaf Tryggvason of Norway; this, however, is probably just a
device to make the tale edifying by linking it with the period of
Norway's conversion and with Olaf's fame. The hero's nickname
bojarmagn means 'Strength of the Farm', and is explained by
saying that he was of huge size and strength. This may imply that
there were other stories told about him, for in the existing saga his
size is only relevant in so far as it makes it the more amusing that
when he arrives in a world of giants he is mistaken by them for a
mere child and is renamed 'Baby of the Farm'.
1 Iorsteins pdttr
(or saga) boejarmagns, in Fornmannasogur, ed. Kongeligt
Nordisk Oldskrift Selskab, Copenhagen, 1825-35, III, 175-98; also in Fornaldarsogur Norcurlanda, ed. Gubni J6nsson and Bjarni Vilhjalmsson, Reykjavik
1944, III, 397-417. Transl. J. Simpson, The Northmen Talk, I965, 180-96.
A

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The first of his adventures is a variant on an international folktale concerning fairies - or, as the Icelanders would call them,
'elves' or 'hidden people'. One day Thorstein came by chance to a
forest clearing with a hillock:
Up on the hillock he saw a crop-headed boy who was saying:
'Mother, hand me out my crook-stickand my mittens, for today I want
to go riding the magic ride. Today is a feast-day in the Lower World.'
Then a crook-endedstick, just like a fire-poker,was thrust out of the
hillock. The boy sat himself astride the stick and put the mittens on,
and spurredoff, as children often do. Thorstein went up to the hillock
and spoke in the same words as the boy, and at once a stick and some
mittens were thrown out, and a voice said: 'Who is taking these now?'
'Your son Bjalfi,'said Thorstein. Then he sat himself astridethe stick
and rode after the boy.
Following this boy (whose cropped hair is a mark of a young
troll in Icelandic tradition), Thorstein comes to a great river,
plunges into it, and so reaches a fair land beneath the waters,
where in a fortress a king and his court are feasting. Thorstein
notices that both he and the boy are invisible to these revellers,
and that the boy is going to and fro stealing food from the tables.
Thorstein himself snatches a ring and a jewelled tablecloth ;2 there
is tumult, the fine food turns to dirt, and the Underworld revellers
pursue him. In his haste he drops his stick, and is forced to fight for
his life; but the crop-headed boy retrieves the stick for him, and
together they escape back to the hillock in the clearing. It is
standing open, and inside there are women weaving and rocking a
cradle (typical occupations of fairy-folk in their own world). The
boy tells of the adventure, and the hillock then closes itself.
Thorstein goes home to Olaf's court with the treasures he has won.
This story finds a close parallel in a folk-tale that has often been
recorded in Denmark and Sweden, which can be summarized as
follows: a boy passing near a mountain hears trolls inside calling
out 'Give me my cap!' (i.e. a cap of invisibility, a regular attribute
of Danish trolls). The boy too demands a cap, and after some
argument one is thrown out to him; he can now see the trolls, but
2
This tablecloth has a gold border and 'those twelve jewels which are the best
of all' - details that are probably due to the popularity of the lapidaries, with
their comments on the jewels of Aaron's breastplate. See Joan Evans, Magical
Jewels, 1922, 72-80.
2

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is himself invisible. He follows them to a human wedding feast,

and watches them steal the food. Eventually he is discovered by the
guests, either because he loses his cap in a scuffle or because he
deliberately takes it off; in some versions he has been stealing food
in imitation of the trolls, but more usually he helps the human
beings to drive the trolls away.3
A more elaborate version of this motif occurs in the folk-tale
'Blue Cap', where the hero is caught by the angry feasters and is
about to be hanged for the theft when one of the trolls appears in
the crowd and restores his magic cap; he asks, as a last request, to
be allowed to die with his cap on, but as soon as this request is
granted he vanishes, and makes his way safely home over land and
sea.4

A related tale is Aubrey's well-known story of the Laird of

Duffus who heard fairies crying 'Horse and Hattock!' as they
passed in a whirlwind, imitated their cry, and was whirled away
with them over land and sea to carouse in the King of France's
cellar.5 Aubrey says that he was caught red-handed, but forgiven,
and that the King gave him a fine cup; in a Cornish variant
quoted by Hartland, the hero steals a cup as proof of his journey.6
The similarity between these stories and that of Thorstein
provides clear proof that the motif was already known in Scandinavia in the fourteenth century; the only major differences are
the use of a stick instead of a cap, and the fact that the feast which
is raided is explicitly stated to be one in the Otherworld.
It is interesting to find from this saga that the motif of riding a
magic stick had already reached the North. A curious phrase is
used in this connexion: rida gandreid, 'to ride the magic ride'. The
element gand-, the precise meaning of which is not known, often
appears in words and phrases denoting magical activity; for
instance, ggndum renna, 'to run by gand,' which is the term used
3 W. A.
Craigie, Scandinavian Folklore, I896, II9; E. Hartmann, Die Trollvorstellungen in den Sagen und Mdrchen der Skandinavischen Volker, Stuttgart,
I936, 73-4, and refs. there given; cf. R. Th. Christiansen, Irish and Scandinavian

Folktales,
4

1959, 134.

I owe this reference to Dr K. M. Briggs.

J. Aubrey, Miscellanies upon Various Subjects, I857, I49-50.
6 E. S. Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales,
I89I, 148; cf. R. Bovet, Pandaemonium, or the Devils Cloyster, I684, 173, for the story of the Drummer-boy of
Leith who would join the fairies beneath the hills and be 'carried' with them to
France or Holland 'to enjoy all the pleasures the country doth afford'.
5

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when sorcerers' souls leave their bodies in a trance. In Njdls saga,

Ch. 125 (c. i280), there is a vision of a figure riding furiously
through the skies on a grey horse, hurling a firebrand; the man
who sees this vision is told: 'You have seen thegandreiJr, and that is
always a portent of disaster.' By the fourteenth century the
concept developed into something nearer to the general European
belief in the ridings of fairies on straws or sticks; not only is there
Thorstein's elf-like boy and his stick, but in Ketils saga hoengs,Ch.
5, there is a troll-woman who rides out to sea to a gathering of
trolls, and though her means of transport is not specified, it is said
that 'there was continuous gandreiJr all that night'. Finally,
modern Icelandic folk-belief provides full and gruesome detail on
the making of a gandreiJ-bridle: you must flay skin from a corpse
for the reins, take the scalp for the headpiece and bones for the bit,
recite a charm, and then, 'if you lay this bridle on any man or
beast, stock or stone, it will rise in the air at once with whoever is
sitting on it and go faster than lightning wherever you will. It
makes a loud whistling in the air, which some men believe they
have heard, as well as the rattling of the bridle.'7
Thus it seems that in Iceland, as in the British Isles, the riding
of a stick was in the late medieval period as much part of the
traditions about fairies, elf-like beings or trolls as about human
witches, though in later times the chief association was with witchcraft. It would also seem that in both areas the idea makes its first
appearance at roughly the same period; in Ireland in I334 Dame
Alice Kyteler was accused of keeping a staff 'on which she ambled
through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed' ;8 and
it was probably at much the same period that the author of
porsteins saga bcejarmagnssent his hero riding on a crook-stick to
the Underworld.
Thorstein's second adventure is briefer. One day he comes on a
dwarf wailing because an eagle is carrying his child off; Thorstein
shoots the eagle, catches the child as it falls, and accepts magical
7 J6n Arnason, Islenzkar PjdcsQgur
og Aefint35ri,Leipzig i862-4, I, 440-I. He
also gives two stories (pp. II0-I4, 44o-I) about men who were forced by this
bridle to act as horses and carry a woman across vast distances; in the first case
the woman is an elf revisiting her own land, while in the second she is a witch
riding to a sabbath.
8 Camden Society, Dame Alice Kyteler, I843. Cf. the confession of Isobel
Gowdie in i662 (R. Pitcairn, Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, III, ii, 603-4).

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gifts from the grateful dwarf. Grateful dwarves are fairly common
in romantic sagas, and also in modern Icelandic folk-tales;9
usually their gratitude is won by a gold ring given to their child,
and I know of only one other instance where the dwarf-child is
saved from peril, the threat in that case being from an ogress.10 Is
the eagle here due to the influence of some continental romance ?
Or is it again a folk-tale motif? According to Elizabeth Hartmann,
some Scandinavian versions of Type 531 ('Ferdinand the True and
Ferdinand the False') open with the hero receiving gifts from a troll
whose child he has saved from a wolf or eagle, or from drowning.12
Thorstein's dwarf gives him four gifts; the first three are merely
what one writer called 'the customary magic bric-a-brac': a shirt
of invulnerability, a ring bringing wealth, and a stone that makes
one invisible when held in the palm of the hand. Parallels to these
can easily be found in medieval literature,l3 and even more easily
in folk-tales; the dwarf's fourth gift, however, is distinctly
unusual:
He took a pebble (hallr)14 out of his pouch; there was a steel spiketo
go with it. The pebble was three-cornered;it was white in the middle,
9Egils saga einhenda ok Asmundar berserkjabana, Ch. 2I; Porsteins saga
Vikingarsonar, Chs. 22-3; Hqralds saga Hringsbana, Ch. Io; Sigurdar saga
pQgula, Ch. 6; Hektors saga, Ch. 7; J6n Arnason, op. cit., II, 3II, 413; A.
Rittershaus, Die Neuisldndische Volksmdrchen,Halle, 1902, 10, 109, 171 ff., 227.
10 Ambales
saga, Ch. 19; see I. Gollancz, Hamlet in Iceland, I898, 112-15.
11 Occasionally romances using the plot of the St Eustace legend may have a
child carried away by a griffin or eagle instead of the more usual land-beast. See
G. H. Gerould, 'Versions of the Eustachius Legend', PMLA, XIX (1904),
335-448. The eagle motif occurs in Bcerings Saga, ed. G. Cederschiold, Fornsogur Sudrlanda, Lund, 1884.
12 E.
Hartmann, op. cit., 175.
13
Magic shirts that are proof against weapons and/or give tireless strength in
swimming occur in at least nine other sagas; see the notes to Egils saga einhenda
ok Asmundar berserkjabanain A. Lagerholm, Drei LygisQgur,Uppsala, 1927, 69.
A ring that provides riches is given to the hero of the French lay Desire. In
Chretien's Ivain and the Welsh Lady of the Fountain there is a stone set in a ring
which will make the wearer invisible when he turns it so that the stone is hidden
in the clenched hand, and there is a similar stone, without the ring, in Peredur
(The Mabinogion, trans. G. Jones and T. Jones, 1949, 164, 211-12). The 'stone
of invisibility', hulinhjdlmsstein, is well known in later Icelandic folklore; it is
said to be found in a raven's nest, a feature which shows the influence of the
general medieval lore concerning magic stones (J6n Arnason, op. cit., I, 650).
14 The Cleasby-Vigfusson Icelandic
Dictionary glosses it as 'jewel' with reference
to this passage, and compares the modern Icelandic glerhallr, 'crystal'. But in all
other passages the word refers to stones of various kinds, including a quernstone and a boulder; from the context, the author seems to have visualized it as a
flat object, small enough to be carried in a pouch, but not tiny; 'pebble' therefore
is a preferable rendering.

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red on the other side, and a gold rim round it. The dwarfsaid: 'If you
prick the spike againstthe pebble where it is white, there will come so
heavy a hailstormthat nobody will dare look straightinto it. But if you
want to melt that snow away, then you must prick the part where the
pebble is gold, and then there will come such sunshine that it will all
thaw. But if you prickit where it is red, then there will come from it fire
and embersand such a showerof sparksthat nobody will be able to look
straightinto it. Also you can hit anythingyou like with the spike or the
pebble, and it will come backto your handas soon as you call it.'
The appearance of this stone, the method of rousing it to action,
and the effects it produces seem to be quite unique; there are no
references to anything comparable in the Stith-Thompson MotifIndex, and Dr Joan Evans has kindly informed me that there is
nothing similar in medieval lapidaries either. There is indeed the
stone by the fountain in Chretien de Troyes' Ivain, which rouses a
hailstorm followed by sunshine, though by a quite different
technique;15 this romance was translated in Norway in the fourteenth century, so it is conceivable that Thorstein's pebble might
be inspired by this episode. However, there are parallels in Icelandic tradition which make a native origin considerably more
likely.
Thorstein, as will be seen when we come to his third adventure,
is the hero of exploits originally ascribed to the god Th6r, so it
would not be strange if the pebble which becomes his weapon had
points in common with Th6r's famous weapon, the missile hammer
MjQllnir.16One such point is obvious at once: MjQllnir and the
pebble both have the power of returning to the thrower's hand.
Another similarity is with Th6r's hammer as it appears, not in
myths, but in later magical practices. In the nineteenth century a
charm was recorded in Iceland in which a small metal hammer
called a 'Th6r's Hammer' was used in conjunction with a spike;
the aim was to discover thieves and force them to restore the goods:
If one has a Th6r's Hammer,one can find out who has robbed one if
one has lost something. For this hammerone must have copper from a
church bell, three times stolen; the hammermust be hardenedin man's
blood on Whitsunday between the Epistle and Gospel. A spike must
15 Water is poured on it, in accordance with a well-known rain-making
technique. Striking a stone to bring rain is rare, but is known at Audeby in
see Bett, English Myths and Traditions, 47.
Lincolnshire;
16
On Mj9llnir see H. R. Ellis Davidson, 'Th6r's Hammer', Folklore, 76, I-I5.

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also be forged out of the same materialas the hammer.With this spike
one must prick the head of the hammerand say: 'I drive this into the
eye of the Father of Battles [Vigfadir,i.e. Odin], I drive it into the eye
of the Father of the Slain [Valfadir,i.e. Odin], I drive it into the eye of
Th6r of the Aesir.' Then the thief will get a painin his eyes.17
Such a hammer was seen by Dr Maurer in 1858; he described it
as roughly made of copper, about three inches long, with a short,
loose handle that could be detached and used for striking the head.
A disproportionately short handle is also, as Maurer noted, a
feature of MjQllniritself.18
Thorstein's pebble resembles this nineteenth-century hammer
in the method of its use by the three-fold stabbing with a spike; the
words pjakka 'prick, stab' and broddr 'a spike' occur in both
accounts. Of course the aim of the proceedings is different,
but a charm associated with a god of such wide powers as
Th6r could surely have very varied uses;19 in fact the effects of the
pebble - snow and hail, sunshine, and fire - all come within the
sphere of Th6r's powers. His association with hailstorms is obvious,
and his control over the sun is implied by Adam of Bremen: 'They
say he rules the air which controls the thunder and lightning, the
winds and showers, the fair weather and the fruits of the earth'.20
As for the showers of sparks, Th6r is lord of the lightning, and
hammers strike sparks from a smith's anvil; it has indeed been
suggested that a ceremonial striking of fire formed part of his cult.21
17 Jon Arnason,
op. cit., I, 445; he also describes an alternative method
whereby one draws a face on one side of a sheet of paper, and on the other a
swastika-like sign also called a 'Thor's Hammer', and then sets the spike on the
eye of the face and drives it in with the hammer. W. A. Craigie, summarizing
Jon Arnason's information (Scandinavian Folklore, 16-17, 420), adds a note that
'the practice is also known in Sweden and Denmark, according to A. A. Afzelius,
Swenzka Folkets Sago-hdfder, Stockholm, 1839-40, I, 20; J. M. Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagn, 1843, III, 360'.
18
K. Maurer, Isldndische Volkssagen, i860, IoI.
19There
is, for instance, the Lincolnshire charm against ague reported at the
end of the last century by the Rev. R. M. Heanly, Folklore, 9 (1898), i86;

Saga-Book

of the Viking Society, III, i (I902), 40; cf. S. Baring-Gould,

A Book of

English Folk Lore, 77. He speaks of a horseshoe being nailed to the bedstead with
three hammer-blows, accompanied by a rhyme to say that the blows are 'One for
God and one for Wod and one for Lok'. Dr Ellis Davidson has recently expressed
scepticism about the reliability of this account ('Folklore and Man's Past',
Folklore, 74 (1963), 534-6); but the similarity with the triple blows and triple
invocation of deities in the Icelandic thief-catching charm greatly strengthens
one's confidence in the Rev. R. M. Heanly's report.
20 Adam of Bremen,
History of the Bishops of Hamburg, IV, 26.
21 H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern
Europe, 1964, 78-9.

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The powers of Thorstein's pebble can thus all be seen as derived

from Th6r's attributes. Nor is the fact that it is a stone, not a metal
hammer, any objection. The so-called 'thunderstones' (i.e. certain
fossils or prehistoric weapons) which until recent times were in use
in northern Europe as protective amulets against lightning, fire,
and other evils, must in earlier days have been specifically
associated with Th6r.22 Indeed, in Sweden certain 'smooth wedgeshaped stones' found in the ground were until recently called
'Th6r's Wedges' and 'were believed to have been thrown by him
at some troll or other'.23
It therefore seems plain that the author of porsteins saga based
his account of the pebble on the myth of Thor's Hammer and on
folk-traditions surrounding thunderstones and model hammers
named after Th6r; the romantic and mdrchen-likeelements that he
also introduced are mere trimmings surrounding genuine Northern
material.24

The third adventure of Thorstein is the longest and most

complex, rich in interesting motifs; its climax is the killing of a
giant named GeirrQth, and it is to the history of this theme that
we must now turn.
The killing of GeirrQthwas originally one of Th6r's feats, and it
must have been one of the most popular myths, for it has left
many traces in literature, including four full-length variants. The
earliest version is a poem by Eilif Guthruinarsonat the end of the
tenth century, which is unfortunately often obscure;25 it tells how
Thor and his servant Thjalfi set out for the world of giants, barely
escaped drowning in a deadly torrent, and at length fought their
22
C. Blinkenberg, The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore, 1911; K.
Oakley, 'The Folklore of Fossils', Antiquity, XXXIX (I965), 117-18; M.
Haavio, 'The Oldest Source of Finnish Mythology', Journal of the Folklore
Institute, I (1964), 44-66.
23
W. A. Craigie, op. cit., I7, quoting A. A. Afzelius, op. cit., I, Io.
24 The colours of the stone
have an obvious natural appropriateness to its
functions, but would also appeal to a taste for the marvellous and gaudy.
Gibbons saga, Ch. 3, tells of a red, blue and gold stone with strange properties;
if one looks at the red part one can see events in distant lands, the blue makes one
'as fair as an angel', and the gold 'as ugly as a devil' (ed. R. I. Page, I960, 9-io).
Such a description shows sheer arbitrary fantasy, without roots in living beliefs.
25
Idrsdrdpa, quoted in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda (Skdldskaparmdl
XVIII), ed. Finnur J6nsson, Copenhagen, I926, 90 ff. For commentary, see
W. Kiil, Arkiv f6r nordisk Filologi, LXXI (1956), 89 ff. This text and others
dealing with Thor and Geirr9th have been discussed by Mrs N. K. Chadwick in
a recent issue of Folklore, (75, 243-59); though my angle of approach is different,
some duplication in plot-summaries is unavoidable, and will, I hope, be excused.

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way into the home of the giant GeirrQth, where Th6r broke the
backs of the giant's daughters. Then GeirrQth hurled an iron bar
at Thor, who caught it, rammed it against the giant's belly, and
then crushed him with his hammer.
Over two hundred years later, Snorri Sturluson gave a very
similar account in his Prose Edda (c. i220),26 using Eilif's poem as
his main source. But in some details he differs from it; for instance,
he says Th6r did not have his hammer with him, and that his companion was Loki; also he gives a slightly different account of the
climax. According to him, GeirrQth challenged Th6r to a game,
and 'seized a mass of glowing iron with his tongs and threw it at
Thor, but Th6r caught it with his iron gloves and raised it in the
air; but GeirrQthran behind a pillar to protect himself. Th6r threw
the glowing iron and hurled it through the pillar, and through
GeirrQth,and through the wall of the house, and so into the ground
outside.'
At almost the same period as Snorri (c. I2I5 or a little later), the
Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus wrote a version27in which the
theme has undergone striking changes and elaborations. The hero
is now a human being, an Icelander named Thurkillus, who guides
a band of Danes to the realm of Geruthus, a region of eternal
darkness and icy deserts beyond the uttermost ocean. The aim of
the expedition is to acquire treasures. There is a sea-voyage beset
with perils and marvels, which resembles the Irish imrammamore
closely than anything in older Scandinavian traditions.
An important new character enters the story, a figure whom
Saxo calls Gudmundus and who appears in several late sagas as
Guthmund of Glasisvellir or Glesisvellir. According to Saxo,
Gudmundus is a giant and brother of Geruthus, yet he helps
Thurkillus in his quest. He is lord of a strange land with rich
fruit-orchards, has twelve noble sons and twelve fair daughters,
and is pressing in offers of hospitality; yet Thurkillus warns his
companions not to eat the food he offers, nor touch his servants nor
his goblets, nor accept the love of his daughters - those who do
will 'lose recollection of everything' and dwell in his land for ever.
Saxo, intent on moralizing, paints this fate in grisly colours; all the
26

Snorri, op. cit., ed. cit., 88-90.

Danorum, VIII, 286-92;
O. Elton, 1894, 344-52.
27Historia

quotations from the translation by

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same, it is clear both from Saxo himself and from passages in

certain sagas that Guthmund is lord of one of those Otherworlds of
unfading and timeless bliss which are familiar to us from Celtic
literature.28
In Saxo's story, Gudmundus ferries Thurkillus and the Danes
over a river into the land of Geruthus, which turns out to be 'a
gloomy neglected town' haunted by grim phantoms, filthy,
stinking, swarming with snakes. There they find a 'ruinous house',
a 'rocky dwelling' with a cavern in it; inside is 'an old man with
his body pierced through, sitting on a lofty seat', and three women
with their backs broken. This, says Thurkillus, is the giant
Geruthus, pierced long ago by Th6r with a red-hot iron, while the
giantesses' backs were broken by his thunderbolt. The men then
go in search of the treasures, but as soon as they touch them the
seemingly dead giants leap up, pandemonium breaks out, and all
but twenty of the Danes are killed. Whether Thurkillus succeeds in
carrying anything off is not said, for Saxo treats the whole story as
a warning on the perils of greed.
This version of Saxo's has obviously departed considerably
from the old myth. Besides substituting Thurkillus for Th6r,29 and
ascribing the wounding of Geruthus to a previous encounter with
Thor, he includes two features, the perilous voyage and the figure
of Gudmundus, to which the readiest parallels are to be found in
Celtic tales. It is, however, unlikely that he was the first to use
them, for they also occur (with variations) in porsteins saga
28
One text of Hervarar saga ok Heidreks says of him: 'So old were he and his
people that their lives lasted through many generations of men. For that reason
heathen men believed that his realm must lie in the Land of the Undying, that
region where sickness and death depart from every man who enters it, and where
no man can die' (C. Tolkien, The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, I960, 66, 84-6).
In Helga Dattr Pdrissonar he and his daughter are chiefly seen as cruel and
hostile to men, but even there there is praise for the lavish hospitality and delights
of his land (Flateyjarbdk, ed. G. Vigfdsson and C. R. Unger, I86o-8, I, 359-63;
also in G. J6nsson and B. Vilhjalmsson, Fornaldarsogur Nordurlanda, III,
42I-6; cf. N. K. Chadwick, 'Literary Tradition in the Old Norse and Celtic
World', Saga-Book, XIV, iii, I94-8). The name of Guthmund's land means
'Glassy Plains' or 'Glittering Plains'; glass and crystal are often mentioned in
medieval accounts of the Otherworld, especially those containing Celtic elements
(cf. the 'Isle of Glass' in Chretien's Erec, and see H. R. Patch, The Otherworld
According to Descriptions in Medieval Literature, 1950).
29 In a later passage Saxo ascribes to Thurkillus another of Th6r's
adventures,
the visit to Utgartha-Loki. However, his version of this is utterly transformed,
partly by confusion with the myth of the bound god Loki, and even more by the
intrusion of the folk-tale of the man who goes to pluck three hairs from an ogre's
beard (Aarne Type 46I).
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bcejarmagns,and it is reasonable to suppose that features shared by

Saxo and this saga must have been present already in Saxo's lost
Icelandic source.30
To return to Thorstein - in his third adventure he, like
Thurkillus, takes on Thor's role as the adversary of GeirQrth.
While sailing east in the Baltic, his ship goes off course in a fog
and bears him to a beautiful but silent land, which turns out to be
Glaesisvellir. He goes exploring alone, spends the night in an oak,31
and encounters the gigantic Guthmund, who laughs at his puny
human size. In this version Guthmund is not the brother of
GeirrQth, but his very unwilling vassal; he is on his way to swear
allegiance to him, but fears it may end in his being killed by
treachery. Thorstein offers his help, saying he can make himself
invisible, and that the protection of the Christian God and of King
Olaf Tryggvason will guard him; Guthmund accepts his offer.
There are motifs here which have a certain Celtic colouring. A
mist that leads the hero astray as a prelude to some Otherworld
encounter is frequent in Irish and Welsh, and also occurs in
medieval romances, where it is usually reckoned as a feature of
Celtic origin.32 However, it is also known in sagas and in Saxo.
Similarly, tales in which a human hero undertakes to help one
lord of the Otherworld against another are frequent in Celtic
literature, and are sometimes claimed as a uniquely Celtic
30
Peculiar to Saxo is the change from a living and active Geirr9th into the
semi-corpse Geruthus, a motionless guardian of treasures in an ill-defined and
sinister locality. He may have been thinking of the very popular Icelandic motif
of a living corpse (draugr) that will spring to life if the treasures are robbed from
its burial-mound; on the other hand, his reference to a 'cavern' and 'recess in the
crag' sounds more like the medieval legend of the king (Arthur, Barbarossa, etc.)
who sleeps in a cavern beneath the mountain, surrounded by treasures. Saxo
often tends to pile marvel upon marvel, resulting in confusion and ambiguity.
31Eik in Icelandic came to mean
any largish fruit-bearing tree, such as an
apple-tree or nut-tree, for oaks were unknown there. The present incident,
however, is very probably modelled on Snorri's description of Th6r encountering
the giant Skrymir under an eik, and there an 'oak' is certainly meant, for its
acorns are mentioned. But the wider meaning would also fit the context, for in
medieval romances and ballads Otherworld beings often appear to those who
sleep or linger near apple-trees (G. L. Kittredge, 'Sir Orfeo,' American Journal of
Philology, VII, i886, I76 ff.; L. C. Wimberley, Folklore in English and Scottish
Ballads, 1928, 153-8). This belief seems to have been known by the author of
this saga, for it is at an orchard-gate that Thorstein meets the giantess who
becomes his wife.
32
Several Celtic examples are given by H. R. Patch, op. cit., 45-6. Sagas using
this motif are Egils saga einhenda (twice), and Helga Pdttr Porissonar; also Saxo,
I, 3 ; III, 70.

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theme.33 Yet this is not the only occasion when the motif appears in
Scandinavia.34In this case, as in that of the supernatural mist, it is
not certain whether the author of porsteins saga would have thought
of himself as borrowing foreign material, for whether or not it was
originally Celtic it may well have been fully naturalized by the
time he came to use it.
So Thorstein and Guthmund (and the twenty-four giants who
are the latter's followers) set out for GeirrQth's realm. To reach it
they must cross a perilous icy river, as Th6r and Thjalfi did in
Eilif's poem; but instead of wading, they cross on horseback,
protected by magic clothing that keeps them dry. Thorstein alone
gets one toe wet, and has to cut it off because it is frostbitten - a
detail which the author has adopted from another old myth, that of
Th6r and Aurvandil,35 bringing it up to date with touches of the
more romantic magic popular in his own period.
Once the river has been crossed, Thorstein makes himself
invisible, presumably by using the little black stone which was one
of the dwarf's gifts, and so watches the reception Guthmund gets
at Geirr9th's court. The general situation here is much like Th6r's
visit to the giant-magician Titgartha-Loki;36 there is the same
barely-hidden hostility, the same mixture of feasting, quarrelling
and tests of strength. Some of the tests are identical: competitive
drinking, and wrestling. There is also bone-throwing; also an
unusual form of ball-game, when the giant-king GeirrQthsends for
his 'gold ball', and this turns out to be:
33
K. H. Jackson, The International Popular Tale and Early Welsh Tradition,
I96I, 127; J. Baudis, 'Mabinogion', Folklore, 27 (I9I6), 35; K. Liestol, Norske
Trollevisor och Norr6ne sogur, 1915, 70 ff.; E. Hartmann, op. cit., 98, 152-3.
34
The hero of borsteins pdttr uxafdts is led into a burial-mound by the leader
of one party of dead men so that he should join in an everlasting fight against a
second party, and so bring it to an end. In the Norwegian folk-tale of Vogel Dam
(Type 301), one troll asks the hero to kill another, so that the first troll may
become king of the trolls (P. Chr. Asbjornsen and J. Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr
no. 3; transl. R. Th. Christiansen, Folktales of Norway, 1964, 243-52). There is a
similar episode in the Danish folk-tale of Svend Felling (E. T. Kristensen, Danske
Sagen, 1872-9I, I no. 968; transl. T. Keightly, Fairy Mythology, 1889, 128-9).
35 Snorri
Sturluson, Prose Edda (Skdldskaparmdl XVII), ed. cit., 87-8. Amputation of a frozen toe was also connected with Th6r in one episode of the lost
JQkuldcelasaga, which told how a certain Hakon used to walk barefoot to Thor's
temple, every day when weather permitted. This he did one day when he was
due to fight a duel, despite frost on the ground; his little toe froze, and for fear
it should make him clumsy, he cut it off. He won his duel. (A. van Hamel,
'(O6inn Hanging on the Tree', Acta Philologica Scandinavica, VII (1932), 281.) I
am grateful to Mrs. Audrey Meaney for this reference.
36 Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda
(Gylfaginning XLV-XLVII), ed. cit., 45-54.
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A seal's head that weighed one hundred pounds; it was glowing hot,
so that sparks flew from it as from the hearth of a forge, and the fat
dripped from it like glowing pitch. The king said: 'Now take this ball
and throw it to one another. Whoever falls shall go into outlawryand
lose all his possessions, and whoever dares not handle it shall be called
shamefuland base.'
The game causes some casualties among the evil giants, and
continues till someone accidentally sends the ball flying out of the
window and into the moat, where a blazing fire leaps up.
Already in Snorri, the sports in GeirrQth'shall had been part of
the story, for there the flinging of the red-hot iron is called a
'sport'; Saxo has the theme too, for he mentions in passing some
'hideous doorkeepers' who 'played a gruesome game, tossing a
goat's hide from one to the other'. (This is simply skinnleikr, a
game popular in medieval Iceland and played with a rolled-up
hide.) But why is the ball now a seal's head? I think it possible that
this may reflect some game actually played in real life in Iceland;
Mr Alan Smith has recently studied evidence for semi-ritual
games with animal heads in England,37and something similar may
have existed in Iceland. Why the seal's head is aflame I am not
sure; it could be a reminiscence of the glowing iron in the older
versions, it could be inspired by real-life games with burning
objects,38or it could be due to the widespread tendency to include
some ordeal by fire among the perils of the Otherworld.
And why does GeirrQth call this head his 'gold ball', when it is
neither gold nor, in view of its huge size, a normal ball? Two
medieval poems are of interest here, as having a similar sardonic
jest in closely analogous circumstances. The first is the twelfthcentury French Pelerinage de Charlemagne,that tells of a visit to
Constantinople, in which many authorities see a rationalized
version of a visit to the Otherworld.39 In the course of this visit,
William of Orange hurls a vast stone at the palace wall, battering it
to the ground; this huge stone is jestingly called a pelotte, which is
37A. W. Smith, 'The Luck in the Head: A Problem in English
Folklore',
Folklore, 73 (1962), 13-24; 'The Luck in the Head: Some Further Observations',
Folklore, 74 (I963), 396-8.
38 M. Williams ('Apropos of an episode in Perlesvaus',
Folklore, 68 (I937), 266)
tells of a game played in Cardigan on i November in which a large ball of tarred
sacking was set on fire and kicked through the streets till it disintegrated; it was
referred to as 'the head'.
8 Ed. E.
Koschwitz, 1923, vss. 507-14, 744-52.

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roughly equivalent to 'tennis ball'. When the Pelerinage was

translated into Icelandic, pelotte was rendered as 'gold ball'.40
The second analogue is the English poem The Turk and
Gawain,41 of about I500, which has much in common with our
saga. It tells how Gawain is led to a court of hostile giants by a
supernatural dwarf called the 'Turk', to bring about their destruction and make the Turk lord of their land. The Turk, posing as
Gawain's servant, performs feats of strength on his behalf in reply
to challenges, just as Thorstein aids Guthmund in the competitive
sports (of which more later); the Turk is invisible at the end, as
Thorstein is throughout. The poem is badly mutilated, but fortunately there is no doubt that for the first sport the giants and the
Turk hurl to and fro a ball of brass that no man in England could
lift, and that the king of the giants calls this 'my tennis ball'. In
another test the Turk lifts a huge brazier of burning coals and
swings it so that sparks fly; one may assume that he then throws it
at some giant, but the manuscript is unfortunately damaged at this
point. At any rate it seems plain that the saga and the English poem
preserve essentially the same plot, and that the 'ball' jest is part of
the tradition which they and the Pelerinage share.
One of the most interesting features of this part of porsteins saga
is the part Thorstein plays in these tests of strength. He is of
course tiny compared with the giants, but he has the advantage of
being invisible (and of being a Christian). In every test, the victory
of Guthmund's party is in fact due to Thorstein; in the bonethrowing, he catches bones in mid-air and hurls them back at the
senders; he steadies Guthmund's followers when they stagger
under the weight of the seal's head; he holds them up in the
wrestling, and trips their adversaries. All this help is given in such
40
Karlamagnus saga ok kappa hans, ed. Bjarni Vilhjilmsson, Reykjavik, 1950,
752, 762. Mr. Alan Smith informs me that in ritual ball-games the balls are
sometimes gilded or silvered to represent the sun or moon, and suggests that
memories of such a practice have mingled with a debased version of an animalhead ritual to provide this colourful variation upon the theme of a weightthrowing test.
41 The Turke and Gowin, Bishop Percy's Folio
Manuscript, ed. J. W. Hales and
F. J. Furnivall, I867, I, 90-0I2. The parallels between this poem and the
Pelerinage have been several times pointed out, and a derivation from Celtic tales
suggested. See G. T. Webster, 'Arthur and Charlemagne', Englische Studien,
XXXVI (1906), 337-69; G. L. Kittredge, A Study of 'Gawain and the Green
Knight', 1916, 118 ff., 274 ff.; L. H. Loomis, 'Observations on the Pelerinage de
Charlemagne', Modern Philology, XXV (I927), 331-49.

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a way that it looks as if Guthmund and his men are performing

their feats unaided, yet in fact the vital work is done by the
invisible Thorstein.
This is a distinctly unusual motif; Marvellous Helpers are of
course extremely common in folk-tales and in medieval literature,
but they all (including Gawain's Turk) are quite open in undertaking tasks on the hero's behalf, and the question of trickery by
invisible aid does not arise. It is indeed true that in folk-tales of
Types 505-8 when the Helper is a Grateful Dead Man, he does
commonly make himself invisible to spy on the cruel princess, but
the whole point of that plot is the discovery of her secret, not the
achieving of a feat of strength.42
But there is one famous story in which the helper makes himself
invisible, and acts simultaneously with the friend he is helping, so
as to trick the watchers, and in which the tests are feats of strength.
This is the Seventh Adventure in the Niebelungenlied, the scene
where Gunther must beat Brynhild in an exchange of spear-casts,
in hurling a huge stone, and in a long-jump. Siegfried, invisible,
performs all three tests in such a way that it seems to be Gunther
who does them; he takes the impact of Brynhild's spear, casts it
back, hurls the stone, and finally gives a mighty leap, carrying
Gunther with him as he goes. Now this scene has caused much
discussion, for, as is well known, in the Icelandic versions Sigurth
wins Brynhild for Gunnar by the more dignified method of riding
through a wall of fire, after they have magically exchanged shapes.
The only parallel so far suggested for the scene in the Niebelungenlied is the Russian folk-tale 'The Strong Bride' (Type 519), of
which thirty-five versions have been collected.43 Here the tests are
to hurl some vast weapon and to bridle a wild horse; the hero has
a Helper to perform these tasks, and deception is sometimes
involved; but it is only in one of the thirty-five variants that the
Helper is invisible,44 and in one other that he is a tiny dwarf
hidden behind the hero. The remaining versions use more rational
42
Types 505-8, especially 'The Monster's Bride'. See S. Liljeblad, Die
und andre Mdrchen von toten Helfern, Lund, 1927, I96-225.
Tobiasgeschichte
43 A. von Lowis of
Menar, Die Brunhildsage in Russland, Leipzig, I923;
F. Panzer, Das Niebelungenlied; Entstehung und Gestalt, 1955, 322-34; S. Lilje-

blad, op. cit., I67-77,

44

235-40.

'The Strong Tsar and the Beautiful Jelena'; even here the Helper, Nikita
Koltoma, is only invisible at the end of the contests, not throughout.

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devices - facial resemblance, or exchange of clothing - or do not

contain the element of trickery at all.
For many years the argument has raged as to whether these
Russian tales are evidence that the Niebelungenliedborrowed this
episode from some early folk-tale, or whether, on the contrary,
they are themselves derived from the Niebelungenlied.45As far as I
know, the similarity between Siegfried's exploit and that of
Thorstein bcejarmagnhas never been brought into the discussion,
but it seems to me that it should not be neglected.46 After all,
porsteins saga boejarmagnsis probably not more than a hundred and
fifty years later than the Niebelungenlied,and appears to be largely
built up out of older themes; its evidence is highly relevant to the
question of what sources were available in the twelfth century for
the author of the Niebelungenlied.The most plausible explanation
seems to be that the motif of the Invisible Helper was already
circulating, but as part of a story of hostile encounters with
Otherworld beings rather than as part of a wooing tale. Whether
the author of the Niebelungenlied was the first to attach it to
Siegfried, and, if so, what led him to make the connexion, is a
question beyond the scope of the present paper.
To return to the narrative of Thorstein's adventures - GeirrQth
and the other wicked giants have become suspicious of the
successes of Guthmund's party, and are beginning to guess that
some unknown person is present, for the presence of a Christian in
their hall affects them as a sensation of unpleasant heat and a foul
smell. Therefore GeirrQthdecides to consult his oracle, which is a
strange drinking-horn, which Guthmund describes as follows:
'Its name is Grim the Good, and it is a great treasure,full of magic
power, and adornedwith gold. On the pointed end there is a man'shead
with flesh and mouth, and this speaksto men and foretells what is still
to come, and declareswhetherthereis enmityto be expected .... A man
of averagesize can stand upright under the curve [of the horn]; there
is a metal band half a yard wide round the rim, and the best drinkerin
45 The discussion up to 1948 is summarized by F. Panzer,
'Nibelungische
Ketzereien', Paul und Braunes Beitrage, LXXII, 463-98. Since then Panzer has
his
for
the
of
the
in
Das
folk-tale
repeated
arguments
priority
Niebelungenlied,
loc. cit., and the opposite view has been put by Jan de Vries, Betrachtungen zum

Marchen, FFC, 150(I954),

II1-17.

46 It was
briefly noted by Margaret Schlauch, Romance in Iceland (1934), 31,
but her remark seems to have passed unnoticed by other scholars.

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their company can only drink as much as will clear this band, but the
king drinksit dry in one draught.Every man has to give Grim treasure.'
In due course this horn is ceremonially carried into the banqueting hall; the giants all worship it, offer it gold, and drink from it.
On Thorstein's advice, Guthmund gives it his own crown and
vows to honour it even more zealously than GeirrQth does; but
he only pretends to drink, for he fears that the liquor may be
poisonous. Nevertheless the speaking head is apparently won
over by his gift, for it does not betray the secret of Thorstein's
presence.
Several ideas are blended in this strange scene. There is the test
of drinking from the inexhaustible horn, as in the well-known story
of Th6r's visit to iJtgartha-Loki. Then there is the idea that drink
proffered by Otherworld beings may be not merely magical but
literally poisonous; this occurs fairly often in sagas,47and becomes
very common in modern Scandinavian versions of the folk-tale of
'The Drinking-Vessel Stolen from Fairies'.48 But the oddest and
most mysterious feature is the oracular head that grows from the
end of this horn. Oracular heads on their own are of course to be
found in many sources in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, the
more archaic ones being actual human heads, either mummified
or freshly severed, and later ones being of metal, usually brass;49
47 Helga pdttr IPdrissonartells of two
men, both called Grim, who were sent by
Guthmund of Glaesisvellir to give two horns, also both called Grim, to King
la6fTryggvason, and it says that the liquor in these horns would have poisoned
him had he not made the Sign of the Cross before drinking; this tale is evidently
related to that of Grim the Good. There are also tales of a she-troll trying to
poison Olaf with drink from a horn (Flateyarbdk, ed. cit., I, 398-9), and of a
demon in the guise of a woman trying to 'beguile' him by the same means (Oddr
Snorrason, ladfs saga Tryggvasonar, Ch. 47). Such stories may be Christian
distortions of an old heathen association between kingship and the acceptance of
a drink offered by an Otherworld being, such as can be clearly seen in Irish tales
(e.g. those of Niall of the Nine Hostages, of Conn and Lug and the 'Sovereignty
of Ireland'); when Geirroth hands the horn to Guthmund he says it will seal the
agreement whereby the latter is to hold the kingship of Glaesisvellir as the
former's vassal.
48 E. Hartmann, op. cit., i8; W. A.
Craigie, op. cit., 13I-3, 429-30; E. S.
Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales, 137-60.
49 A. Dickson, Valentine and Orson: A
Study, 1929, 20z0-6; A. Ross, 'The
Human Head in Insular Pagan Celtic Religion', Proceedings of the Society of
Antiquaries of Scotland, XCI (1960), 10-43. Icelandic speaking heads are comparatively rare: that of Mimir mentioned in two Eddic poems and by Snorri;
that in Eyrbyggja saga, Ch. 43; and that which a later sorcerer named Thorleif
Galdra-Leif is said to have revived by magic and kept hidden in a chest or a
crevice among rocks (J6n Arnason, op. cit., I, 523).
B

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however, the combination, one might say the integration, of

oracular head and drinking horn is unique.
Nevertheless a source may perhaps be suggested, though only
as a conjecture based on circumstantial evidence.50 The work of
Professor R. S. Loomis on the origins of the Grail legend led him
to ascribe great importance to the Welsh figure of Bran the Blessed,
and to postulate a group of lost stories about a horn of plenty
belonging to him; these stories would have passed from Wales to
the Bretons, and thence into French literature, where they would
have contributed greatly to the growth of the Grail legend. Now
one thing certain about Bran is that the Mabinogion says that he
was decapitated and that his severed head presided at a feast that
lasted for eighty years. So in the case of Bran we have the same
figure being thought of as a severed head, and probably also
associated with a famous magic horn; and the more we examine the
alleged characteristics of Bran's head and of his horn, as reconstructed by Professor Loomis and Professor Helaine Newstead,51 the more the resemblance to Grim the Good becomes
impressive.
First, the names: in the Mabinogion Bran is called 'the Blessed'
and also 'the Noble Head' (or 'Noble Chieftain', for penn is
ambiguous); it is alleged that Bran's horn was called Cor Benoit,
'Blessed Horn' -compare the name 'Grim the Good'. Bran's
head spoke, presided at a magic feast, and protected the land;
Grim spoke, appeared at an Otherworld feast, and was expected to
give its owner warning of enemies. Bran's horn is alleged to have
also been associated with feasting in a fair land, to have been a
discriminating vessel that would feed no coward, to have been
worshipped by giants, to have foretold the future, and to have
answered all questions; 52 the similarity to Grim in all these features
is very marked. (Grim shows discrimination against cowards by
50 The
following paragraphs are a summary of arguments which I have set out
in greater detail in 'Grimr the Good: A Magical Drinking-Horn', Etudes
X
Celtiques,
51R. S. (1964), 489-515.
Loomis, 'The Irish Origin and Welsh Development of the Grail
Legend', Speculum, XIII (1933); 'The Head in the Grail', Revue Celtique,
XLVII, 39 ff.; Wales and the Arthurian Legend, I956, 40-I, 44-50, I51-2.
H. Newstead, Bran the Blessed in Arthurian Romance, 1939.
52 The last three
points are very conjectural; they depend on passages in
Perlesvaus and Fouke Fitz Warin in which, according to Loomis, tors 'bull' is a
scribal error for cors 'horn'.

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taunting an old giant who had done badly in the wrestling, and
this giant had to take three draughts before he could drain the
horn.)
I believe that this series of similarities goes beyond coincidence,
and that the author of porsteins saga (or some predecessor of his)
knew stories about Bran's horn and severed head as talismans of
plenty and protection, and modelled his Grim the Good upon
them. Many masterpieces of French romance - the lays of Marie
de France, the works of Chretien, and so on - were translated
and imitated in the North in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and it is intrinsically probable that other French lays
and tales, now lost, also reached the North at the same period. The
more such tales had kept their pagan, Celtic, non-Arthurian
features, the more readily they could have blended with native
Scandinavian material. If the cycle of stories about Bran was
indeed as popular and influential as Professor Loomis maintains,
its reappearance in Norse disguise is only one more example of the
influence of Continental literature on the sagas; nor would this be
the only case where an Icelandic text can cast light on a problem
in the field of romance.
We have once more wandered far from the actual adventures of
Thorstein, which are now drawing to their climax. After the great
horn has been removed from the hall, Thorstein decides to reveal
himself, and enters, visible. The giants are amazed to see so small
a creature, and take him simply as a figure of fun; Guthmund
declares that this is his page, who 'knows many little tricks'.
Geirrgth asks to see some, and so with the dwarf's three-cornered
pebble and spike Thorstein produces in turn a storm of hail and
snow, then hot sunshine, then a shower of sparks. The evil giants
are blinded and thrown into confusion, and Thorstein closes the
performance by flinging the pebble and spike at GeirrQth, 'and the
pebble went in one of his eyes and the spike in the other, and he
crashed down dead on the floor.'53
So Guthmund of Glasisvellir became king of all Giant Land,
and rewarded Thorstein with the gift of three magic objects: a
53 In all other versions Geirroth dies
from a blow that pierces his body, not his
eyes; the change of method must be due to some version of the widespread
Polyphemus story (Type 1137), and is particularly reminiscent of the killing of
Balor of the Evil Eye.

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goblet that only he could drain dry, a gold-embroidered towel

which no fire could burn, and a silver dish, the properties of which
are not stated. After this, Thorstein won as his wife the daughter
of a giant named Agthi, and also stole from Agthi a pair of drinkinghorns, which he took home to Norway for King Olaf.54 What
became of Grim the Good is not said, but presumably it remained
with Guthmund. Thorstein did not remain in Norway but returned
to Giant Land, where, after one last adventure of minor interest
(the laying of the dead giant Agthi who would not rest in his grave),
he settled down as an Earl, holding land in fieff from Guthmund.
'We have never', says the author, 'heard anything about Thorstein again.' Like the Irish heroes Laegairemac Crimthainn, Nera,
and Connle, Thorstein returned at last to the Otherworld where
he had had so many adventures, and of him as of Lagaire it might be
said that 'he entered again into the Sidh, where he exercises joint
kingly rule, nor is he come out of it yet'.
54
Similarly in the folk-tale of the 'Drinking-Vessel Stolen from Fairies' the
stolen goblet or horn is usually given to a king or a church. This tale is very
popular in Scandinavia, where it is first recorded in Norway in the sixteenth
century; in England it goes back to the early thirteenth century, and perhaps the
author of Thorstein's Saga knew it too, though if so he has treated it very
E. S. Hartland, op. cit.
cursorily (see R. Th. Christiansen, op. cit., II7-2I;
I37-60). The horns Thorstein gives King 6Olaf are stolen back by the giant
Agthi, just as in some Danish versions of the 'Stolen Drinking-Vessel' the cup is
recovered by the 'berg-folk' (Craigie, op. cit., 429-30). But Thorstein finds the
horns again in Agthi's burial-mound and returns them to King Olaf; the saga
says that when Olaf threw himself overboard at the battle of Svold (A.D. 00ooo),
the horns vanished 'and no man has seen them since'. Exactly the same thing is
said of the Grim Horns in Helga pdttr dorissonar(see n. 45 above); clearly there
was a persistent legend that Olaf owned supernatural horns that were bound up
with his life and luck.

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