Sagas of Iceland · Part 11 · Outlaws · B1–B2
Grettir the Strong
Part 11 of the Sagas of Iceland: Grettir, the strongest man in Iceland and its longest-surviving outlaw. He fought the terrible ghost Glámr, who cursed him to be afraid of the dark forever, and spent his last years on a rock in the sea with his brother, until the fire went out. Comparatives and superlatives, too and enough, so… that, and the language of strength and fear, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight’s hero is Grettir the Strong: stronger than any man in Iceland, braver than anyone, and unluckier than everyone. He was an outlaw for nineteen years, longer than anyone else in the sagas.
Very. He once fought a ghost so terrible that nobody else dared go near it. Grettir won. But before it died, the ghost cursed him: from that night on, Grettir, the bravest man alive, was afraid of the dark.
Grettis saga, written in the early 14th century, tells the life of Grettir Ásmundarson (about 996–1031), the strongest man of his time. As a boy he was lazy and rude; as a man he was brave, generous to the weak, and always in trouble. His great deeds include fighting the walking dead, a bear and twelve berserkers.
His most famous fight is with Glámr, a huge, sinister shepherd who had died on the mountains and came back as a draugr, one of the walking dead, haunting the farm of Thórhallsstadir. Grettir wrestled him through the house, broke the doors, and finally cut off his head. But in the moonlight, Glámr’s eyes looked into Grettir’s and he cursed him: he would never grow stronger, he would be an outlaw, and he would always see Glámr’s eyes in the…
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