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4.0 out of 5 stars
A Unique Version of Egil's Saga, December 1, 2001
This review is from: Egil's Saga, Done into English out of the Icelandic (Hardcover)
Egil's Saga Done Into English Out of the Icelandic with an Introduction, Notes and an Essay on some Principles of Translation, by E. R. Eddison, Cambridge University Press, 1930
After Eton, Eric Rücker Eddison took seconds in Classical Moderations and Literae humaniores at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1905, and this translation, his fourth book, was well enough considered in scholarly circles to be published by Cambridge University Press in 1930.
Any predilection for this saga, however, requires some justification, because Egil is, at first sight, not an attractive figure (although, he does not appear until chapter 31 of an 87 chapter book). The original author's delayed introduction of his central character is, however, quite deliberate, for the first part of the saga is clearly `preparation'. As King Harald Finehair begins to subjugate Norway, a conflict develops between him and another family, that of Kveld-Ulf, who has two sons, Thorolf and (Skalla)grim. The former enters into the service of Harald, while the latter remains aloof.
Thorolf, while serving Harald well, is eventually slandered by the sons of Hildirid, whom he has slighted over a legacy. Harald eagerly credits their story, and his suspicions are exacerbated by Thorolf's grandiose behaviour, which leaves the King feeling slighted. Open conflict soon develops between Harald and Thorolf, who protests his innocence, but eventually enters the fray wholeheartedly. Thorolf is killed in battle by the King, just three feet from him, fully intent on slaying Harald, and defiantly asserting so with his last breath. With his family now in grave disfavour, Skallagrim makes the trip to Iceland, where Egil is born.
At the precocious age of three, Egil displays his own talent for poetry, composing his first stave, and at the equally precocious age of seven winters, he kills his first enemy, an older boy. These two activities, verse and manslaying, were to remain of paramount importance to him throughout his long and bloody life. What remains of the saga is truly Egil's story, although for a while we follow the activities of Egil's elder brother, also called Thorolf (after his uncle). As the two sons of Kveldulf were divided in their attitudes to King Harald, so too are Egil and Thorolf in theirs to Harald's son, King Eric Bloodaxe. This dynastic parallelism reveals to us the point of the lenghty introduction, and we know that for Eddison, who was fascinated by the `ouroboros' myth, cyclical patterns were of great importance in conveying his views of history.
Egil's subsequent adventures make very entertaining reading, in Eddison's version no less than any other. His first notable adventure comes when, during a drinking bout, he outwits Bard and Eric's scheming wife, Queen Gunnhild, who attempt to poison him. He kills Bard, and then has an exciting escape to a nearby island. As a prisoner of the Kurlanders, he befriends the Dane, Aki, and burns the farmhouse of his captors to the ground, escaping with much booty. Next, he goes as a mercenary with Thorolf to join King Athelstane of England, and although Thorolf is killed in battle, Egil is rewarded with chests of silver for his military assistance. On his father's death, Egil has the grim task of getting the corpse, immobilised by rigor mortis, out of his dwelling-place and safely into a cairn. When he finally falls into the hands of Eric and Gunnhild in England, he famously composes a drapa on the King to save his own head. This he achieves despite being hindered in his room by the efforts of Gunnhild, a shape-changer, who has (presumably) assumed the form of a singing swallow. In another episode, he vanquishes a berserker called Ljot the Pale by hacking off his foot.
He cuts a slightly pathetic figure when he takes to his bed to die after the death of his favourite son Bodvar, but later rallies. Latterly, he presides over a quarrel between another son, Thorstein, and Steinar, before he ends up a blind old man in his eighties, taunted by the womenfolk for warming his feet. He meditates one delightful piece of final mischief, by contemplating taking his chests of silver to the Thing (Parliament) and causing an almighty row among those hoping to possess them. In the event, however, he merely goes off and hides his treasure secretly. When his bones are found, his massive skull proves resistant to blows, a fact which reflects his hard-headedness in life.
As a translator, Eddison favours models such as William Morris and Sir George Dascent and he justifies an archaic style as the appropriate form for modern versions of the text. Indeed, in the `Induction' to The Worm Ouroboros, Lessingham's wife briefly quotes from Dascent's translation of Njal's Saga, and something of Eddison's own attraction to Egil's Saga is evident when, in his first published work, he likens a dead friend to Egil, `who fought and harried over many seas and kingdoms'. In his critical apparatus, Eddison has little to say about the question of authorship, but his footnotes make it clear that he was very familiar with Icelandic geography.
If all a reader wants from Egil's Saga is a modern English prose translation, one might just as well read Christine Fell's 1975 Everyman edition, but for admirers of Eddison, this text is of particular interest as it falls exactly at the midpoint in his career between Styrbiorn the Strong (1926) and the beginnings of the Zimiamvian trilogy (1935). Thus, it shows the influence of Norse and Icelandic traditions on his work at their zenith, while being stylistically the closest we come to his 1922 masterpiece The Worm Ouroboros. This alone is enough to recommend Eddison's resolutely archaic version of Egil's story to us.
Dr. Kenneth D. Farrow
<kfarrow@supanet.com>
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