Magical Objects, part TWO (Seven Viking Romances V)

More magical objects for your reference and mine! From the Seven Viking Romances -- finishing up with the romance of Arrow-Odd, today, and moving on to the romance of King Gautrek (Son of Gauti the Boss -- Gautrek himself is kind of worthless), and then Halfdan Eysteinsson!

4) "The best of all swords" Snidil 
     It "never faltered in battle" owned by Odd's companion, Sirnir. That's really all there is to be said about it in the story. It isn't exactly magic, I suppose, but never faltering in battle seems pretty super-power to me.

5) Three Stone Arrows
     Gifted to Odd from an old man named Jolf while Odd was living in disguise (dressed in bark) and going by the name of "Barkman." These stone arrows could only be used once, and were meant to defeat an enemy which Gusir's Gift couldn't. Odd uses them, and they disappear after taking out his enemy.

From the Romance of King Gautrek:

6) Starkad's Magic Spear
     It appears to everyone else only to be reed, anad Starkad uses it to kill King Vikar in sacrifice to Odin, when Vikar would have made mockery of hanging himself to the god. When Starkad pokes Vikar in the side with it, it turns back into a spear. Magic!

From the Romance of Halfdan Eysteinsson:

7) Halfdan's Magic Sword
     Gifted to him by an elderly couple in the wood who nursed him back to health, the sword "seemed to drip venom from its edges." And it ensured victory to whoever held it -- at least if they "handled it properly" it would always find its mark.

8) A Necklace of Precious Stones
     Also a gift from the elderly couple -- the necklace protects Halfdan from harm, granting a certain level of invulnerability as long as the stones are whole. It's a good thing, too because half of Halfdan's enemies seem to shapeshift into dragons at the drop of a hat.

9) The sword Horn-Hilt
     Owned by a viking named Val, "inlaid with gold, and its stroke never failed."

We still have four Romances to go!

Related: Magical Objects, Arrow-Odd Edition

Magical Objects, Arrow-Odd Edition (Seven Viking Romances IV)

You might remember Arrow-Odd's magical arrows, from our discussions about his super odd religious choices. But these arrows, (undeserved by Odd, p.s.) are just the first a great many magical objects littered throughout the Seven Viking Romances, so I thought it'd be fun to go through the catalog, just in case anyone is in the market for something in their own fiction. Or wants to go on a quest. Either/or.

And that would be odd, with the red beard,
looking super baffled. (I still hate him.)
(image from wiki commons, natch!)

Let's start with the Romance of Arrow-Odd (but seriously I hate this guy).

1) Odd's Magic Arrows, AKA Gusir's Gifts
     These are the first magic objects we come across in this book of Viking Romances, and they have a couple impressive properties:

• They're feathered with gold.
• They always return after their shot, and they rarely miss. When a normal arrow might be stopped by some magic or other, Gusir's Gifts usually get the job done. (That said, you'd be amazed how many people get shot directly through both eyes and out the back of their skull, and still don't die.)

Odd uses Gusir's Gift to kill a great many people and monsters in his day, until they're lost to him in a fight against a giantess.

2) Odd's Magic Shirt
     While in Ireland, the Irish manage to kill Odd's BFF, Asmund. (And don't ask me why every opponent of Odd's takes arrows through both eyes and the armpits before they even slow down, but Asmond gets struck by one arrow and drops dead just like that.) Odd flies into a rage, of course, and starts slaying everyone in sight. Then he happens upon a group of women, and one of them, named Olvor, strikes a bargain with him: Let her go free, and she'll make him a magic shirt unlike any he'll ever find anywhere else. What made it so special? Well...

"You'll never be cold in it, either by sea or land. You'll never be tired when swimming, never hurt by fire, never troubled by hunger, and no iron will bite you. It will protect you against everything with one exception" (52).

That exception is of course that if he runs away from battle, he can still be killed. Clearly it is a shirt woven with Viking sensibilities in mind. It also happens to be silk, embroidered with gold, and when Odd returns to collect his shirt, he gets a bride as well.

But this isn't the only magic shirt in the Viking Romances, either. Just the first mentioned.

3) The sword called Tyrfing
     For a change, it doesn't belong to Odd, but rather his opponent, Angantyr. Two things make it special:

• It was forged by dwarfs.
• It cuts through anything, including iron and rock. (But presumably not Odd's shirt.)

And we'll take a breather here, but tune in next week for more Magical Objects! Because there are a lot of them, friends and followers.

Arrow-Odd's Odder Religion (Seven Viking Romances)

About twenty pages from the end of this first Viking Romance (Seven Viking Romances, Hermann Pálsson, Penguin, 1985) Odd exchanges some poetry with a priestess of Frey, that goes like this*:

Priestess: Whose the leader of this monstrous army?!
Odd: Me! and I burned all your temples, destroyed your idols, and couldn't care less!
Priestess: Frey will smite you, and so will the other gods, who will support me, their priestess!
Odd: I'm not afraid of you or your gods! God is my God!
Priestess:

"Who fostered you
to be such a fool,
as not to offer
sacrifice to Odin?"

Odd: Ingjald, what of it? I was totally ungrateful and rude to him, too.**
Priestess: WOE! my husband is dead!
Odd: And I killed him! HA!
Priestess: Who helped you, you monster?!
Odd: Just my wicked sweet magic arrows from this random mysterious guy I was drawn to sup with, AND, I never worshipped YOUR worthless gods! because they're worthless!

"These gutless gods
ran like scared goats
before a wolf
wherever I worried them.
Odin's bad
as a bosom friend:
so we'll do away
with devil-worship."

Priestess: WOE! *flees to hide in a temple*
Odd: Ha HA!

Odd then proceeds to be nervous about entering said temple, and ends up killing the priestess by throwing a giant boulder through the skylight, so he doesn't have to go in after her, in spite of the fact that he just proclaimed her gods totally made of lame.

But earlier in this story, a number of things take place which kind of makes all this anti-Odin stuff a little, well, odd.

1) Odd says he doesn't really believe in or worship ANY gods, though admittedly he states explicitly that he does not worship Odin.
2) Odd confesses that among the Christians, after his baptism (which he only agreed to upon the condition that he could keep on killing all the peoples in this matter-of-fact, I-guess-I-will-get-baptized-since-you-people-will-not-leave-me-alone moment that inspires no one), that he's "never been so bored in my life." And he SNEAKS AWAY to go back to his raiding, murdering, ungrateful ways.
3) One of his blood-brothers, "Red-Beard" is theorized in the story to be Odin, Himself, who gives Odd all kinds of help and good advice, and is repeatedly praised for giving good advice.
4) SO MUCH UNCHRISTIAN MAGIC.
5) After his baptism, Odd proceeds to go on for 40 pages without the slightest reference to Christianity or his supposed faith and trust in God.
6) This Norse-God loving priestess appears to have lived in Antioch, and Odd? he was fighting for Greece.

On this basis, I am going to call shenanigans on this insertion of religion into the story, and the whole "devil-worship" bit. Odd is easily the LEAST Christian person in the history of men baptized for convenience. Now, Odd's story does get recorded late -- the end of the 13th century or so. But reading this, I have a really hard time believing Odd's story didn't originate much earlier, with the Christian bits as an overlay, added at the time it was written down. Why else is Odd hanging around with Odin and going to Giantland where he's making babies with Giant-Ladies, even though he only comes up to their hip in height?

That said, I don't know what the scholarly consensus is, regarding these stories, so, maybe I'm way off base with my thoughts. Maybe Odd really is just a really bad Christian in a time of really bad Christians.

But I still say he is REALLY weird.

*forgive my paraphrasing
**this second part is my own addition

Seven Viking Romances: Arrow-Odd

I'm reading Seven Viking Romances (Penguin Classics, edited by Hermann Pálsson) right now -- a fantastic Christmas Gift from my brother, who has read more of this stuff than I am likely to ever manage -- but I'll be honest with you, the first "romance" ARROW-ODD is kind of, well... Odd.

Odd himself is kind of a jerk, and not the least sympathetic. I'm not really surprised by this, because it was a different culture and a different time, and when you read the stories of Theseus and Pirithous and Heracles from the modern perspective, they're kind of jerky too. But Odd isn't just a jerk, he's pretty ungrateful and demanding, from the start. As a young man, he's gifted arrows by people (I don't know why, I wouldn't give him anything) and leaves them lying around for people to sit on and hurt themselves, and then when his foster-father takes him to task for it, he demands the man slaughter one of his goats to make him a premium-grade quiver to keep them, because, he says "I'd have thought you could only blame me if you'd given me something to keep them in," (p. 27).

Then, when that's settled (what a little punk kid!) his father invites a prophetess to give them their fortunes and tell them their fates -- but for some completely unexplained reason, Odd thinks this is a terrible idea and is furious with his foster father for doing it, even more so when the woman gives him his fortune, that he'll live 300 years before he's killed by the skull of his horse. He's so mad, in fact, that he ATTACKS HER with a stick, and bloodies her nose. (what!?)

And this is all before he ditches his foster parents (good-riddance) and starts going out and killing people, completely unprovoked, just to prove that he's "the better man." Oh. Okay, then. On one of these quests, for example, this exchange takes place (p. 59):

'[...] Shall we carry on fighting or part now, because I can tell you how our battle is bound to end. Your sworn-brothers Hjalmar and Thord will both fall here, and so will every one of your followers. All my warriors will be killed, too, only the two of us will be left standing, and then, if we fight it out, you will be the death of me.'

'On with the game then, till all our men and yours are dead,' said Odd.

In  contrast, his "sworn-brother," Hjalmar comes off as downright AWESOME when he proposes these rules for Viking-ing to Odd (p. 49):

1) His people don't and won't eat raw meat. (I'm not sure what the cultural significance is to this but I kind of want to find out.)
2) Never rob merchants or peasants beyond what is needed to cover IMMEDIATE needs.
3) Never rob women. No matter how alone or how rich or how easy a target.
4) No woman is to be taken against her will, upon penalty of death.

Odd agrees, sure, because he perceives Hjalmar as his equal, but the first time things don't go his way, he's ready to throw number 4 out the window for revenge, and is only stopped by the bribe of a magic shirt. I'm still kind of hoping that it will poison him before the end of the story -- but alas, we already know Odd's fate: He gets to live 4 times longer than he has any right to, to continue being a jerk to people in four countries.

I'm hoping the story of King Gautrek in the next romance will offer me some kind of hero I can root for.