Medieval Icelandic Literature
The Saga of Arrow-Odd
13th century, Old Norse.
One morning a stone boat approaches the cliff. In it sits a giant.
Arrow-Odd, fated to live for three-hundred years, pursues an adventurous life, pitting his skills in battle against a number of notable Viking warriors and winning ships and wealth and a great deal of notoriety. But one day, whilst crossing a forest, he comes to a ravine that brings his journey to an abrupt halt. Perhaps this is a metaphorical ravine – for his life has been fated to last for three hundred years – a metaphorical barrier punctuating an unusually long life, for it seems to be impossible for him to cross it unscathed and soon a vulture appears from out of nowhere, takes him in its claws and carries him far away to its nest, which lies high on a cliff above a forbidding sea on a desolate and windswept crag.
Living for many days on the food brought by this vulture for its chicks, Arrow-Odd can see no way of getting down.
One morning a stone boat approaches the cliff. In it sits a giant who is rowing towards the vulture’s nest in search of the food that it has stolen from him. Odd kills the chicks, gathers the food the vulture had stolen into a pile and calls out to the giant. The giant climbs into the nest and puts the food into his stone boat. Odd hurriedly hides.
Where’s that little infant I saw here just now?
says the giant.
Story fragment recounted from: Pálsson, Hermann, and Edwards, Paul, 1985, reprinted 2005. Seven Viking Romances. Translated from Medieval Icelandic with an introduction. Penguin Books Limited. Arrow-Odd, 18. In Giantland, pp 74–79.
references
Sagas of Icelanders – Wikipedia
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