02 | Saga Land | The story of Gudrun

Richard Fidler and Kari Gislason continue their travels across Iceland to tell the ancient Viking sagas; tales of love, war and humanity. This episode tells the story of Gudrun, the most beautiful woman in Iceland and the two men who loved her. Kari and Richard also continue to try and piece together the mysterious and tantalising threads of Kari’s Icelandic family history. Credits: Writers - Richard Fidler and Kari Gislason Producer - Richard Fidler Sound Engineer - Steve Fieldhouse Music composition - Richard Fidler Saga Land https://harpercollins.com.au/products/9780733339707 is written by Richard Fidler and Kari Gislason, published by Harper Collins/ABC Books, 2018

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  How much would you give up for love? Your home, your best friend, your life? Hello, Hilary Harper with you in Rewind, with another episode in the series Sagaland, where ABC Conversations host and author Richard Fidler, along with his dear friend, the writer Kari Gislason, take us to Iceland to explore the ancient Icelandic Viking sagas, tales of love, war and humanity. Today, it's the story of Gudrun, the most beautiful woman in Iceland, and the two men who loved her. Kari and Richard also continue to try and piece together the mysterious and tantalising threads of Kari's family history. Here's Richard and the story of Gudrun.

• 1:33Speaker 04

  My friend Kari is a Viking. Last year, he said he was going to Iceland. I said, I was going with him. Kari Gislason is a writer and an academic. He was born here in Iceland and he's still crazy about the place.

• 1:47Speaker 05

  There's a sort of a tragedy to it, or a sadness to the Icelandic love of home. And I have that.

• 1:56Speaker 05

  I'll borrow a line from W.H. Auden, "I'm never not thinking of Iceland."

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Iceland was uninhabited for countless centuries, until it was settled by the Vikings in the Middle Ages. We know so much about the lives of those people because their stories were recorded in the sagas of Iceland. Kari loves the sagas. He feels a real connection through them to his ancient Viking ancestors, people whose lives are at once so familiar to us and yet so strange. But we're also here because of another possible connection to the sagas, through Kari's bloodline. Kari only ever met his Icelandic father four times in his life, but at their last meeting, he told Kari something that just floored him.

• 2:45Speaker 05

  He said to me, "Kari, what are you doing with your life?" I said, "Well, I'd like to be a writer." He said, "Ah, that makes sense. You know you're related to Snorri Sturluson, don't you?"

• 2:58Speaker 04

  If that's true, then Kari's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather is the greatest of the saga authors. And that's an idea that's very alluring to Kari, and a little terrifying too, for reasons that'll become clear later on.

• 3:23Speaker 04

  Kari and I are on our way to a farm called Logar, which is north of Reykjavik. It's the site of one of the most famous of the saga tales, the story of Gudrun. We've come into the west coast of Iceland, which I expect to be kind of hard and brutal and frosty. But in fact, it's actually kind of pleasant, Kari. Really beautiful green, rolling hills, rolling down into the water.

• 3:49Speaker 05

  And when the sun comes out like this, there's a line, you know, "Sólun var hjómið" in Sókranvaksinnkona og Gudrunskom. It means, "The sun was beside me, like a thin girl in yellow shoes."

• 4:08Speaker 04

  It's close to midnight and we've just come out here to the edge of a small, dark forest. It's very still tonight, and there are a few stars, and the forest smells of wet earth.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  We're here to tell the story of a Viking woman called Gudrun, who lived in this area. What do we need to know about Gudrun before we start, Kari?

• 4:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, this is a woman's story, and a story about a woman who loses really everything, and that her answer to that loss is to bring the whole show down. There was a man called Ósvifur. He was the son of Helki, the son of Ósvifur, the son of Bjarnir, the son of Kehtir, the son of Bjarnir. Ósvifur's mother was called Nýðbyrkv. Her mother, Káthlin, the daughter of Gungur, the son of Æksnáthur. His wife was called Thordis, the daughter of Thjótholvir. Their daughter was called Gudrun.

• 5:11Speaker 05

  I want to tell you the story of Gudrun, and I want you to love Gudrun, despite everything she did wrong.

• 5:20Speaker 05

  She was a pretty girl, we know that. She had beautiful manners and she cared about them, but she started to have these dreams.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  In one, she was wearing a lovely bonnet, but it didn't suit her. She didn't like it, and she tossed it off and threw it in the water.

• 5:38Speaker 05

  In the next one, she was wearing a silver ring that she liked very much, but it slipped off and fell into a lake.

• 5:48Speaker 05

  In the next one, she was wearing a gold ring, which she thought must be even more valuable than the silver, but turned out not to be so. And she hit it against a stone, and it split open and spilled blood.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  And in the last dream, she was wearing a very heavy helmet, covered in jewels, and it was too heavy for her and toppled off into the sea.

• 6:16Speaker 05

  And these dreams troubled her.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  A friend of her father's was visiting the farm. His name was Guest, and he was known for being able to read such dreams.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  He said, "Gudrun, your first dream about the bonnet was about your first husband, who you won't like and who you'll divorce. Your second dream is about your second husband, a silver ring, who you'll love but who you'll lose to drowning. Your third dream, the gold ring, is about your third husband, who won't seem as fine as the metal is precious. And when it's split open and spilled blood, that was a sign that he'll be murdered. And your last dream was about a man, a great chieftain, the heavy helmet, who you will love but who you will also lose when he drowns in the sea."

• 7:10Speaker 05

  "Gudrun, those are your four marriages."

• 7:17Speaker 05

  She flushed red, but thanked him for the interpretation.

• 7:24Speaker 05

  As he said, her first husband was a man she didn't love and divorced. Her second husband was a man she did adore, but lost in a drowning. And so time passed on, and Gudrun had no choice but to wait for the arrival of the third husband.

• 8:01Speaker 05

  Not far from where we're sitting here at Logar is a river called Laxau. Just near that river, there was a farm, and two handsome, promising young men lived on that farm, and their names were Kartan and his foster brother, Botli. They loved swimming in the river. And one day, Guest, the man who'd interpreted Gudrun's dreams, actually, was riding past that farm, and he saw the boys coming out of the water. They were still wet and they were getting changed.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  Guest was travelling with his son, and when his son looked at his father, he noticed that he was crying. There were tears streaming down his face.

• 8:43Speaker 05

  And of course, he asked his father, "What's wrong? Why are you crying?" And he said, "Oh, I shouldn't say anything about this. But it pains me to see such fine young men and to know that one day, one of them will kill the other, and in so doing, will bring about his own death."

• 9:06Speaker 05

  The foster brothers loved coming here to Logar. Gudrun lived here, after all, and it was probably worth the trip up the coastline to see Gudrun swimming in the hot streams at Logar.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  Kartan and Gudrun spent more and more time together.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  And Botli was always there as well, actually.

• 9:30Speaker 05

  And eventually, Gudrun and Kartan fell completely in love, and it was obvious to everyone around here that they were perfectly suited, both beautiful young people and also so refined in their manners.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  But Kartan wanted to travel first. He wasn't ready to marry, and he told Gudrun that he wanted to go abroad to Norway with his foster brother, Botli.

• 9:58Speaker 05

  And Gudrun said, "Well, can't I come?"

• 10:04Speaker 05

  Kartan said, "No, but please wait for me. I'll be back in three years. I just need you to wait three years."

• 10:13Speaker 05

  And she said, "You can't ask me to wait."

• 10:17Speaker 05

  And they left things at that.

• 10:30Speaker 05

  He went to Norway and he was successful there. And he even attracted the attention of a princess, the king's sister no less. But still, he was intending to come back in three years.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  But could he keep his promise?

• 10:49Speaker 05

  No, he couldn't in the end. He was held back in Norway.

• 10:56Speaker 05

  His foster brother Botli got away on time. And he got back to Iceland in three years. And he rode straight to Loigur, here, to visit Gudrun. He said that Karstan was doing really well at court and was enjoying incredible success. And Gudrun replied, "Well, that's to be expected."

• 11:22Speaker 05

  Then he said he didn't think it very likely that he was going to ever come back to Iceland.

• 11:28Speaker 05

  But then he also added that Karstan had fallen in love with the king's sister.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  Huh. So Botli lies to Gudrun. What does Gudrun say when she hears that?

• 11:40Speaker 05

  She pretends to be pleased for him. Botli then offers his hand in marriage to Gudrun. And she says, "I'll never marry another man as long as Karstan's alive."

• 11:57Speaker 05

  But Botli keeps pressing, keeps telling her that Karstan's not coming back. And eventually, she gives in and she marries Botli.

• 12:08Speaker 05

  And they say there wasn't that much love on Gudrun's side of that marriage.

• 12:14Speaker 05

  The gold ring wasn't as precious as she thought it might be.

• 12:22Speaker 05

  Karstan, of course, didn't know any of this. He was still in Norway. But he still meant to come back, and eventually he was able to get away.

• 12:32Speaker 05

  The king's sister walked with him to the ship. And then she took out something to give to him, a present, but it was for Gudrun.

• 12:43Speaker 05

  It was a beautiful headdress. She said, "Give this to the woman who's waiting for you in Iceland."

• 12:57Speaker 05

  And so Karstan left Norway and sailed to the west coast of Iceland to here, where the ship was moored and where everybody came down to greet him.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  And he asks one of his visitors, "What's the news?" And it's not good news. He's told that his best friend Botli has married Gudrun. He's too late.

• 13:20Speaker 05

  One of the people visiting this ship is a young woman. Her name is Repna. And she's looking through Karstan's things that he's brought back.

• 13:33Speaker 05

  And Karstan is watching her. She doesn't know this, but he's watching her try things on.

• 13:40Speaker 05

  And then he sees her put on the headdress that was given to him for Gudrun. He walks in and says to Repna, "The headdress suits you.

• 13:52Speaker 05

  I think I would like it and the girl who's wearing it."

• 13:59Speaker 05

  And he marries another woman.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  Karstan is able to fall in love eventually with the girl who tried on the headdress. But of course, there's still something between he and Gudrun.

• 14:21Speaker 05

  Botli and Gudrun visit Karstan. And Gudrun asks Repna, his wife, if she can look at the headdress, which she calls the most valuable treasure ever to come to Iceland.

• 14:35Speaker 05

  And Repna shows it to her. And then later, she's walking past Karstan's room, actually, and Gudrun stops and watches him dress and overhears a conversation. Someone yells to Karstan, asking for instructions about the seating arrangements. And he asks, "Would you like Gudrun to have the high seat as normal?" And Karstan yells back, "No. From now on, Repna, my wife is to always have the high seat in this house."

• 15:07Speaker 05

  Poor Gudrun, she hears this. And so when it's time for Karstan and his wife to visit Gudrun's farm here at Loigur, she asks again to see the headdress, you know. And they put it away in a storeroom with all the women's things are kept. And the next day, Repna goes to get the headdress and it's gone. It's disappeared. It's been stolen.

• 15:38Speaker 05

  Karstan is furious and he demands to know who the thief is.

• 15:45Speaker 05

  Gudrun gives her answer to that.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  She says, "Whoever stole that headdress deserved to have it."

• 16:00Speaker 05

  And this is where it gets nasty, because Karstan comes back here with a bunch of men. And they lock the doors of Gudrun's farm and locked Gudrun and her brothers and her family and the servants, all of them, inside the farm for three days.

• 16:23Speaker 05

  He humiliated Gudrun and made them stew in their own filth for three days. When he went back to the farm, there was a conversation between him and his wife. She said, "I hear you had a long conversation with Gudrun. Did you get a chance to see her wearing the headdress?"

• 16:46Speaker 05

  Karstan said, "No."

• 16:49Speaker 05

  "But you can be sure that if I had seen her wear that headdress, there would be no more beautiful woman in Iceland than her."

• 17:13Speaker 05

  The Gudrun demands action. She wants Botli to kill Karstan.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  One day, they hear that Karstan is riding by. And she says to Botli, "Seems that Karstan can ride wherever he wants because nobody here dares to stand up to him, no matter how much he insults us." And that's it. Botli and Gudrun's kinsmen set off to ambush Karstan. It's not far from here, Svina dalir, Pig Valley.

• 17:51Speaker 05

  Botli came riding over this ridge here from the north and met Karstan riding up from the south. Botli's companions began their attack and Karstan defended himself well with a spear. And then he took out a sword. It wasn't a good one and it kept bending while he was defending himself and he had to keep stopping to straighten it with his foot. But all the same, he kept them back.

• 18:16Speaker 05

  He could see Botli standing there watching. And eventually, he said to him, "What's wrong, Botli? Why won't you attack?" And his foster brother ignored him.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  Botli's companions said, "How can you stand there and watch us getting beaten by Karstan? Why did you come out if you weren't going to attack him?" And so Botli drew his sword.

• 18:45Speaker 05

  It was called Leg Biter. And he stepped up to Karstan.

• 18:52Speaker 05

  As soon as Karstan saw the sword in his foster brother's hand, he dropped to his knees and said, "What you're about to do is a terrible thing.

• 19:07Speaker 05

  But I would rather you killed me than put up a defense against you."

• 19:14Speaker 05

  And Botli stabbed him. Karstan fell and Botli caught him.

• 19:24Speaker 05

  And Karstan died in Botli's arms.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  Botli went back to the farm and told Gudrun what he'd done. And she said she was pleased with the news.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  But Botli had signed his own death warrant. And not long afterwards, Karstan's kinsman came after him.

• 20:01Speaker 05

  The attackers killed Botli. And then they walked down to the stream to find Gudrun. One of them, Helgi, stepped up to Gudrun. And told her what they'd done.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  Gudrun was pregnant by now with Botli's child. And she was wearing a blue and white sash over her tummy. Helgi walked up to it and took out his sword, still covered in Botli's blood, and smeared it across the sash.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  Helgi's companion said, "That's an awful, disgusting thing to do." But Helgi said, "Don't worry.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  One day, that boy inside Gudrun's belly will be my killer."

• 20:51Speaker 05

  And she did give birth to a boy. And she named him Botli, after his father. And that boy grew up to be a man who one day killed Helgi.

• 21:05Speaker 05

  Gudrun did marry a fourth time to a man she cared about, a chieftain. But as predicted, he too died, drowned in the sea just near us. That was the heavy helmet she'd seen in that fourth dream that fell off her and toppled into the sea.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  So that was her four husbands?

• 21:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, and she ended up living on her own after that, in some sorrow and in grief. She became Iceland's first nun.

• 21:40Speaker 05

  Her son Botli visited her often, of course. And one day, he asked her a question. He said, "Mother, which of your four husbands did you love the most?"

• 21:57Speaker 05

  And she said, "Thym varje vest, erje unni mest."

• 22:05Speaker 05

  "I was worst to the one I loved the most."

• 22:20Speaker 04

  "I was worst to the one I loved the most." She's talking about Karstan, isn't she?

• 22:26Speaker 05

  Or Botli.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  How could that be Botli?

• 22:29Speaker 05

  You know, I think it's Karstan. She loved him the most. But was she the worst to him? It's a two-sided equation.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  It seems to me, Kari, when we talk about the saga stories, after you've told them, we're always talking about the women. We're always talking about what they do and what they think and why they do what they do.

• 22:48Speaker 05

  They have to come at things without swords. Words are their weapons. And if you rely on words to make things change, there's a chance you'll say something more interesting.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  "I was worst to the one I loved the most." What a terrible thing to have to admit at the end of your life.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's heartbreaking. And, you know, you ask me, "Why do I love Gudrun?"

• 23:20Speaker 05

  Maybe it is for that tender moment when we see the crack in all that anger. And really, just the wound of love.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  One of the reasons why the saga characters are very real to modern-day Icelanders is because most people here can trace their roots all the way back to the Viking Age. People here can literally go to a database and look up their Viking ancestors.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  But Kari has never been able to do that. And this is where we get to his complicated family story. Kari was born here in Iceland, but his mother didn't put down his father's name on the birth certificate because his father already had a wife and five kids. But when Kari was 27, he thought it was time to live in truth about all this. So he wrote a letter to his siblings.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  And they responded beautifully, and they welcomed me into the family. My sisters, bless them, organised for he and I to sit down and have a chat. And he said to me, "You know you're related to Snorri Sturlsson, don't you?"

• 24:40Speaker 04

  Snorri's like the Shakespeare of Iceland. He's the author of some of the greatest of the sagas. And he died in the year 1241. But Kari's never been able to confirm the truth of what his father told him before he died.

• 24:55Speaker 04

  So when we got back to Reykjavik, we got in touch with Kari's half-sister, Bryndis. And Bryndis had been close to their father. She'd grown up with him. So we invited her over to our apartment. We had a cup of tea, and Kari asked her what she knew about the family connection to Snorri.

• 25:10Speaker 06

  It had to come through in the family tree somewhere. And it came through with you. And that's beautiful. He was proud of having you as a son, but he was never able to show it, you know? It was a difficult situation, you know? In those times, you did not divorce a woman with five children. That was just losing your face in society.

• 25:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:33Speaker 06

  But I think he loved all his children.

• 25:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:36Speaker 06

  And he regretted all his life, I think, having taken that position in his life of refusing you, because that's what he did, you know?

• 25:46Speaker 05

  It's lovely to hear, you know? You talk about this, and I realise, over the years, we haven't really talked that much about it, have we?

• 25:55Speaker 06

  No, we haven't. I think we all grow up, you know? We all grow up and we kind of learn how to look at things differently through different eyes. And I don't want to be angry with anybody anymore, not even my father. I have, I mean, he tried his best.

• 26:11Speaker 05

  That's how I feel as well. When we met that day, I sort of felt that he was giving me something when he said, you know, "You're descended from Snorri."

• 26:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  I felt like it was a gift. "Do you care whether you're descended from Snorri? Have you thought about it that way?"

• 26:29Speaker 06

  I mean, it's good for the ego.

• 26:33Speaker 06

  I mean, he was kind of the biggest man in Iceland.

• 26:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, the way we've been talking about it together, Richard and I, is like, it sort of means nothing.

• 26:42Speaker 06

  No, exactly.

• 26:43Speaker 05

  But it also means everything, you know? It's one of those ones, it's a bit of both, isn't it?

• 26:48Speaker 06

  It is.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  Next time on Saga Land, Kari and I go right out to the remote northwest fjords of Iceland to find the classic saga of Gisli, the Viking fugitive. And we go to the offices of Is Lendiga Book to see if there's some way, anyway, they can help us to find out whether Kari's father had told him the truth. And to see if there is a connection between Kari and the greatest of the saga authors.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  And as Richard said, next time, they'll tell the tale of Gisli in the windswept landscape where the Viking went into exile. It's a story about the complexity of family life and the difficult choices that come with it. Saga Land is produced by Richard Fidler and Kari Gislason with sound engineer Steve Fieldhouse. And Richard also composed the beautiful music that you hear throughout the series. This has been Rewind, a Radio National production. You've been listening to an ABC Podcast. Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.