According to the Icelandic Book of Settlements (Landnámabók), a man named Grim Hroaldsson
sailed to Iceland sometime during the so-called Age of Settlement
(approximately c. 860-930). Likely before his journey, but possibly after, Grim
married a woman named Bergdis and they had a son named Thorir (or Þorir).
Grim
and his family settled in the Steingrimsfjord region of northern Iceland, and
their land became known as Grims Isle.
Before
long, Grim had his farm up and running, and hired farmhands to help on his
land. When Grim and his farmhands were not busy tending their flocks, they all often
went fishing out at sea. Grim’s son, Thorir, was brought along on these fishing
trips, but he must have still been a child (or was uninterested in fishing),
for he was always swaddled in seal skins and stowed securely at the prow of the
ship while the others fished. If weather was particularly harsh, Thorir was
apparently stuffed into a sealskin bag. The boy’s later nickname, Sel-Thorir,
is often attributed to those sealskins in which he was wrapped (or bagged) during
his childhood.
At this point of the tale,
the wholesome story of Grim’s charming life as a farmer, fisherman and family
man took a sudden turn out of the mundane and straight into folklore and myth. According
to the Book of Settlements, Grim made
an amazing catch during an autumn fishing trip. The creature put up a fight,
but the farmer eventually pulled his prey up to the surface of the water. Grim,
according to the tale, had caught a merman, and, as it was a sentient being,
the fishman and the fisherman naturally began to talk. After they had exchanged
pleasantries, Grim asked the merman to predict the future. The merman agreed
and indeed gave a prophecy, which was apparently modeled on a Greek myth of
Cadmus—the one in which he was instructed by the Delphic Pythia to follow a cow
to the location where the city of Thebes would be built. According to the Book of Settlements the conversation
between Grim and the merman was as follows: “’There’s no point in my making
prophecies about you,’ said the merman, ‘but that boy in the sealskin bag,
he’ll settle and claim land where your mare Skalm lies down under her load’” (Landnámabók, Sturlubók manuscript, chapter 68).
After the merman encounter,
life on Grim’s farm apparently returned to normal. For the rest of the autumn,
work on the farm held priority. Yet, when winter arrived, Grim and his
farmhands once more sailed out to sea on a fishing trip. This time, young
Thorir decided to stay behind in the comfort of home instead of being stuffed
inside another sealskin bag. It was a good choice, for Grim and his farmhands
all tragically drowned at sea that winter.
After the fishing accident,
the widow Bergdis was left alone to care for young Thorir and she found the
farm on Grims Isle untenable now that all the farmhands were dead. Instead of
hiring new workers, she decided to fulfill the merman’s prophecy. After gathering
her son, Thorir, and Skalm (the mare), Bergdis set off on a journey inland into
Iceland. According to the story, mother and son followed behind their trusty
horse, Skalm, as she meandered through the Breidafjord and Borgarfjord regions.
The Book of Settlements described the
final leg of the peculiar journey:
“Skalm was still in the lead,
and coming down from the moor into Borgarfjord District, just as they reached
two red-coloured sand dunes, Skalm lay down under her load beside the westernmost
dune. So Thorir took possession of the land south of Gnup River to Kald River
below Knappadale, from the mountains and down to the sea” (Landnámabók, Sturlubók manuscript, chapter 68).
As the merman allegedly
foretold, the land where the mare lay down was claimed in the name of Thorir.
When the boy grew up, he reportedly became a powerful chieftain. Although he
faced some misfortune (one of his farms was allegedly wiped out by a lava
flow), Thorir lived to a great old age and was laid to rest somewhere on a
local cliff.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
Picture Attribution: (merman
painted by Arthur Rackham (1867–1939), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).
Sources:
- The Book of Settlements (Sturlubók version) translated by Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1972, 2006.
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