SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Germanic and Celtic Heroic Traditions 23
saga moves into the domain of the weird and confronts us
with demons and ghosts, we do not wander in a world of
horror and marvel, but the powers of darkness and
sorcery seem to step forth into the realm of real life.
Take for instance the fight of Grettir and the ghost Glamr.
Surely the narrator has done his best to make the scene as
lurid as possible. The moon shining forth through the
shifting clouds gives the right atmosphere for this demonic
fight; it is just the theatre for such an encounter of man
and ghost. Then that brilliant scene at the end: Glamr
falling backwards on the ground, Grettir jumping upon
him to throttle him and the moon suddenly peeping forth
between the clouds and shining into the mischievous eye
of the monster. We hold our breath and await a sudden
disaster. But in the same instant the sagaman recovers
his serenity of mind and returns to the course of the hero's
life. It is a touch of genius to make this scene the key
to the psychology of Grettir: from this time on these
demonic eyes will pursue him with their lurid glance and
rob him of his self-possession as soon as they appear in
the darkness of lonely nights.
So the Icelandic narrator does not allow us to go astray
in a world of horror and enchantment; on the contrary
this scene of ghostly moonlit fight is a piece of narrative
adroitly put in with the object of giving a psychological
explanation of Grettir's disturbance of mind.
Not so the Irish story-teller. Cuchulainns combat at
the ford, with the long series of single fights, could have
been written in the manner of the Iliad. It is, however,
quite different. Cuchulainri's behaviour is in many
scenes exceptional. At the pitch of a combat he
transforms himself into a demoniac figure by his 'riastrad'
or distortion. One of its elements is the following: the
hero draws one eye so deep into his head that a crane
would not be able to reach it with its bill, while he
protrudes the other one so far out of its orbit that it lies
on his cheek. This is a grotesque exaggeration of