Résumé
Résumé de Grettir le hors-la-loi
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
Readers who love Viking adventure, ghost stories, feuds and lone heroes, and anyone curious about how Icelanders told tales around the winter fire. It also suits travelers who enjoy a guide pointing out the landscape.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Grettir the Outlaw is a retelling of the Icelandic Saga of Grettir the Strong, made by the English clergyman and traveler S. Baring-Gould. He first read the saga as a young schoolmaster and told it to his pupils on their half-holidays. Thirty years later, one of those pupils asked him to write it down as a story for boys. He visited Iceland in 1861 and rode over most of the ground where the hero lived.
The tale follows Grettir, born around 997 at the lonely farm of Biarg in northern Iceland. He is strong, sullen and quick to anger, and his temper turns one quarrel after another into a killing. Exile, outlawry and fear of the dark follow him across Norway and Iceland. Along the way you meet pirates, a bear, a walking dead man, a mad shepherd and a chain of deadly feuds. Baring-Gould also stops to describe the lava fields, glaciers and farms he saw himself, and to say which parts of the tale he thinks are history and which are embroidery. Let us begin with the farm where it all starts.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A sullen boy at the farm of BiargFree
- 2One killing sends a boy into exile
- 3The Red Rovers and the dead man's sword
- 4A bear, a braggart and a bitter homecoming
- 5The ghost of the Vale of Shadows
- 6A king's judgment and a brother's murder
- 7Hunted across the empty land
- 8A den, a river fight and a clever trick
- 9What the story is really about
- 10How the saga is told and what is true
Point clé 1 sur 10
A sullen boy at the farm of Biarg
The book opens with the author himself arriving at Biarg at midnight in summer, when the sky glows amethyst and swans fly overhead. The farm is now a poor huddle of turf and wood, but the hills and the river are the ones Grettir knew. Baring-Gould uses the scene to explain how Iceland was settled by Norwegian nobles who fled the rule of King Harald Fairhair, and how their families passed down tales of their great men through the dark winters.
Grettir is the son of Asmund the Grey-Head and Asdis. His brother Atli is kind and peaceable, and his little brother Illugi is gentle too. Grettir is different. He has red hair and a freckled face. He is broad and strong, and he sits by the fire brooding and saying little. He does every task badly, and his father regrets asking him to do anything.
The boy loves best the winter tale of his great-grandfather Onund Treefoot. Onund was a Viking who fought King Harald at the sea battle of Hafrsfiord. An axe cut off his leg below the knee, and he stopped the bleeding by plunging the stump into boiling pitch without a cry. He wore a wooden leg ever after and sailed to Iceland to start again.
Grettir's cruel streak shows early. He kills the geese he is set to mind, and he digs a wool comb into his father's aching back. Baring-Gould says plainly that the boy's good qualities stay hidden until suffering brings them out.
At fourteen, Grettir is matched against Audun, a taller boy, in a ball game on the frozen fjord. When Audun's strike makes Grettir run, people laugh. Grettir hurls the ball into Audun's face, and the two wrestle on the ice until Atli drags them apart. Grettir says that slaves take revenge at once and cowards never do. The remark tells you how long he will carry a grudge.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Grettir le hors-la-loi
What is Grettir the Outlaw about?
It follows Grettir the Strong, an Icelander born around 997, from his sullen boyhood through exile, feuds, a haunting and years as a hunted outlaw. It is a retelling by S. Baring-Gould of the Icelandic Saga of Grettir the Strong.
Is Grettir the Outlaw a true story?
The author treats the main facts as history, backed by other Icelandic sagas and the Landnama Book. He marks the fight in the barrow, the troll-wife and the waterfall giant as embroidery added in later storytelling.
Who wrote Grettir the Outlaw and why?
S. Baring-Gould wrote it after telling the saga to schoolboys years earlier. A former pupil asked him to put it into a story for boys. He added what he saw on his trip to Iceland in 1861.
What is the meaning of the verses and riddles in the story?
Norse poets avoided plain names and used roundabout phrases. An axe becomes a battle ogress, and men become trees of wealth. Baring-Gould explains each verse as it appears, so the riddles are easy to follow.
Who is Glam and why does he matter?
Glam is a powerful Swedish shepherd who haunts a farm in the Valley of Shadows. His fight with Grettir leaves a curse that makes Grettir fear the dark for life, and it shapes every choice that follows.