ABSTRACT
Egill Skalla-Grímsson is one of the most memorable and colourful characters in the literature. His saga, which most scholars believe was written in the 1220s to 1230s by Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), begins in Norway where Egill’s grandfather Kveldúlfr ‘evening wolf ’ and father Grímr (later Skalla-Grímr because he becomes ‘bald’) fall out with King Haraldr Finehair (see B&OS). They emigrate to Iceland where SkallaGrímr establishes a prosperous farm at Borg in Borgarfjlrðr. Egill’s birth is reported in chapter 33, and clearly he is a handful from the off. We are told that ‘as he grew up it soon became clear that he would turn out very ugly and resemble his father, with black hair. When he was three he was as big and strong as a boy of six or seven. He became very talkative at an early age and had a gift for words, but tended to be diffi cult to deal with in his games with other children.’ When the family is invited to a feast that year Skalla-Grímr forbids Egill to join them: ‘You’re not coming,’ said Skalla-Grímr, ‘because you don’t know how to behave where adults are drinking heavily. You’re bad enough when you’re sober.’ Throughout his saga Egill is a ruthless warrior, a bit of a berserk, a prodigious drinker, a rune master, a sailor, and a fi rst-rate Skaldic poet. Most of the individual Skaldic verses preserved in this saga are unlikely to be his, but the long poems probably are, as well as the single surviving stanza and refrain from his lost Aðalsteinsdrápa ‘Eulogy on King Æthelstan’ (see Viking Wars), for which, according to the saga, the king gave Egill two golden rings, each priced at half a mark of silver, and a costly cloak which had belonged to himself.
