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00:12Every country has its treasure trove of beloved tales, but one nation has an unrivaled passion for storytelling.
00:23For ten centuries, Icelanders have been enthralled by a series of homespun stories.
00:33They're some of the most wonderful tales ever told. How they came to be written is one of the great
00:40mysteries of the Dark Ages.
00:46A thousand years ago, at the edge of the Arctic Circle, there was an explosion of creativity, which remains pretty
00:53much unparalleled in history.
00:58When the Vikings came here to Iceland, one of the first things they did, strangely, was to settle down and
01:04begin telling each other tales.
01:11These sagas, as they're now known, are some of the greatest stories ever told.
01:16They're haunted by ghosts and plagued by witches. Mighty heroes ride to the rescue, wielding magical swords.
01:24The sagas captivated audiences ten centuries ago, and they're still entertaining millions of people today.
01:36They're about money and sex and, you know, and death. And this is just, you know, the essence of good
01:44story. Sex and death.
01:49This is probably the greatest book ever written. You know, this is make me for the story. Both has everything's
01:55good novels you're supposed to have.
01:57She has love and bottle and great poet and everything. It's everything in there.
02:05The sagas are not only great works of fiction. They're based on the lives of real people, and they challenge
02:13many of the stereotypes of the Viking Age.
02:17They reveal the power Scandinavian women wielded. They were explorers and colonizers. They may even have written some of the
02:26sagas.
02:29Iceland's ancient tales also had a profound effect on us. The sagas influenced many of Britain's greatest writers and inspired
02:39some of our most treasured stories.
02:56Themitry of the British beasts has never happened to us.
03:05The
03:05The
03:05Trees
03:06Trees
03:06The
03:07Trees
03:07Trees
03:07Trees
03:07The
03:09Trees
03:10L
03:10From the
03:13Trees
03:16The
03:17Trees
03:18The
03:18The
03:26Trees
03:44This is how great stories begin.
03:51With a journey, a quest, a search for a promised land.
03:59And so it is with the sagas.
04:05They recount the moment when Norwegian exiles set sail in their longships.
04:15They defied the wild oceans to found a brave new world.
04:25They named it Iceland.
04:35I wonder what the first settlers here in Iceland thought when they arrived.
04:40It's the least likely of promised lands.
04:43Certainly the strangest place I've ever been to.
04:46It feels primeval.
04:48Like a woolly mammoth should come lumbering along the horizon.
04:52There's nothing growing here.
04:54There's no trees or crops.
04:56And under the ground, there's no iron ore or gold.
05:00And yet these hardy pioneers didn't just turn tail and sail off in their longboats.
05:07They stayed and tried to create something out of this extraordinary landscape.
05:11And what they created was truly magical words.
05:16It's the only thing that I've ever been to.
05:50Iceland is where Europe ends and the Arctic begins.
05:58It's more than 700 miles northwest of Scotland, remote, far-flung, isolated.
06:08But when it comes to the world of words, this country has always been one of the centres of literary
06:14activity.
06:16One in ten Icelanders is a published author, and this love of letters began long ago with the writing of
06:23the sagas.
06:24I think all modern Icelandic writers, they have their background in this, one way or the other.
06:32During the centuries, we didn't have any universities, no academies, and we didn't have many types of arts.
06:41No architecture, no theatres, no music, no opera, no sculptures, no ballet, of course.
06:50Maybe, if you look at our history, this is the only thing that we have ever been good at.
06:56It's writing stories and telling stories.
07:00The greatest of these stories are known as the Family Sagas.
07:04They're set in the first 150 years of Iceland's history, from the original settlement in 870 AD.
07:11The sagas were written down in the 13th and 14th centuries.
07:16In just over 100 years, dozens and dozens of stories were composed.
07:21It's a creative outpouring that has few parallels in history.
07:26Well, it was very, very remarkable that such a large volume of literature should come out of this relatively tiny
07:36island,
07:37with a very small population.
07:40But remarkable, too, is the genres, the forms of this literature.
07:45While the rest of medieval Europe was writing courtly romances about knights and princesses,
07:51the Icelanders were creating dramas about real families, in real locations, doing real things.
07:59The thing that they're most like, actually, is much, much later 19th century novels.
08:05They're in prose, they're naturalistic.
08:09They deal with social issues.
08:12So they're big, expansive narratives.
08:18You see something that is so much in common with our time and this time.
08:24So you feel, wow, this is really human.
08:26That's how human being is.
08:28You know, you get something like, ah, we have no chance.
08:32In a way, I know this.
08:34It's like, peep into a hole, into a place and say, they're doing the same thing.
08:40They are, of course, about, in essence, always about a very primitive thing.
08:45They are about the inner circle in human action, about, you know, lust and power and fight.
08:54And they're about, you know, they're about the glue that binds us.
09:00Out of the many sagas that were written, four or five are classics.
09:04But there's one in particular that's always intrigued me.
09:09We all love a good story.
09:11But who'd have thought when you're flicking through a book at bedtime or lying reading on the beach that this
09:17is where it all began, one of the first great works of fiction.
09:21The pages may be blackened by the passage of time.
09:24But despite being over 700 years old, the story still leaps out at you.
09:29It's got everything a good book needs, love and lust, violence, betrayal and revenge.
09:36It's called Laxtella Saga, and in my opinion, it's the greatest of the Icelandic sagas.
09:46Laxtella means Salmon River Valley, and it's in the rich farming and fishing country of northwest Iceland that the story
09:53takes place.
09:57The Laxtella Saga charts the fortunes of the families who settle in the area.
10:04It follows their triumphs and tragedies over several generations.
10:09The love affairs, the blood feuds, the marriages, the murders.
10:19The story is rooted in a timeless landscape.
10:23It's still possible to pinpoint the fells and fjords where key events occurred.
10:29This sense of place underpins the relationship between Icelanders and their ancient stories.
10:38This happens in my area.
10:41These characters are my forefathers, and they are still in my mind.
10:46I know the farmers who live on their farm, and I've found a similarity to them.
11:01I don't think we're having so much change since this time.
11:04We are still the same farmers as we were in these days.
11:07I almost imagined myself when I was, for example, taking sheep down from the mountains.
11:12I was sometimes thinking about these things that they have done.
11:15I'm in the same steps as they were, and they were there, and there, and there.
11:26You start Black Styler Saga with a portrait of the great matriarch Unnur,
11:32and her nickname is The Deep-Minded.
11:35What does The Deep-Minded mean?
11:37Clever, wise, with a huge memory, philosophical.
11:41What a wonderful epithet.
11:42What a surprising, maybe, epithet for a woman in a saga.
11:47The Deep-Minded.
11:54While the Deep-Minded is entirely too stupid.
11:55After all, she threw a new path toward the river, and taught her for a couple of years to sew.
12:27Many of the characters in the sagas are real people.
12:32The moments of high drama can be traced to genuine historical events.
12:37And few moments are more dramatic than the discovery of a new land.
12:44So who are the first settlers in this area then?
12:47That was Öðir, the Deep Minded. Öðir Djúlbúga as we call it on Iceland.
12:52She came sailing up this bay and had settlement over there by the other end of the bay.
12:56She settled there on a farm called Kvamr.
12:59So it was a woman?
13:00It was a woman, yes.
13:01Ah, tell me a bit about her then.
13:02She probably came here in the year of 892.
13:07She came from Scotland.
13:10What happened is that her husband went into battle there and he died.
13:14And she had to go away with her crew and she established a crew on her boat,
13:19made the boat ready so nobody was supposed to know it.
13:23And then she sailed away from Scotland.
13:24She was, what you should say, running away from there.
13:27But that was magnificent that a woman could do that on those days.
13:31So the first settler in this area is a woman.
13:34Yeah.
13:34And she's Scottish.
13:35Yes.
13:36And she's able to control a boatload of men.
13:39Yes.
13:39Command.
13:40And then what happened when she got here then?
13:41She settled down in this farm called Kvamr.
13:43And what she did is that she gave her crew.
13:47All the men got independency.
13:49They lived here in this area, in this Dallas Isla area.
13:53You can imagine that she must have been at least a very big woman.
13:56Very big minded, you know.
13:58Can you imagine that she must have been very clever.
14:00And she must have been very fair.
14:02She was fair to people.
14:03She gave everybody with her.
14:04So she must have been, as you say, a very big woman in mind.
14:08She must have been a great woman.
14:10Wonderful.
14:10Gosh.
14:11And she earns the title, I'm the Deep Minded.
14:14Yes, yes.
14:14It's a good, it's a very apt one, isn't it?
14:16It tells a lot.
14:17Yeah.
14:17About it.
14:28Is it really possible that a thousand years ago,
14:32a British woman colonized part of Iceland?
14:36It sounds like the stuff of adventure fiction, not historical fact.
14:43But recent archaeological evidence actually supports the story told in the Laxdella saga.
14:52This is a skeleton of one of the first settlers in Iceland.
14:56She's a woman, only 25 years old when she died.
15:00She was probably someone's wife, mother, daughter.
15:05She's here in a position of rest, just as she was laid in the ground a thousand years ago.
15:11And it was at precisely this time that the Laxdella saga was being composed.
15:16But is there any truth to these tales that Iceland was settled by foreign women?
15:21Well, DNA studies on bones just like this have shown that while the majority of the male population
15:27were coming over from the Nordic homelands in Scandinavia, over 60% of the women were British.
15:35So this evidence shows us that, right from the word go, Iceland was a multicultural melting pot.
15:58The story of Un the Deep-minded shows us how close the links were between Iceland and the British Isles.
16:08Both countries were staging posts in a maritime empire which stretched from Norway right across the North Atlantic and beyond.
16:22Here we have a collection of silver coins discovered in Iceland and dated to the turn of the first millennium.
16:29But what's really remarkable about this collection is the majority of coins are English.
16:35At this point, around the year 1000, over two-thirds of the British Isles was ruled directly by Vikings.
16:42And here we have a payment known as the Dangeld, which was made by the English kingdoms to the Vikings
16:49in order to keep them off their land.
16:52But we've also got coins here from Germany and Arabia and the Middle East,
16:57which shows that the Vikings were also raiding, trading and settling right across the known world.
17:09The Viking Age began in the 8th century.
17:13Over the next 300 years, they raided, traded and settled, leaving a profound mark on Europe and especially the British
17:21Isles.
17:23Well, I suppose the most obvious effects are on place names.
17:26I mean, so many place names in northern and eastern England.
17:30Just thinking about where I grew up, there were Thornaby, Ormsby, Normanby.
17:35The language, of course, that's even more obvious, if you like.
17:39The Scandinavian loan words are very basic words.
17:42So they're words like husband, window, law, egg.
17:45And even the pronoun system in English is derived from Scandinavian pronouns.
17:51So they, them, they're.
17:53They're derived from the Scandinavian pronouns, not from the corresponding Old English ones.
18:00The Scandinavian settlements resulted in a thorough enrichment of English society.
18:18The Vikings, who settled Britain, had to fit in alongside other people.
18:23But the Scandinavians, who sailed to Iceland, found an uninhabited land.
18:29Here, the Vikings had to build a new nation from scratch.
18:33And what they created was unique for the Dark Ages.
18:55We're in this very significant place, aren't we?
18:58It's got geographical and political and spiritual significance.
19:03Can you tell me a little bit more about it?
19:05This is the site of the Althingi, the early meeting place of the Icelandic Commonwealth,
19:11where people came from all over the country to discuss legal matters, formulate a new law,
19:17and the settled disputes.
19:19So history more or less happened in this location.
19:27This is a parliament that the settlers come up with here after a few decades of living in the country
19:33as a free man.
19:34And they sit here in a very structured assembly that has a democratic function,
19:43in a way, for free farmers and males, and decide by voting.
19:54Is it unusual in terms of what's going on elsewhere in Europe at this time?
20:00In terms of European history, this is quite unique because they don't have a king.
20:04They don't have a centralised power, and that is the beauty of the system.
20:09You have independent chieftains coming together and they decide on something and execute whatever is decided.
20:23Iceland has set up a nation from about, from 870 onwards, and they set up a parliament,
20:29and they set up a legal system.
20:31In a way, I think perhaps that the outpouring of literature that you get in Iceland,
20:39this huge flowering of not just sagas, but also unique kinds of poetry,
20:45I think maybe that was part of being a new nation, that you had a terra nova,
20:50and you didn't only settle that and build it up as a nation socially, you also inscribed a kind of
21:00literary culture.
21:11The first things that were written were family trees,
21:16tracing the Icelanders back to very noble people in Scandinavia, and I think one of the reasons they
21:24did this may have been that there were rumours in our neighbouring countries about the people
21:32that moved to Iceland in the years of around 900 or 1000 were mostly anti-social elements,
21:41thieves, thieves, fugitives, murderers, people that didn't survive around civilised people.
21:48So maybe the first reaction was when they had this alphabet and could write down,
21:53they were building these family trees saying that this was the most noble people,
21:58because all Icelanders, they can trace their roots back to kings and queens and even Odin and Tor and so
22:07on.
22:15For some, storytelling may have served an even more profound function,
22:21reminding them of the homes and loved ones which they would never see again.
22:28While a few British women, like Ann the deep-minded, chose to settle in Iceland, others were brought by force.
22:38One of the next characters we meet in the Laxdella saga is a concubine.
22:46Today, we call her a sex slave.
22:51She's been abducted from Ireland. Her name is Melkorka.
22:59The most of the women, they were brought either in slave markets in Scandinavia or
23:06brought directly from the British Isles, mostly from Ireland.
23:10Of course, when they came here, they became a part of the population
23:15and the male culture, the Scandinavian male culture became dominant, the language and so on.
23:21But they had an experience for generations of telling stories in their own language
23:30and even writing books in their own language, the Celts.
23:34Of course.
23:34The book of Celts and so on.
23:36There's something really interesting taking place in Icelandic literature then.
23:40You've got this male population with the oral tradition of storytelling, combined with this
23:46influx, this exodus of women coming from Britain.
23:49So the Celtic influence could be this idea that you take that literature and then write it down.
23:55Absolutely, absolutely.
24:01Foreign women like Melkorka weren't just characters in the sagas.
24:06These lonely, literate exiles may have helped create the sagas by writing down their stories.
24:16In the Laxdela saga, we find out that Melkorka, the Irish slave girl, is pregnant by her master.
24:23A Viking called Hoskuld.
24:27In the name of Hoskuld.
24:31In the name of Hoskuld.
24:31In the name of Hoskuld.
24:31In the name of Hoskuld.
24:32Hoskuldu var þangað kallaður og honum síndu Sveinninn.
24:36In the name of Hoskuldu var þangað kallaður og honum síndu Sveinninn.
24:36Thótti honum sem fleirum, hann hefði ekki vætnað barð séð ennst mjög stórmanlegra.
24:43Hoskuldur var spurður hvað Sveinninn skildi heita.
24:46Hann bað Sveinninn kallað Ólaf.
24:50Ólafur var afbrað flestra barna.
24:54Hoskuldur lagði mikla ást við Sveinninn.
25:04Olaf is a major character in the early part of the saga.
25:08He's kind and wise.
25:10He marries and raises a family.
25:13Olaf has one child that he dots upon.
25:16A boy called Kjartan.
25:21Hann var allra manna fríðastur þegar þeir þæðst hafa á Íslandi.
25:26Hann var mikill leittur og vel farinn í andliti.
25:29Hann var manna best eigður og ljóst litagur.
25:32Mikið hár hafði hann og fagur tveð silki og lokkar fjallu með.
25:38Mikill maður og sterkur.
25:50Olaf also has another lad.
25:52A foster son by the name of Botli.
25:55Botli is a gifted child but he grows up in Kjartan's long shadow.
26:11Olaf's family and farm are flourishing.
26:14All is going well.
26:15Rather too well of course.
26:17It's at this point that a new and sinister character enters the story.
26:47Sorcery is ever present in the sagas.
26:49Reflecting the Viking belief that magic really could transform the lives of ordinary folk.
27:12Minni bæðu flíðu frá.
27:17Fjandi óttabundin.
27:20Hj Ariði Þкраfgir?
27:28Altiformen, ekki Óðið og hefndi skræð!
27:47Porken Ekinmullân
27:50something by doing some rituals, and with that they could affect the world around them,
27:58both in good and bad ways, of course.
28:03In a way it was very much practical magic to let the cow milk more, magic to let the
28:12grass grow faster.
28:17And therefore people had some kinds of magics that could help them to look more positive
28:27in the coming days and have extra power to survive.
28:41But sorcery could also be used to maim and kill. For Vikings, curses
28:48were weapons of malign magical power.
28:55The word in Iceland has always been the most important thing in the whole culture. People
29:18would have been the most important thing in the right order, then it could give you actually
29:23more power.
29:25...
29:31...
29:33"...
29:33...
29:34I am very proud that this sword will be those men who will be able to make it to the
29:42end of the day,
29:43and most of the damage will come to, and most importantly will come to.
29:53Botley inherits the cursed sword, and with the handing over of the weapon, the story takes a new turn.
30:00The focus shifts to Kjartan and Botley and a beautiful young woman with whom their fate will be intertwined.
30:35Kjartan and Botley
30:51There are many leading ladies, but towering above them all is Gudrun, a complex and tempestuous beauty.
31:04The number of strong women characters is a striking feature of the Laxtella saga.
31:10So too is the delight the writer takes in clothes and jewellery, love and romance.
31:16And this has led some historians to question the authorship of the saga.
31:22So we think that probably the traditional view of the sagas is that they are very heroic tales,
31:28they are written by men, for men and starring men.
31:31Is that the case with Laxtella saga?
31:34No, I think it's the other way around.
31:37I'm Icelandic scholar, Professor Helga Kress has suggested that the writer, the one who wrote down Laxtella saga was a
31:44woman.
31:45There are so many scenes in that book that tell you about women's lives.
31:49It must have been told by women and listened to by women.
31:52And you see, up to the time of television probably, you would have storytelling evenings in Iceland, in the farmhouse.
32:00You have this long winter months, eight or nine months, and you have to pass the time.
32:05There is no telly, so you tell stories.
32:12You would have the people sitting on those benches on both sides of the longhouse.
32:16And you would have one person in the middle reading or telling stories.
32:24Women's domain is within the house and men's domain is without the house.
32:29So storytelling must have been a great part of life of women just as men.
32:33Absolutely. So we have this saga centered on women, possibly told by women about women, women's roles within society.
32:42Definitely, I would say so, yes.
32:51This is the site of one of the greatest romances in all of Icelandic literature.
32:57It's the hot spring at the tiny hamlet of Laugar.
33:02Laugar is Gudrun's home and it's at this spa that Kjartan and Gudrun begin their courtship.
33:10Gudrun falls passionately in love, but Kjartan is a true Viking.
33:14He's consumed not by love, but by lust.
33:19Wanderlust.
33:22With marriage beckoning, he ups sticks and leaves Iceland.
33:39Kjartan and Bodli sail away to Norway.
33:42They arrive in Scandinavia at a pivotal moment in European history.
33:52Take a look at this amazing little object.
33:55This man just oozes character.
33:58He's got a flamboyant moustache, deep penetrating eyes and really strong features.
34:05He's wearing this conical hat and he's sitting on a chair holding a very weird looking object.
34:12But when we take a closer look, you can see that the hat is in fact a crown.
34:17He's seated on a throne and the object could be either an upside down crucifix
34:22or the hammer wielded by the pagan god Thor as he creates thunder.
34:29This wonderful little man encapsulates the moment when the Viking world has one foot in the pagan past
34:37and one in the Christian future.
34:58This is a ceremony to mark the end of summer and the beginning of winter.
35:03It's the last remnant of a once mighty faith.
35:06The religion of Odin and Thor, Norse paganism.
35:20The word paganism comes with many negative connotations.
35:25It might seem odd, peculiar, perhaps even a little sinister.
35:29But that's because for 2,000 years Christians have been writing tracts and treaties that downed these so-called pagans
35:36to hell.
35:37In fact, for thousands of years this Norse paganism was the religion of the Scandinavian people.
35:44It helped them make sense of the universe.
35:46It acted as a comforter to them in times of need.
35:49And it even helped them chart the passage of time.
35:52It's a mark of its influence that it's still doing this today.
36:14A thousand years ago this ancient religion was under attack from a new crusading faith.
36:22Christianity.
36:25The man who was driving the conversion of the Vikings was Olaf, the king of Norway.
36:35Were there reasons then for converting to Christianity? What were the benefits?
36:40It was basically joining the European Union.
36:44It was basically the same thing.
36:45Right, so it was trade?
36:46Yeah, it was trade because the markets were closing down.
36:49We could no longer do trade with England because they would not accept pagans.
36:56And for a period of years people could do what they called prime signing, which was basically crossing yourself before
37:04you did commerce.
37:05But that was no longer accepted.
37:08Denmark was basically very strongly Christian.
37:13Norway had become Christian after one bloody battle.
37:16Sweden was about to become Christian.
37:18So it was basically, everything was closing down.
37:22So it was a very practical business decision.
37:30But many people didn't want to give up the faith of their ancestors.
37:35The Icelanders resisted Christianity.
37:39To make them convert, the Norwegian monarch, King Olaf, decides to keep Kjartan as a sort of VIP hostage.
37:47The king's sister, Ingibjorg, keeps Kjartan entertained.
37:56In medieval courtly romance, the hero would have escaped from Norway and returned to his true love.
38:02But what sets the family sagas apart is their realism.
38:09What's so surprising is that the characters are archetypal kind of.
38:15It's so easy to identify with the characters.
38:18I mean, sometimes deceptively easy.
38:19We forget how very different their circumstances and beliefs and cultural traditions were.
38:24But the characters in family sagas are their feelings and their failings, their hopes and their fears, their passions and
38:33their weaknesses.
38:34They're very easy to identify.
38:41Kjartan is not only beautiful and good.
38:43You know, he's also...
38:44Come on, he's doing the princess in Norway and he's not a holy figure or a holy guy.
38:52All the literature in Europe is very Christian in that sense that there are martyrs.
38:56There are good guys and there are bad guys.
38:58And good things happen to good guys and bad things happen to bad guys.
39:02In the sagas, this is not so.
39:06The sagas can be about a bad guy, an asshole, that does something very bad to everybody and has success
39:13with it.
39:19Kjartan is happy to stay in Norway, but Botli wants to go home.
39:24Before he leaves, he criticizes Kjartan for the way he's treating Gudrun.
39:33Kjartan is happy to see you.
39:36Kjartan is happy to see you.
39:49Kjartan is happy to see you.
39:52Khmm!
39:52Kjartan is happy to stay in Easter Là slots.
39:57Kjartan is happy to see you baby.
40:00When you are walking, if you are welcome to have those who may!!!
40:02If you are merry to arrive in Ireland, you are as a merry way to meet Ingibjörgu'en.
40:08and his sister.
40:16Botli arrives home.
40:19He tells Gudrun about Kjartan's affair with the king's sister.
40:24The reason for his anger with Kjartan now becomes clear.
40:28Botli is in love with Gudrun.
40:31A few months later, he takes a fateful step and proposes.
40:46In the year 1000, Iceland finally converts to Christianity.
40:53Kjartan is free to return home.
40:56He brings with him a wedding gift.
40:59A priceless headdress for his fiancée Gudrun.
41:03Kjartan has the bridal gift, but not the bride.
41:08He marries another woman, but he's consumed by what he sees as a double betrayal.
41:14There were regular feasts in the area, so the two couples, Botli and Gudrun, and Kjartan and his new wife,
41:22couldn't avoid each other.
41:23Whenever they met, Kjartan publicly humiliated Gudrun, and he spurned Botli's attempts at reconciliation.
41:31With each slight, the hatred grew.
41:34The precious headdress that was supposed to have been Gudrun's was now the property of Kjartan's new wife.
41:40And this headdress became the focus of the feud.
41:45One particular feast, the headdress goes missing.
41:49Everyone suspects it's Gudrun's doing.
41:51If she can't have it, then no one can.
41:55With the destruction of the headdress, Kjartan's pent up fury explodes.
42:01He barricades Botli and Gudrun in their home, cutting them off from the toilets which are outside.
42:08He's deliberately inflicting maximum humiliation.
42:17Revenge is the kind of engine of quite a lot of saga narrative, because obviously, if you get a feud,
42:24for instance, that's going to kind of keep on through generations.
42:29For instance, resentments build up.
42:31In a number of family sagas, it's these proud, independent women who are pushing the vengeance.
42:37And it's quite often the men who are trying to kind of damp it down by due legal process and
42:44make settlements.
42:45And the women are inciting the violence.
42:47As in Laxdala saga, Gudrun provoking Botli to kill Kjartan, because she can't bear not to be married to him.
42:58Goaded on by his wife, Botli and his men ride out to confront Kjartan.
43:24So, Siggy, the tension is really mounting in the saga now, isn't it?
43:28Um, Gudrun has goaded her brothers and Botli to ambush Kjartan.
43:34And then, then what happens?
43:35This is the place where everything happened.
43:38Uh-huh.
43:38Kjartan was coming from this direction with his friend.
43:41He was coming from Saurpair.
43:42And, and Botli and the brother of Gudrun, they came from this direction.
43:46And probably they picked up this place because they, the valley is, is slimiest here.
43:52And probably they were staying, or we think that they were staying up there in the hill.
43:55On the reds there, there is a hole down there, very deep hole.
43:59And they could hide themselves with the horses and having looked to both directions easily.
44:05So, when, when Kjartan is in this direction, they saw that he could fight him.
44:10Then they went down here and, and, and, attack him, of course.
44:28They were attacking him, three or four, attacking one person.
44:31So, must have been a lot of noise with weapons.
44:34They were three, four, attacking one person.
44:36Lot of threat.
44:37Probably some plot because Kjartan was punishing them a little bit with his sword.
44:41And it was a bad sword, so you can imagine that he got tired, for example.
44:45You can imagine that it was a lot of, of high breathing and they were, they were tired.
44:54Kjartan fights bravely, but finally he weakens.
44:58With his strength failing, he turns and addresses Botli.
45:28And it was a lot of, of high breathing, but finally it was a lot of things.
45:33And it was a lot of things that he would look for.
45:34And this is what we have done.
45:38And it is what we have done,
45:39And it is what we have done.
45:41God bless you.
46:24God bless you.
46:42God bless you.
46:46God bless you.
46:48God bless you.
47:31God bless you.
47:45God bless you.
48:11God bless you.
48:15God bless you.
48:28God bless you.
48:38God bless you.
48:54God bless you.
49:04God bless you.
49:17God bless you.
49:20God bless you.
49:37God bless you.
49:38God bless you.
49:38God bless you.
49:40God bless you.
49:42God bless you.
49:44God bless you.
49:46after another and leads to more death and in the text you see that Christianity is believed to bring
49:55peace and forgiveness into society finally calming down the feuds family feuds that
50:01have been going on for generations and you can just stop and go to rome and be blessed and live
50:17happily ever after peace came in 1262 but at a heavy price
50:24the icelanders were forced to accept the rule of the norwegian king
50:29it was the prelude to centuries of suffering
50:34things went downhill for the icelanders we were almost extinct because of of diseases starvation
50:47isolation and so on and you at that time maybe one of the reasons that we survived the few who
50:59did
51:00was because they had this mythology based in the literature we were we were taking all our
51:08courage and all our identity from the the sagas this was what we based our hope and and ambitions on
51:21ironically just when iceland's pain was most acute britain was discovering the great stories iceland
51:28had produced in the 18th century the sagas reached our shores they had a profound influence on one of
51:39our greatest poets i think it's a very very big influence actually on blake's work i mean perhaps
51:46the one of the most characteristic things about about blake's poetry and and one of the most notoriously
51:53difficult things really is that he he has um created this huge and hectic mythological world this he's
52:02created a kind of alternative blakeian mythology so many of blake's poems contain elements derived from
52:09old north myth that's very significant i think
52:16the historical book by the 19th century more and more writers were borrowing from norse literature
52:25britain was hooked on the romance and heroism of the viking age
52:31victorian entrepreneurs industrialists and explorers i had a kind of fellow feeling with with what they saw
52:38as the Viking achievement, that is, the exploring,
52:41the white heat of technology, the new ships,
52:45the seafaring, the great ships of the Vikings,
52:48and that sense of independence and taking your fate in your own hands
52:53and getting ahead and so on.
53:01The influence of Icelandic literature reached its high watermark
53:05in the 20th century in the work of one famous Oxford academic.
53:12Tolkien taught Old Norse, Tolkien published on Old Norse,
53:15and Tolkien's imaginative world was surely shaped by his reading of Old Norse.
53:21And the Lord of the Rings, he definitely uses names
53:23that he's called from his Old Norse reading.
53:26Actually, the Silmarillion, which people don't read so much,
53:29echoes more some of the themes of the sagas,
53:33as there's more betrayal and darkness in the Silmarillion.
53:37So I think Tolkien was really steeped in Old Norse literary culture.
53:47Through Tolkien, the world had woken up to the power of the ancient stories.
53:53But in Iceland, the sagas had never gone away.
53:58Generation after generation had fallen in love
54:01with these strange, otherworldly tales.
54:08It's very unusual in Britain for people to read such old literature
54:12and find it exciting still.
54:14Why is it the sagas are so exciting?
54:16Just the drama and the action, you know.
54:19A girl can't choose who he marries.
54:21If she wants someone and the brothers don't like him,
54:24they say no.
54:25And if he doesn't understand, they kill him.
54:29I think it's the revenge and what they believe in.
54:33Because they believe in very strange things.
54:36Very strange things. What sort of things?
54:39Like when someone cheated on their wife,
54:42they have to kill him and burn him, something like that.
54:46So that's enjoyable to read now as well.
54:49Sometimes, yeah.
54:50I think it's just very interesting that we live the way they lived,
54:54around the places that they did.
54:55Yeah, it's like learning about your ancestors
54:57and what they did in the past.
54:59Yeah.
55:01Somebody cheats on your wife.
55:02They kill him.
55:03She's just creepy.
55:06That's mostly fun to read, actually.
55:22The sagas were written to help the Vikings make sense
55:25of a bewildering new world.
55:29A thousand years later, they still serve the same purpose.
55:33As Icelanders come to terms with a country transformed by financial crisis,
55:38they're turning once more to their stories.
55:43Some years ago, we decided that we were the most brilliant international bankers of the world.
55:49It turned out to be not so good.
55:52A myth.
55:53Yeah, it turned out to be a myth.
55:54But we have 800 or 1,000 years of tradition of making literature.
56:03So, and me, like other writers, we go back to the circus to find our ideas for how to tell
56:13stories
56:13and even what to tell stories about.
56:25We are, of course, a small island in the north, and that's what we are famous for,
56:30are the writers and the books, the old books.
56:35I think that's a slice in the heritage of the Icelanders, to read these books.
56:43The language and the words and the poetry, that's what our culture is about,
56:49having control over the word and the language.
56:53So, therefore, the language for Icelanders, for example,
56:57is the most important thing in the whole world.
57:06You feel that you are discovering something.
57:09You are seeing something.
57:10It's like mind-openers.
57:12And you're like, you get a window into another world.
57:14And for me, it's a great thrill because this is a true window.
57:24There's something about the backgrounds of the stories
57:26and just the magic of good story, how good story works.
57:31A good story becomes a classic because it works.
57:40I feel really inspired being here in Iceland.
57:44I've been trying to work out what it is,
57:46and I think the thing is that it's such a sparsely populated country,
57:51just a third of a million people.
57:52And it does feel very distant from the heart of Europe,
57:56up here on the edge of the Arctic.
58:02But despite that, the people haven't developed an island mentality
58:06or turned in on themselves, in fact, they've done the opposite.
58:10They've gone out into the world.
58:11They've embraced the world and they've given something back.
58:15For ten centuries, they've been welcoming us into their homes
58:19and settling us down around their hearts
58:21and entertaining us with their stories.
58:28Tomorrow, we're off walking in Iceland with Julia Bradbury at nine
58:32in Icelandic Walks.
58:33Next tonight, though, stay with us for Icelandic Cinema with Jar City.
58:38Next tonight, though, stay with us for Icelandic Walks.