[1] While visiting Norway, Ǫgmundr dyttr, an Icelander who is a cousin of Víga-Glúmr from Víga-Glúms saga, accidentally sinks the ship of Hallvarðr, a favourite of Jarl Hákon, who punishes him with an insulting injury.
Gunnarr takes refuge in Sweden, where he finds a young woman who is a cult bride of Freyr about to set out on an autumnal progress through the countryside in a cart with a wooden image embodying her husband.
He then puts on its clothing and decorations and takes Freyr's place in the cart, asking the devotees at each stop for valuable gifts instead of sacrifices and participating in their feasts, both of which please them, and impregnates the woman, which is also taken as very propitious.
[1][2][3][4][5] Although disparaging of heathenism and the Swedes, the Gunnarr helmingr story is evidence of seasonal processions of a deity in a cart as a fertility ritual, echoing Tacitus' account in Germania of the cult of Nerthus.
[12] It is often treated as a loose concatenation of two separate stories, but Joseph Harris has argued that it is "an artistically successful, coherent novella" woven together by "an 'author' of skill and discernment".