Gautreks saga

[1] The shorter version begins by relating how Gautrekr's father-to-be, King Gauti of West Götaland, becomes lost while hunting, and spends the night in an isolated homestead of strange, arguably insane, backwoods bumpkins: a stingy farmer named Skafnörtungr ('Skinflint'), his equally stingy wife Tötra ('Tatters'), and their three sons and three daughters.

The account bristles with grisly humor as it relates how one by one the members of the family go on to kill themselves over the most trivial losses, believing that they will go to Óðinn in Valhöll, until at last only Snotra and her child Gautrekr remain.

But he takes the ox and gives Ref a whetstone in return, telling him how to employ it as a gift to King Gautrekr to get greater wealth.

The shorter version of the saga ends with an account of King Gautrekr's remarriage to the fair Ingibjörg, daughter of a powerful hersir in the Sogn region of Norway.

Gautrekr fights off an attack by the rejected and disappointed Óláfr, marries Ingibjörg, and fathers two sons named Keti'l and Hrólfr with her.

The younger and much better known version of the saga includes these two lighthearted tales, but inserts between them an account of the ancestry, birth, and earliest exploits of Starkaðr, who is perhaps the grimmest and strangest of Scandinavian legendary heroes.

Starkaðr persuades Víkar to put his neck in a noose of stretchy calf intestines and be stabbed with a fragile reed, thus undergoing a mock sacrifice.

The entire saga seems to be a meditation on generosity: sacrifice to the gods is useless, and stinginess is not admirable—but giving and receiving gifts, participating in networks of reciprocal exchange, is the way to good fortune.

[2] The longer version does not include the story of Gautrekr's remarriage, but essentially the same account appears at the beginning of Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar.