Grettis saga
[1] The author is unknown but it is believed that the saga may have been based on a previous account of Grettir's life written by Sturla Þórðarson.
[4] Originally, the ill-tempered Grettir experienced some success, but his life takes a turn for the worse after he encounters the undead shepherd Glámr in chapter 35.
[5] As a result of Glámr's curse, Grettir becomes disastrously unlucky, only grows weaker/never stronger, becomes afraid of the dark, and is doomed to loneliness, becoming an outlaw, and an early death.
Chapters 1–13 take place before Grettir's birth and focus on his father, Ásmundar, his grandfather, Thorgrim Grey-head, and his great-grandfather Önundur.
Ásmundar Grey-hair and his wife Asdis have two boys: (1) the eldest brother, Atli, is quiet and gentle, and (2) Grettir, is rebellious, bad-tempered, and mischievous.
Despite attempts to pay compensation to the family similar to weregild, he is temporarily banished from Iceland and sentenced to lesser-outlawry for three years.
In chapter 18,[6] Grettir fights his first creature, a reanimated undead or draugr of the man named Kárr inn gamli (Kar the Old).
Grettir triumphs using the sword Jökulsnautr (‘Jokul's Gift’, presumably passed down from his maternal great-grandfather Jökull Ingimundarson, son of Ingimundr Þorsteinsson who figure in the Vatnsdæla saga[8]).
As a result of Glámr's curse, Grettir becomes disastrously unlucky, only grows weaker/never stronger, becomes afraid of the dark, and is doomed to loneliness, becoming an outlaw, and an early death.
While in Norway for the second time in chapter 38, Grettir will accidentally kill a hut full of people by unintentionally lighting it on fire.
She sends him off with his 15 year old brother Illugi and they head off to spend the rest of the saga on the island of Drangey off the northern tip of Iceland.
His enemies make one last effort, using sorcery to cause him to wound himself and finally defeat him, atop the cliff-sided, lonely, fortress-like Drangey off the northern tip of Iceland where he was staying with another brother of his named Illugi, and his slave Glaumur.
After Thorsteinn Dromund completes his mission the two of them decide to spend the rest of their lives in monastic cells in Rome.
The late fifteenth-century manuscript Eggertsbók contains the sole surviving text of Grettisfærsla, a poem concerning a character called Grettir which is mentioned in chapter 52 of Grettis saga.
The poem is notable for its thematic focus on sex and the "indiscriminate sexuality" of its protagonist with both men and women, and even animals, expressed in direct, non-euphemistic language.
In it, the ghost of Grettir speaks with two men, Craven and Ryan, who have been 'hounded' from a decadent and war-threatened Europe 'whose voice calls in the sirens of destroyers'.
The Australian composer Percy Grainger described the Grettis Saga as the "strongest single artistic influence" in his life.
[19] "Grettir’s last stand at Drangey" is mentioned in John K. Samson's 2011 song "Letter in Icelandic from the Ninette San".
