Is Grettir the Strong an anti-hero?

Preston Spivey

09/22/18

Blog Post #1

Is Grettir the Strong an anti-hero?

In The Saga of Grettir the Strong the story of a troubled boy is told, a boy who turns into a man’s man and a legend in Viking Culture yet in modern times his situation can be looked at very differently. Grettir is born strong both physically and mentally, this combination aids him in his natural calling: killing. Grettir finds great respect and recognition early in his life through his aptitude in killing yet his fame is short-lived in this story. His life is doomed to misfortune by a curse and just as his life is plagued by this curse he plagues the lives of all he interacts with.

Can Grettir in The Saga of Grettir the Strong be considered an anti hero?

Grettir’s early life is troubled just as his adult is, filled with cruelty that eventually escalates. In the beginning of The Saga of Grettir the Strong young Grettir is characterized as lazy and unhelpful, always getting into trouble and showing signs of being a sadist. When Grettir flays the skin off of the back of his father’s horse and leaves it for weeks for his father to find it is clear that he has no conscience and follows his own rules. Grettir hardly shows any heroic attributes besides strength in the early parts of his life, and the killing of Skeggi was in no way heroic. He shines brightest later on when he saves Thorfinn’s estate cleverly from the clutches of a band of infamous outlaws. At this point in the story Grettir seems to be on his way to climbing the hill on the road to being a hero maybe develop some noble values and fight for the greater

good. This is not the case.  

Grettir’s life starts to take a different turn for the worse when he is cursed by Glam. Glam dooms Grettir and his misfortune becomes a key part of his identity as a character.

After Grettir is cursed the first event that marks his misfortune is the fire in Norway, this event represents a turning point in his attitude and life. When Grettir ventures to Norway his crew finds a way to shore in a blizzard and Grettir being “The most accomplished man in Iceland” decides to take on the task of finding fire for them in the nearby village so that they may survive. Grettir’s luck takes a turn for the worst because when he reaches the village he finds an inn that seems to be glowing from fire light and when he barges in they believe he is an ice troll. I found this very ironic because the very creature that he was cursed by (Glam) was actually an ice troll. Grettir’s appearance spurs a fight which he ends up escaping with fire for his crew, yet the reader later finds out that during the fight the inn had been set on fire killing all of the people inside. This event ends up getting especially sticky because several of the men killed were a part of a well renowned family. Grettir saves his crew but the people in the inn are sacrificed. I believe that at his point in the story it can be seen that Grettir turns into an anti-hero through the readers eyes because even when doing something simply good it seems to have negative side effects.

After Grettir is outlawed in Norway for burning down the inn everything in his life spirals out of control in the Homefront of Iceland as well. It seems as though Grettir can do no good he collects food for survival and becomes a hermit living in caves and bouncing from place to place killing bounty hunters and those who get in the way of his survival. This is the lowest point in his story and he lives like this until he reaches an unnatural demise at the hands of sorcery. The reader can derive from Grettir’s actions and characteristics that he is not ordinary hero and can be characterized as an anti-hero.