The chants were sweet to the ear

So I’ve moved from rereading Njál’s Saga to rereading Laxdæla Saga, which concerns some of the same historical figures, except, of course, at the hands of a different writer, they become different characters with different personalities.

It’s also a story that feels more deeply seeped in its sorcery than Njála. I just got to this bit:

Grima and their sons set out at night for Hrut’s farm, where they began to perform strong magic rites. As the magic proceeded, the inhabitants of the farmhouse were puzzled by the sounds. The chants were sweet to the ear.

Only Hrut realized what the sounds meant and told his household that no one was to leave the house to see what was going on, ‘but everyone is to remain awake, if he possibly can, and if we can manage to do so no harm will come to us.’

Eventually, however, they fell asleep. Hrut managed to keep awake the longest, but finally even he fell asleep. Hrut’s son Kari was 12 years old at the time and the most promising of his children. He was a great favorite with his father. Kari slept lightly and uneasily, as the incantations were directed at him. Eventually he sprang to his feet and looked outside. He went outside into the magic and was struck dead immediately. The next morning Hrut awoke, along with the rest of the household, to find his son missing. His dead body was found a short distance from the entrance to the house.

He went outside into the magic and was struck dead immediately.

That made me shiver, even though I don’t even know what it actually means.

Descriptions of saga sorcery seem often to be sketchy about the details, as if the writers themselves didn’t know quite how magic worked, and only knew that it was considered a bad thing. They may well not have known, since the sagas weren’t written down until a couple centuries after the events they talk about occurred.

I find it interesting, too, that sorcery is often performed without any witnesses, so that whether the events blamed on sorcery really were caused by same isn’t at all clear. I mean, Kari could have died of a heart condition, or been struck by lightning; or he could actually have met up with Grima, who could have made him drink poison. All of these things could look the same as a magical attack to Hrut the next morning.

But even so. He went outside into the magic and was struck dead immediately. Even without specifics, there’s power there, and it’s only later that I thought to question whether magic was really what killed him.

The characters, though, never have these doubts at all, not in these centuries-later retellings, anyway. One wonders what the writers thought.

Laxdæla Saga also–as nearly everyone who reads it points out–has no shortage of strong women. But that wants a post of its own, I think.