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- [00:00]
Emily Lethbridge
K Pop Demon Hunters, Saja Boy's Breakfast Meal and Hunt Trick's meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
- [00:14]
James Osborne
It is an honor to share.
- [00:16]
Emily Lethbridge
No, it's our honor.
- [00:18]
James Osborne
It is our larger honor.
- [00:20]
Emily Lethbridge
No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side. Ba da ba ba ba.
- [00:28]
James Osborne
And participate in McDonald's while supplies last.
- [00:30]
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- [01:00]
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- [01:27]
Emily Lethbridge
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
- [01:35]
Podcast Narrator
It was the Vikings of Northern Europe who first settled the harsh landscapes of iceland in the 9th century. Most of the figures leading this movement were men, powerful chieftains who claimed vast swathes of land and parceled it out to their followers. But among these pioneers was Ord the Deep Minded, a woman who subverted the expectations of the Viking world. In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Emily Lethbridge speaks to James Osborne about Ord's incredible life and legacy and explains how she went from a vulnerable widower in a hostile land to one of the Vikings most impressive matriarchs.
- [02:17]
James Osborne
Emily, you and I, we're here today to talk about the life of Ord the Deep Minded, who was one of the prominent figures in the early Norse settlement of Iceland. My first question to you, Emily, about her life is. I'm aware that I'm saying her name in a Very anglicised, modernised way. When I'm saying ord, that's not how her name would have been said in her own time, the 9th century. Can you please teach me how it should be pronounced?
- [02:39]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah, absolutely. One of those tricky ones. Icelandic pronunciation is a bit of a nightmare for native English speakers, but her name in Icelandic, we pronounce it oe. So the at the beginning is kind of, I suppose, like the French.
- [02:54]
James Osborne
So it's almost like O T H U R, like Uther, not aud. It's so different, isn't it?
- [03:01]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah, exactly. And I think the English kind of version of the name comes from translations of the sagas. And translators have typically, you know, made choices to try to anglicise strange Icelandic names for their English reading audiences.
- [03:17]
James Osborne
Well, please forgive my pronunciations throughout because my Icelandic is certainly not up to scratch, neither is my old Norse. So please correct me on place names, people's names, because, yeah, I think when we're talking about these people, I certainly feel like it's important to think about what their names would have been in their own time rather than what we're imposing back onto them.
- [03:38]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah, absolutely. But in all the sources, she has the same nickname or the same epithet, this descriptive name, Jup Uddga, the Deep Minded.
- [03:48]
James Osborne
And of course, that's actually a very flattering epithet, isn't it? I'd love to be known among my friends and family as James the Deep Minded. I guess that gives us some sense of the person we're about to talk about. Okay, so I guess to begin with, I know her from. And I first came across her story reading Laxdaler Saga, which is this story of. Initially, it begins with some of these early Norse families who settle Iceland. And then it goes on in the final two thirds to become about this quite famous love triangle. Is this the primary source for her life or are there others?
- [04:22]
Emily Lethbridge
Well, it's the major kind of narrative source for her life, but there are actually two other written sources that we can read in tandem with Laxstyler Saga. And one of them is an amazing work called Landnamabog, which is literally the Book of Land takings. And this is a 12th century piece of writing that covers the whole country, describes kind of lists, each of the settlers, where they arrived, where they came from, what land they claimed. And Eudr is in that source. She's in Inland Nmeborg. Most of the details are the same as what we find in Lacstile Saga, but there are a few differences as well. And then there's a third Source an early 12th century source called Islanding Bog by this guy, Ari Frodi, Thomas the Wise Thorgilsson, and he is thought to have written East Leningeborg around the 1120s. And EUDR is mentioned in that context as one of the. One of, you know, only a handful of major settlers. So her significance in the early history of Iceland is huge. And she's accorded a lot of respect in these written sources.
- [05:29]
James Osborne
And I guess something that that tells us, and this is really echoed across all of the different Norse and Icelandic sagas that I've read, is the importance of genealogy within these stories. It seems like they were really concerned by tracing and being able to trace their family roots and especially how that relates to places and land. It seems like every Norse saga I read begins with at least several chapters of X, the son of Y who had a daughter who married Y. And this is no different, is it? And this is where Aur's story comes into Laksda saga at the beginning, when it's establishing that genealogy. That's right, isn't it?
- [06:11]
Emily Lethbridge
Exactly. There are two kind of primary axes. One is genealogy, as you've mentioned, and the other one is geography or place. So always at the beginning of these Icelanding sogr, the sagas of Icelanders, people are situated in space and they're situated in terms of who are their people, who's their tribe. And I suppose this was significant because at the time, you know, Iceland still is a very small, tiny society in terms of numbers, demographics. Back then as well, you know, one of the really key social dynamics was, you know, who are you related to? So a way of placing the characters in kind of time and space.
- [06:52]
James Osborne
And that's really fascinating because when I think about my genealogy and my family, I only learned my great grandfather's name a few days ago. And what these sagas really shows, they had this really deep sense of, yeah, these family stories, who they were, where they came from and the land that they inhabited in a geographical sense, I guess. To begin Odde's story, then, what do we know about her family background and her lineage?
- [07:17]
Emily Lethbridge
Well, we know from these written sources that she's part of the generation of primarily Norwegians who emigrate from Norway or are around the North Atlantic in the, you know, the Viking age, who make their way west. Some stop in the British Isles, Scotland, and this is part of Uther's story as well. Some stay there and others continue west. Pharaohs, Iceland. And a little bit later, by around the year 1000, these same people or their descendants are pushing Even further west and going over to Greenland and North America. So I suppose, you know, in terms of the chronology, we don't know exactly when Eudir was born. That's a bit of a mystery. But maybe, you know, sometime in the early 9th century or early to mid 9th century. But she's said to be the daughter of a powerful chieftain in Norway. So we know straight away that she's from the perspective of class. She's come from the ruling elite, so born into good circumstances in that respect. Her father, Certel, is said to have gone over to the Hebrides. He is alive at the same time as the Norwegian. Well, firstly a local king, and then he becomes more important, Haraldr Haurfagry. Harald the Fair. Hair, I always call him Hairfair, but, yeah, Haurfagry. And this is the Norwegian local king who starts to extend his power and consolidate power. And several of the sagas describe figures, chieftains or people from the kind of the top aristocrats who basically don't really like Haraldur lording over them, and they decide to just go off and seek better life or more freedom elsewhere. And Iceland has newly been sort of discovered as an unsettled island, and so a lot of them head off in that direction. So I guess that's the kind of the broad social, political context into which Eudr is born.
- [09:19]
James Osborne
So she's his daughter, so she is living in this context of movement and migration, and she is coming from prominence, wealth and power to an extent. What kind of upbringing might a Norse woman in this context have had? What expectations might have been placed on her? What would her early life have been like? And I know we can't look to the Sags directly for this because it doesn't talk about her early years from her perspective, but what might they have been like?
- [09:48]
Emily Lethbridge
Well, I suppose, kind of, broadly speaking, women of that class, if a girl was lucky enough to grow to become an adult in that kind of context, sort of upper aristocratic chieftain's family, I mean, really, her primary function would have been sociopolitical. Women were the kind of social glue. Of course, this is a time it's a very patriarchal society, and so daughters of chieftains are used to make alliances and to secure a family's social position and financial position as well. So in that context, presumably a child, a girl brought up by her parents, you know, with a view to her being placed somewhere, making a successful marriage and thus cementing the family's political power. And in fact, we know that she's said to have, you know, the saga tells us, and these other sources tell us, that she marries this hiberno Norse king, a guy called Olavr Krity, Olavr the White, who is said to have been king of Norse Dublin. So she has presumably gone with her father, her family, to Scotland, to the Hebrides, where her father's been sent to collect tax. And actually then he kind of breaks away from Helfagry, her father, and decides to start ruling autonomously himself. So there's a. You know, you can sense a bit of the political tensions and everyone vying to be top dog. She's over in Hebrides, she ends up. She marries this figure, Olavr, who then dies. She's said to have had one son with Oliver, and that's where Laxstyle saga picks up. But she also, I mean, she's one of five, I think. So she's got four siblings, she's got two brothers and two other sisters whose paths also follow kind of similar trajectories. So in terms of her upbringing. Yeah, born into a family of power and a girl, or an opportunity to consolidate power across geographical space.
- [11:50]
James Osborne
So I guess her early years would have been orienting her towards this important diplomatic position whereby the women in these high social status families are connecting different families together and therefore expanding influence and control. So women in Aur's position would have played a really important role within diplomacy and politics of this period, wouldn't they?
- [12:14]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah, exactly. And also, you know, I think she probably would have had to. Of course, she would have been learning really practical skills as well. So, you know, how to run a household. The two major spheres or kind of tasks that women at every level of society had at that time in this Norse context, would have been like food preparation, you know, ensuring that the household had enough to eat, and also textile production. So food production, ensuring that household was functioning, and also wool production and weaving.
- [12:48]
James Osborne
So really, these women are almost serving as the engines of these communities, aren't they? Without them, while the men are away fighting and raiding and arguing amongst themselves, it's the women who are keeping things going behind the scenes so that these men have a place actually to come back to.
- [13:04]
Emily Lethbridge
Exactly. And sales. I mean, some scholars in recent times have emphasized the role of women in sale. You know, without sales, the Viking expansion would never have happened. So, and you know, who's making the sales? It's the women from spinning the wool, weaving it into the. Into the material that then was worked, sewn together and made those sails. And that was hugely time consuming. But absolutely kind of the powerhouse, the engine room of the Viking age.
- [13:30]
James Osborne
So, as you say, she marries Olaver. The Anglicised version is Olaf, but she marries Olavr and he dies. And they have a son together who I believe is called Thorsten, or Thorstein, if I'm trying to do my good Icelandic. And her husband dies quite early on. What would widowhood typically have looked like for a woman in Odr's position? What would have been expected of her?
- [13:56]
Emily Lethbridge
Well, I think, you know, I don't think there's any one answer to that question, but I suppose, you know, from Laxstelle Saga and Landnammer book, we know that. So Oliver, her husband has died. She then basically stays with her son Thorstein. Thorstein goes to Scotland, northern Scotland, and becomes effectively a warlord there. Firstly, I think it's interesting that she sticks with her. She goes with her son. So, you know, maybe there's a sense that as a widow, she nonetheless has to stay kind of part of this family unit. And Thorstein is her only son. But I think, you know, for a woman like Oded, becoming a widow and then losing her son would have been both, well, a turning point, a time when she could have been quite vulnerable. You know, things could have gone very badly wrong for her. But at least in the narrative, there's a suggestion that her incredibly strong character manages to turn this difficult, this incredibly challenging situation into an advantage. Or she just takes control, decides that, okay, she's now the head of the household. She's got these two brothers already in Iceland. She gathers together her son's children. So she's also a grandmother by this stage. She's not a young woman either. The timeline is a little bit hazy, but she's not young and wet behind the ears and has clearly wealth and resources to draw on and manages to get her whole household out of Scotland in secret before they're attacked by the Scots or by their Scottish enemies, and they sail off, headed for Iceland.
- [15:29]
James Osborne
And this is happening after her son Thorsten, who, as you said, is this warlord, this war leader who's been rampaging around northern Scotland with her by his side. He dies. And then after his death, she's then left in this vulnerable position where she's widowed, her son has died, and now she's in Scotland. And clearly the Scots want to just push out the Norse influence. So that's then what leads to her having to flee. And it's a massive turning point in her life, as you said, isn't it?
- [16:02]
Emily Lethbridge
Exactly. It's a catalyst.
- [16:03]
James Osborne
And after her son dies, and she commissions the building of this ship, and she consolidates power around herself and decides to flee to Iceland. What I find really interesting reading Black Sedala saga is that there really is absolutely no ambiguity. You don't have to read between the lines to see that she is the leader. She is the person who is spearheading this movement from Scotland to Iceland in the aftermath of her son's death, even though it makes very clear there are powerful men around her. To me, that just seems so striking. It just seems like a really remarkable. Do you feel the same? Should I be as surprised as I am?
- [16:47]
Emily Lethbridge
She's presented as an extraordinary character, you know, regardless of the fact that she's a woman, she's presented as an extraordinary character in the narrative context. And I think because of her independence and her power and the respect that is afforded to her, the respect that she clearly commands, she's captured the imaginations of audiences and readers for centuries afterwards. And, you know, not just us today, you know, for us. You know, maybe we look at her and she's a kind of a really interesting example of a powerful woman at a time in a society where women might have had a degree of soft political power, but only very exceptionally were they the rulers or the leaders. But here we have the story of one of these women. So, you know, it's interesting also that in the 12th, 13th century, Icelandic society is clearly proud of her. You know, she's considered to be a really important ancestor, a matriarch, only one of a handful of women who are said to have come to Iceland under their own steam or as kind of leaders and claimed land themselves. Of course, there are many, many women who accompany their husbands or fathers and generally were introduced to women in the context of their male relatives in the sagas. But Odr is very different in that respect. And so there's a lot to chew over in terms of her presentation. And, you know, in teasing out some of these questions, you know, you could probably go on for about four hours if we had the luxury of time.
- [18:20]
James Osborne
It opens up so many questions. And when I opened up Laxdaler saga for the first time, I was completely ignorant of the story. And I heard of her in passing over, but I didn't really know anything about her. And then in these early pages, I'm just confronted by this, who is clearly so powerful and formidable and impressive. And it just defied all of my preconceived notions about what I would read in that story. And I think that we have these preconceived notions for a reason, like this really was a patriarchal society and for a woman to have reached this status, she really must have been remarkable.
- [18:58]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah, absolutely. But I think it's also important to remember that this is the exception. You know, she's the exception rather than the rule. And I think it's also really, maybe this is a useful point to just remind ourselves of her circumstances. The lives of most women of the time, probably almost all women at the time, probably would have been pretty miserable and very difficult. So intersectional issues play clearly very strongly into this. She's born into a powerful, wealthy family and she has remarkable character and strength, and she turns a potential disaster into an opportunity.
- [19:38]
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- [22:12]
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- [22:43]
James Osborne
at this point where we're at in her biography and the chronology of her life, she's just left Scotland and she's going to Iceland. Along the way she stops in the Orkneys and stops in the Faroe Islands and marrying off her granddaughters in I guess what we were talking in terms of, she's connecting her family line with other families of high status across the world of the Norse diaspora. Then she finally arrives in Iceland.
- [23:11]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah, that's where she ends up. But before that though, so it's her granddaughters who she's marrying off. So her dead son's daughters, exactly as you describe. You know, the saga says so little about them, but just all we hear is, oh, they stop off in Orkney and then stop off in Pharaohs. And these granddaughters are married to kind of cement the political alliances. And then the saga says, oh, and you know, the descendants of these girls became the leaders of those areas. But then she's supposed to have at least in Latin, if not in LA saga, they get to Iceland and the ship is wrecked. You know, having gone all the way, then they have to deal with this. The ship is wrecked, but everyone manages to get to land alive and all of her stuff presumably washes up on shore.
- [23:55]
James Osborne
I think it says in kind of typically blunt saga fashion, I think it says the ship was wrecked, but the crew and the cargo were fine. So it was fine.
- [24:02]
Emily Lethbridge
So it was fine. Don't need the ship anymore. Got to Iceland. So she's on the south coast where this is said to have happened, this shipwreck. And then she goes, she's got these two brothers. So she naturally goes to not far from where modern day Reykjavik is today, to where the first brother Helgi, has claimed a big area of land. And then there's this quite amusing scene where she turns up with all of her, you know, her crew and her followers. She has some 20 freeborn men with her and you know, children and goodness knows what. And Helgi, her brother says, oh well, I can probably put half of you up for the winter. And she takes offense at that and turns down that half hearted effort. And she goes then further to the west where her other brother is on the Smeiffelsnes peninsula, he's called Bird. And he responds in an appropriate chieftainly manner and says, oh, of course, you know, dear sister, all of your followers, you're all welcome. You'll all be with me for the winter. So they stay there for the winter. And then after she's been there for a while, the saga tells us that she heads off and starts kind of exploring an area in west Iceland for herself and makes a massive land claim, explores really widely and decides that she'll apparently no one's there. So she just takes it all. And after she's done that, and after we learn from the saga where several place names have come from. Because very often in these kind of exploration passages in the sagas we hear why places got the names that they have. And so in one place she's said to have stopped and had breakfast with her followers. And so that whole peninsula gets the name Durg Verdar Nias, like breakfast Peninsula. And then in another place she sort of lost her comb and that place becomes known as Kamsness Comb ness. And scholars have kind of debated about how authentic the explanations for the origins of these names actually are. So she takes this massive claim and then having been playing the role of the patriarch of the male family leader, having given her granddaughters to chieftains in Orkney and Shetland, doing that political stuff on the way to Iceland, once she's in Iceland as well and she's made her land claim, she continues this very male role and she parcels out packages of her larger land claim and gives her followers portions of land too, which is exactly what you see all of the male settlers doing in other sagas. There are several points at which her behavior and the decisions that she takes and the way that she responds to the circumstances absolutely mirror those of her male counterparts.
- [26:52]
James Osborne
It's so interesting. So she has landed in Iceland with a shipwreck and from there she's gone to visit her brothers, one of whom is quite mean spirited. And so she leaves, goes to visit another brother who hosts her and her party over winter. And from there she then begins to explore the unsettled land and begins to stake a claim to it and parcel it out, as you said, among her followers. And so I guess these are people who are loyal to you and if you're giving land to them, you're also exerting influence over their land too, in a way.
- [27:24]
Emily Lethbridge
Exactly.
- [27:25]
James Osborne
So she is effectively the authority figure across this really quite huge span of land. She settles her farmstead in a place called Hvam H V A M M. Am I pronouncing that right?
- [27:39]
Emily Lethbridge
Nearly. The H V in Icelandic is a K. So it's actually, and it means like a grassy hollow. We're in Breidafjord. It's a site that's just by the water, a little bit above the water, this deep fjord that comes in into West Iceland.
- [27:58]
James Osborne
So she settles her farmstead in Kvamr, which is the base of her power. Can we still see the remains of this site? That really interests me.
- [28:08]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah. So in so many of these cases, these, the names of the farms, the settlement sites in the sagas, they're still in current usage today. So you can drive around that part of Iceland and you'll just see all of the place names on road signs and you'll kind of recognise the names from the saga, which, when you kind of experience that for the first time is I found it just mind blowing. And so Cranberg actually became a really important political. You know, if you think about geopolitics in Cranmer, this site that Eiddric is said to have claimed and settled herself first became really important later in the 11th, 12th, 13th centuries. And it's connected to people like Snorri Sturdlusson and others. So there's clearly, there's kind of a line of political continuity in terms of that location. Another kind of source for Odd and her life are the place names themselves. And there are two place names that in the 19th century were recorded and kind of associated with Oetr. Actually one of them, even before the 19th century, and that is oftir. So that's. I mean, Toft is like a ruin or a kind of the remains of a farm. So the name literally means the ruin, Uddur's kind of ruins, which are very nearby Cranber. So we've got that. And then there's another place name or the name of a rock. It's called O State, just not far from the farm down on the shoreline. And that in kind of folk tradition is where O was said to have been bur buried. Although we don't have that tradition in the saga. So there's sort of different traditions to do with when where she was buried. There was a lot of surveying going on in the 19th century. And a Danish guy called Christian Courland was fascinated by the relationship between the sagas and the landscape. And he actually went all around Iceland. He published like a four volume, a long survey. And he goes every district he goes through and he's looking at sagas and trying to, you know, find these places in the landscape. Today a lot of my research is about the relationship between place and story and how story is mediated or communicated through place and through place name. And that's part of the power of these stories is that they're so geographically situated in a really concrete way. And that makes Iceland an amazing place to visit if you're interested in the sagas as well, because you can sort of move through places and as people from the 19th century have, have done. William Morris, for example, came twice to Iceland, loved Blackstyler saga, translated it was really emotionally moved. By experiencing the landscapes of the saga
- [30:53]
James Osborne
for himself, I can absolutely understand why. And I feel some of that draw to come to Iceland and try and see these places myself as well. The way that Kvamr is described in the saga, it makes it sound quite grand. I'm imagining kind of like a turf roof, long hall that would have been her primary building and then farms around it. Is that broadly, do you think, an accurate picture that I'm conjuring in my head or do you think I'm getting that wrong?
- [31:23]
Emily Lethbridge
Maybe slightly romanticized, but in its basics, maybe not so far from archaeology anyway has shown us. We can see the kind of footprint of these Viking age long houses. And some of them were smaller and some of them were larger. Farming in Iceland at that time, you know, the settlers brought sheep, cows, horses over to Iceland with them. These long houses would have been quite carefully kind of demarcated, not least to protect the area. The farmland that was most carefully cultivated was directly around the farmstead. So that would have been sort of walled off to protect it from animals grazing, because hay was vital as fodder to keep the animals alive over winter. If we're thinking about Udr and her household from the perspective of the saga, there are a few clues that give us an idea about how, you know, what sort of scale it might have been on, or at least the scale that whoever was writing the saga in the 13th century kind of imagined it being big enough to accommodate a lot of people. There's a scene that we might. We'll get onto, in which there's a huge feast and she invites people from far and wide. And so a space that was big enough to hold not only her presumably relatively large household, but also guests. But the spot, I think it's good to say, also useful to say that it's, in terms of geopolitics, it's in a place where there's good visibility, so nearby there's a kind of a hill, sort of rock, from which you can see widely all around the local area. You know, sight lines are obviously quite important at that time, keeping a tab on who's going where and who's doing what.
- [33:05]
James Osborne
Yeah, that paints a much more realistic picture than perhaps what I had in my head, where it was kind of cosy and there's a big roaring fire and it's all lovely, but as you say, large enough to accommodate lots of people. And, you know, it says that, yeah, they have this big feast, so perhaps it's not always just scraping by all of the time. Perhaps there are these moments where they can relax and celebrate big moments and bring all the food that they've cultivated across the year and start to enjoy that. I guess that brings us to what is effectively the end of her story. She's the leader of this powerful, important farmstead at Kvammar, and she lives to quite an old age and she's still highly respected and powerful. And she, as you say, hosts a particularly large feast to celebrate the wedding of her grandson, Olavar. This is such a memorable scene because it's also the night before she dies. Can you take us through that moment and explore how she was able to exert this dual patriarchal and matriarchal influence even throughout the final stages of her life.
- [34:13]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah, so the saga tells us that she's getting old. She starts slowing down in her old age. She's slower to get up in the morning. She doesn't like people asking about her health, which I think is a really wonderfully human detail. And she's made a decision that her grandson, Olavur Faelon, so the youngest son of Thorsted, will be her heir and that he will inherit Cranmer. And she has a. The saga describes how she has a conversation with him kind of one spring, I guess, and she says to him, right, I'm getting old. I've decided that you're going to be my heir, but before this happens, I think you better get married. So he's unmarried at this point. And she says, we should really fix this up now because we've got the summer ahead of us to get provisions in that we need for the feast. And we'll have the feast, the wedding feast in the autumn. So she kind of fixes all of this up, finds a woman from a powerful neighbouring family, and then she sends out invitations far and wide to family members, to other powerful people all around Iceland, fixes a date for the feast and everyone turns up. Late summer, early autumn, at this feast she stands up and publicly announces that she's handing on the property to her grandson. And then she encourages everyone to have a fantastic time. There's no lack of food or drink, and she goes to bed. And then Oliver comes in the next morning to find her and she's dead. She's sat up dead in her bed. I mean, what a way to go out. And so this wedding feast that she's organized turns into her funeral feast. I think there's something kind of quite beautiful about that in a way, sort of both looking to the future and celebrating the past. And so that's what we hear of her last months and days. The narrator says everyone agreed that it was one of the most magnificent feasts of the time. And either she is particularly praised and remembered for her dignity with which she kind of completes, lives out her life and her power and her mental capacity and her character. And so it's really quite remarkable. And then in the saga, actually in Laxtola saga, we're told that she is then buried in a ship. So she's given a pagan pre Christian burial. And this is supposed to be happening roughly Saga chronology, about 900. So still within the settlement period, the first few decades of Iceland's settled history. But a hundred or so years before the country was converted to Christianity, but lacks Dalisaga. There's no mention of her being a Christian. She's buried in this ship, burial in a mound. And so that's all quite clear. But as I'm sure you know already in land there's this other tradition and in landmark she is supposed to be Christian. So she's one of these few characters who come to Iceland already Christian. And the implication is that she's converted, you know, while she was in the Hebrides or Ireland, Scotland, those countries having been Christianized long before Iceland was. And so she brings her Christianity to Iceland. Landna Mabock mentions a place called Cross Holler, Cross Hills, that's quite close to Cranmer and explicitly says at this place Euggdr went and prayed. And then in Ladnammerbolk we're told that Eudr's last wishes are that she were buried, that she should be buried not in a mound, not in a pagan mound, but on the beach, on the tideline. And there are no churches in Iceland at this time because the country hasn't been converted to Christianity. So the idea is that the tideline is a sort of liminal. You know, it's not pagan. It's as Christian a place as you can find. And then there's this large rock that over time comes to be known as Ostedt. It is said to be the spot where Odish was buried on the shoreline.
- [38:22]
James Osborne
It's a fascinating death that I think almost says everything you need to know about her life. So as you said, she gives this speech where she says that her grandson Olavr is going to be her heir effectively. And I guess what that tells us is that she really has this eye on the future. She really has this foresight and this incredible planning. And I think that's also reflected in when she's going to Iceland. She's marrying off her granddaughter, she's thinking about the future of her family. I think also it says in the version of the saga I've read that when she's speaking and when she's stood at the front and welcoming everyone and thanking them for having come from so far, everyone is so impressed by how stately and dignified she is and how. How powerful she is. It really makes it clear that throughout her story she leaves nothing to chance. She grips hold of the situation and it's her who's. Yeah, she has a plan for what comes next. And I guess it just paints her as this. I guess maybe that's why she is referred to as deep minded and even queen.
- [39:28]
Emily Lethbridge
You know, when these 19th century travelers are coming to Iceland and exploring these saga sites and this becomes a bit of a craze. And William Morris and others, they're kind of touring around on horseback and looking, correlating the sagas to places and they call her Queen Oddur in a country where there was no royalty, because Iceland, of course, was founded as a republic.
- [39:52]
James Osborne
I guess my final question to you then about Oddr is about her legacy. So one of her really prominent descendants is Hoskoldr, who is a grandson who becomes this powerful chieftain. And he has a very interesting story because he takes a woman called Mel Korker as his concubine, and they have a son called Olavar. I just wonder if you could tell me a little more about Mel Korka and perhaps what she says about women in the Viking age in contrast to Odr to have paint a fuller picture. Because, as you've said, ODR is the exception, isn't she?
- [40:32]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah, Mel Korka, she is another fascinating female character in Laxstyla saga. And she, you know, in a way, the line of her story kind of picks up on the different trajectories that women's lives could unfold on, because we learned later in the saga that she's the daughter of an Irish king. So she's a royal character. And everyone later admires her and is very keen on her for that reason. But, you know, it's not her choice to go to Iceland. What we understand of her history is that she's been captured in a Viking raid in Ireland. When. When we meet her in the saga, she's in a huge market, a slave market, and she's sold essentially as a sex slave to this character Haskelltr, who puts his head into the tent, likes the look of her and buys her. And the slave trader, the man who's selling Mel Kotka, tells Haskell that, yes, this is a good purchase, but there's one thing you need to know. She doesn't speak. She's muted. So we never. We just don't know. Corsa saga never gives us any insights into her perspectives or feelings on where she is at that point in time and the circumstances in which she gets taken forcibly to Iceland. But he, Herskilde, takes her as his concubine. She bears a son, Oliver. By him, Olaver is heard speaking Irish with his mother, Melkorke. And so Husgoda, the father, comes along, realizes that Melkorka is not mute and that she can speak in her song. Silence has been a choice, probably a coping mechanism to deal with the trauma that she's suffered. And so then he tells her it's no good pretending to be silent anymore. Who are you? Where have you come from? Then that's where the story of her being a princess comes out. Husgulda also has a wife at home in Iceland. And this woman has been looking after the household and keeping everything running as Huskildur has been traveling around and trading. After some time, the two women understandably can't get on together and fight. And so Huskilda then moves Mel, Korka and her son Oliver out to their own farm. So at that point in the story anyway, she gets a bit more independence and so things end better for her. So she's in a difficult situation and not autonomous in the way that Eadr is. But she's a really fascinating character. And, you know, if nothing else, she says something about the place of enslaved people in early Icelandic society and the fact that the Viking age was largely driven on the slave trade and on huge slave markets. So that's a much darker side of early Icelandic history that we see with her story.
- [43:25]
James Osborne
I guess what it says to me and why I relate it to Odr, beyond the fact that that she ends up being kind of related to through her son. The reason why I related to Oda is because I think it shows, as you said, that these women, their lives were dictated in part not just by whether or not they could be like Odr and grip hold of the opportunities that would get afforded to them, but actually, sometimes they didn't even have that choice. And very much their life was subject to the environment that they happen to be in and the circumstances they happen to be in. So while Odr is this amazing figure who did make the very best of her circumstances, she could have ended up in different circumstances. And I guess that's what Mel Corker's story says to me.
- [44:13]
Emily Lethbridge
Yeah, that's a really nice reading. I think. Sort of two, you know, two lives, two parallel tracks. Two women of good upper class background. Initially, this is what happens to one, and this is what happens to the. To the other.
- [44:26]
Podcast Narrator
That was Emily Lethbridge speaking to James Osborne. Emily is a lecturer at the Arni Magnussen Institute for Icelandic Studies and an expert in the literature of early medieval Iceland and in the women and landscape of Norse sagas.