Annotated Saga: Grettis saga (Excerpt)

If Njáls saga is the saga of law and burning, Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar is the saga of an outlaw's strength and his long doom. Grettir Ásmundarson is the great misfit-hero of the genre — immensely strong, unlucky, afraid of the dark, an outlaw for nineteen years — and the saga is a string of feats and hauntings strung between his quarrels. The passage below is his first great feat: in chapter 21, taunted for hanging back, Grettir goes alone into a narrow mountain ledge (einstigi) to kill a savage bear that the others had failed to face, and finishes it hand-to-hand at the cliff's edge. It is a model of saga action grammar, and it puts on display the one device this page exists to teach: the way the narrative switches from the preterite into the present tense at the most violent moment, to throw you into the scene. We present the normalised passage, gloss it, and then take the grammar apart. Read the orientation first if you have not (texts/saga-overview); the naming-formula and er-relative basics are worked out on texts/njals-saga, and the tense theory behind the alternation on complex/tense-and-temporal-interpretation.

The text

Read it once for the action — beast charges, paw struck off, grapple, both go over the cliff, the killing blow. Now read it again for the grammar. Three engines drive the passage, and the first is the one that makes saga fights feel alive.

1. The historical present: the prose jumps to the present at the kill

The whole passage is a past-tense narration — gekk "went," hljóp "ran," hjó "struck," féll "fell," viku "went over," lagði "stabbed." But twice, at the two most physical, most dangerous instants, the verb switches into the present tense: Hann þrífur "he grabs" (the moment he seizes the bear by the ears) and Grettir þrífur "Grettir grabs" (the moment he gets his short-sword for the kill). The events are unquestionably past — everything around them is preterite — yet the saga slips into the present exactly where the danger peaks. This is the historical present, and it is a deliberate pacing device: the present tense yanks the listener out of "this happened" and into "this is happening, right now, in front of you." Then the prose drops back to the preterite (hélt, lagði, var) once the crisis passes.

That alternation — preterite narration, present at the climax, preterite again — is the rhythm of a well-told saga fight, and it is not a medieval curiosity: modern Icelandic storytellers do exactly the same thing in a spoken anecdote (…og þá kemur hann… "…and then he comes…"). The grammar of vivid narration has not changed in 700 years. For the tense theory behind it, see complex/tense-and-temporal-interpretation.

2. er = "who / which", not "is" — the relative particle

Twice the passage hangs a relative clause on a noun with er, and both times er is the relative particle "who / which / that" (= modern sem), not the verb er "is." This is the single trap that wrecks saga reading for beginners, and the disambiguation rule is mechanical: if the clause already has its own finite verb, er cannot be the copula and must be the relative.

In hramminum þeim er firr var berginu, the demonstrative þeim ("that one," dative, agreeing with hramminum "the paw") pairs with er to mean "the paw which…"; the clause's verb is var "was." Because var is already there, er is the relative, never "is." Note the saga even varies the relativiser: one clause uses old er, the next uses sem — both are "that/which." Internalise the rule on these two clauses and the genre opens up.

3. Terse parataxis chained with og

Look at the shape of the third and fourth sentences: Grettir hjó í móti… og kom á hramminn… og tók þar af; Þá vildi dýrið ljósta… skaust á stúfinn og varð hann lægri… og féll þá dýrið…. The saga reports the fight as a chain of short clauses strung on og "and" — strike, hit, take off; lunge, slip, fall — with almost no subordination. This is parataxis, the hallmark saga style: events laid end to end in the order they happen, each a bare assertion, the camera never editorialising. The effect is speed and objectivity; the reader supplies the drama. Notice too the V2 inversion that fronting drives — Þá vildi dýrið "then the beast wanted," þá viku þeir "then they went over," þá féll dýrið "then the beast fell" — where the fronted þá "then" throws the subject behind the verb, the ordinary verb-second order pulsing through the action.

4. The surrounding dialogue: the reported / hypothetical subjunctive

Just before Grettir acts, his rival Björn taunts the company, and his speech shows the saga's other grammatical signature — the subjunctive in hypothetical and reported contexts. The sagas reach for the subjunctive constantly in speech: in conditions, in claims about what would be the case, in reported judgements. Björn's line carries two such marks.

The key form is væri, the past subjunctive of vera "to be." Björn is not asserting that Grettir is as great as reputed; he is saying that if Grettir killed the bear, then he would be — a hypothetical, counterfactual-flavoured claim, and Icelandic marks exactly that with the subjunctive væri, where the indicative var/er would assert it as plain fact. The contrast inside the same breath is instructive: hann *er sagður "he *is said (to be)" uses the indicative er for the bare fact that people say this of him, while hann *væri slíkur "he *would be such" uses the subjunctive for the hypothetical consequence. Indicative for the reported fact, subjunctive for the hypothetical result.

Putting the scene back together

Reassemble the fight with all the engines visible. Hann gekk þegar í einstigið — terse preterite: Grettir steps onto the ledge. …með hramminum þeim *er firr var berginu — a relative *er-clause specifies the striking paw. Grettir hjó… og kom… og tók þar af — paratactic og-chaining reports the counter-blow. Then the danger spikes and the tense flips: Hann *þrífur þá meðal hlusta dýrinu — historical present, you are at the grapple — before the prose settles back into preterite *hélt. The pair go over the cliff (þá viku þeir báðir), and at the kill the present returns one last time: *Grettir þrífur þá til saxins og lagði björninn til hjartans*. Around it, Björn's taunt frames the deed in the subjunctive of the hypothetical — *Þá væri hann slíkur sem hann er sagður*. In a handful of flat clauses the saga has staged a lethal fight, told you which paw struck, thrown you bodily into the worst instant of it, and assessed the hero's reputation — with no adjective of suspense anywhere. That economy, and that tense-switch at the kill, are why the sagas still read like the best action prose ever written.

Common Mistakes

When a clause already has a finite verb (var), er is the relative "which/who," never the copula "is."

A present-tense verb in the middle of preterite narration is the historical present — a pacing device, not a change of time.

The subjunctive væri marks a hypothetical; the indicative var/er would assert it as fact. Saga dialogue uses the subjunctive heavily for suppositions and reports.

Key Takeaways

• The passage's signature device is the historical present: amid a preterite narration, the prose jumps to the present (Hann *þrífur…, Grettir þrífur…*) at the two most violent instants, then falls back to the preterite. The events stay past; the present is a vividness/pacing switch — and the same device drives modern spoken storytelling.
• er appears as the relative "which/who" (= sem), not "is" — diagnosable because the clause already has its own finite verb (var). The saga even alternates er and sem for the same function.
• The fight is reported in terse parataxis — short clauses chained on og, blow by blow, with V2 inversion after fronted þá (þá viku þeir) — the objective, fast saga style.
• The surrounding dialogue shows the subjunctive of hypothesis and report: Þá *væri hann slíkur ("then he'd be such") uses the past subjunctive *væri for "would be," beside indicative er sagður ("is said") for the bare reported fact.
• English-speaker traps to avoid: reading er as "is", mistaking the historical present for a present-time event, and reading the subjunctive væri as a plain past "was."
• Source: the bear-fight in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ch. 21, normalised text from the Icelandic Saga Database.