Saganatt

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Saganatt: Emotions in Viking Family

Now there was a handmaid of Skallagrim’s named Thorgerdr Brak, who had nursed Egil when a child; she was a big woman, strong as a man, and of magic cunning. Said Brak: ‘Dost thou turn they shape-strength, Skallagrim, against thy son?’

Welcome to Saganatt, a project tracking the emotional journey of the hero Egil, his father Skallagrim, and his older brother Thorolf in the 40th chapter of Egil’s Saga. You can jump right in, go to the scatterplot section, or read about the ways this map is interactive in the “Navigations and Suggestions” section right below! There is also a glossary at the bottom for any unfamiliar words and links to the source text and more resources to dig deeper.

Index

Person

Egil

Skallagrim

Thorolf

Place

Navigations and suggestions

• Click and drag to move around the map and use the + and - buttons to move in and out. I recommend focusing on the area of Iceland around Andakíll where most of the dots are clustered
• Hover over a point to see the placename (modern names are located in the glossary)
• Click to get the context of the paragraph
• Some words are tagged with “%%”, “@@”, “==”, or with people’s names
  • %% Real placename gone to
  • @@ Real placename mentioned
  • == nonspecific place gone to
  • SKALLAGRIM_START/END Skallagrim is in this location at this point in the text
  • EGIL_START/END Egil is in this location at this point in the text
  • THOROLF_START/END Thorolf in in this location at this point in the text
• A drop down menu allows for more paragraph entries to be viewed at once
• Search by location and see every entry containing it, another bar searches by keyword
• “Index” means paragraph number and they’re in both the paragraph listing and the scatterplots. The list holds different indexes for all three characters.
• Have fun!

Scatterplots

Egil was very angry. Skallagrim and everybody else were set at table, but Egil had not yet come to his place. He went into the fire hall, and up to the man who there had the overseeing of work and the management of moneys for Skallagrim, and was most dear to him. Egil dealt him his deathblow, then went to his seat. Skallagrim spoke not a word about it then, and thenceforward the matter was kept quiet. But father and son exchanged no word good or bad, and so that winter passed.

These scatterplots compare the appearance of character names throughout the chapter. This is less precise than tagging because some names may be just mentioned, but that also lets us explore the narrative weight of these name mentions. See “Navigations and suggestions” below for guides to these graphs.

Navigations and suggestions

• The graphs to the left compare Egil and Thorolf, the graphs on the right compare Egil and Skallagrim
• The top graphs compare both people separately on the y-axis (up and down) to the index or paragraph number on the x-axis (left and right)
• The bottom graphs compare one character on the y-axis to another character on the x-axis
  • For example, the one on the left shows that Thorolf and Egil are mostly apart except for some minor interaction from when Thorolf takes him abroad at the end and Skallagrim and Egil are mostly mentioned together but Egil has more independence from Skallagrim, likely from when he goes with Thorolf.

Glossary

1. Egil (“Egill”) a historical viking poet, the overall main character of this family saga
2. Thorolf (“Þórólfur”) Egil’s older brother, one of the main characters of the first part of the tale, more loved by his father than his brother Egil
3. Skallagrim (“Skallagrím”) Egil’s father, a sometimes cold and very violent man
4. Borg (“Borg á Mýrum”) settlement dating back to the settlement of Iceland
5. Digra-ness (“Digranes”) peninsula in the county of Mýrasýsla
6. Duck-kyle (“Andakíll”) region in Iceland
7. Grims-river (“Grímsa”) river in Iceland
8. Laxfit - likely not around anymore
9. Sandvik (“Sandvík”) a town or maybe a farm
10. Sogn (“Sognefjord”) fjord in Norway
11. White-river-dale (“Hvítá”) River in Iceland
12. Saganatt - a Norwegian word found in their national anthem, a historic night

More

1. The 1893 W.C. Green English Translation of Egil’s Saga
2. Ármann Jakkobson’s “‘Egils saga’ and Empathy: Emotions and Moral Issues in a Dysfunctional Saga Family
3. Torfi H. Tunilius’ “The Construction of Egil’s Saga: New Approaches to ‘Egil’s Saga’” contained in the book “Egil, The Viking Poet: New Approaches to Egil’s Saga