EGIL SKALLAGRIMSSON

Battle-raging berserker, world-renowned poet
c. AD 910–990

With bloody brand on-striding
My bird of bane hath followed;
My hurtling spear hath sounded
In the swift Vikings’ charge.
Raged wrathfully our battle,
Ran fire o’er foemen’s rooftrees;
Sound sleepeth many a warrior
Slain in the city gate.

—Egil’s Saga

EGIL SKALLAGRIMSSON WAS AN UTTERLY unstoppable Viking warrior and skald unmatched in physical strength, skill in combat, and eloquence of verse. He spent his life sailing the seas, plundering towns, slaying his enemies, and having the sorts of adventures that would make him one of the most famous antiheroes in Viking history. He did battle with armies of mighty warriors, cut his enemies apart with an axe, and once killed a wolf with his bare hands and ate it raw.

Oh, right, and he also wrote two of the most famous poems in the history of medieval Iceland and is believed to be one of the best literary minds of the Viking Age.

Wait, what?

As his name would suggest, Egil was the son of a man named Skallagrim, who was a prominent landowner and nobleman in Norway. Things started getting hairy for Skallagrim when King Harald Fairhair was doing his “conquer all of Norway” thing, so he left and set up shop in Iceland, where Egil and his older brother, Thorolf, were born. Egil was strong, talkative, clever, and incredibly grouchy. His large body, broad shoulders, and thick neck were made all the more imposing by the fact that he had a large, weirdly shaped head that kind of looked like an eggplant with eyes. It’s described as being one of the ugliest heads ever seen in Viking history, and his skull was allegedly so thick in some places that it once deflected an axe blow. That, coupled with his horrible temper, has led some modern doctors to believe he suffered from Paget’s disease, an incredibly painful disorder in which the bones continually change shape. Egil did not have a sense of humor about this.

Egil first started showing signs of his sunny personality at the tender age of seven, when he was out on the playground and some neighborhood bully beat him up. Rather than run home and cry about it, Egil handled the situation like a Viking: He picked up a nearby axe and dropped the bully with one swing, setting off a family feud that ended up killing half a dozen people. Survey says: Don’t mess with Egil Skallagrimsson.

At the age of fourteen, Egil did what any respectable tenth-century Icelandic man worth his bearskins would do: He joined up with a Viking raiding party. One of their first destinations was a nearby island where a dude named Bard—who was a good friend and servant of King Erik Bloodaxe of Norway—put them up. Egil, who had a little too much to drink (there is a reason the most popular beer in Iceland is named after him), believed Bard was trying to poison him, so he stabbed his host in the middle of the dinner hall, fled into the woods to avoid being arrested for murder, swam through a freezing-cold harbor, climbed onto a boat, killed the Vikings on board, and rowed out of there by himself. He spent the rest of his life evading the long arm of the law, with Erik Bloodaxe and his wife, Gunnhild, constantly sending people to murder or arrest him.

Here’s a tip: It’s not good to make an enemy of a Viking king named Bloodaxe. And we’ve already seen what Queen Gunnhild Kingsmother was capable of.

The next summer, Egil headed out with his brother, Thorolf, and they sailed up and down the European coastline, sacking cities and plundering merchant vessels. At one point, while in the kingdom of Courland (in present-day Lithuania), Egil and his men were ambushed by a large force and imprisoned in a dungeon. Egil’s hands and feet were bound to a large pole, and his captors informed him that he and his men would all be tortured to death the following day. That night, while the Courlanders were partying and drinking in a large dining hall, Egil managed to break free by wrenching the pole out of the ground and chewing through his bindings. He freed his comrades, broke through the door of his cell, and found the Courlanders’ armory. The Vikings looted the armory and the palace’s treasury and then stealthily made their way outside with armfuls of gold and silver.

However, Egil didn’t feel right about this. He told his companions to wait for him as he headed back inside the palace. Once inside, he barred all the exits from the dining hall except one and then set the place on fire. When his captors called out, “Who is responsible for this!” Egil responded: “Here now is that same Egil whom you bound hand and foot to the post in that room you shut so carefully. I will repay you your hospitality as you deserve!”

The Courlanders lucky enough to escape the fire were cut down by Egil as they came through the door. Everyone else burned to death.

Not long after this, Erik Bloodaxe’s wife, Queen Gunnhild, Mother of Kings, sent two of her brothers out to kill Egil and his brother, Thorolf. When Egil heard about this plot, he didn’t do what any sensible person would and simply watch his back. He changed course, found Gunnhild’s brothers, ambushed their camp, killed every single person he found, burned their ships, and stole all their plunder.

Well, now the Skallagrimsson brothers realized they were in deep trouble in Norway, so they sailed their crew over to England and offered their services to King Athelstan of the Britons. Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great, was in the middle of wars with the Vikings, the Scots, and the Welsh, so he was obviously pretty psyched about having an army of some three hundred Vikings at his disposal, and he let them join up.

A few months later, the Viking king Olaf of Scotland launched an attack on Athelstan’s kingdom, and Egil once again tasted battle. While scouting ahead in search of the main enemy force, Egil and Thorolf got embroiled in combat with two Scottish earls, and despite being outnumbered, they were able to defeat the much larger enemy force on the battlefield.

The next morning the main forces of Olaf and Athelstan met in combat. When Thorolf was killed in battle by the Scots, Egil pulled his sword, flew into a blood rage, and charged forward like a berserker. He crashed into the nearest Scottish division, slaughtering an earl, his color guard, and anyone else who crossed him. The earl’s unit fell into a full retreat, and Egil’s men gave chase, cutting down the routed Scots forces. The Scottish lines subsequently broke, and King Olaf was killed in battle, along with five jarls and a few other minor kings. Though the battle was over, Egil and his men continued pursuing the broken Scottish forces for several days before finally returning to bury Thorolf. Egil would later mention Thorolf in his poem The Loss of a Son, a heartbreaking lamentation composed after the death of two of Egil’s sons, and a poem now believed to be one of the finest in Icelandic history. You can check it out online on the Guts & Glory website (gutsandgloryhistory.com)!

At the victory banquet, Egil was given two chests full of silver by the king, as well as a bunch of other sweet swag. He returned home to Norway for the winter to mourn his brother and break the news to his brother’s wife, Asgerdr. During the winter, Egil and Asgerdr fell in love and were married, which sounds pretty weird today but was kind of common for the time period.

Now, Asgerdr was the daughter of a wealthy landowner in Norway. After the wedding, she and Egil moved back to Iceland to be with Egil’s dad for a few years. During that time, Asgerdr’s father died, and her brother-in-law snatched up all of what (Egil believed) was her rightful inheritance. So she and Egil headed back to Norway to deal with it. Unfortunately, the brother-in-law was a dude named Bergonund, who was tight with Queen Gunnhild, Egil’s mortal enemy. So of course the queen and the royal court sided with Bergonund.

Now, if you’ve been paying attention to this epic saga so far, Egil Skallagrimsson isn’t the kind of guy who’s going to sit back when he thinks he’s been wronged. First, he sailed out to Bergonund’s island and defeated him and two of his bodyguards in hand-to-hand combat. Then he plundered Bergonund’s household of all the inheritance he believed belonged to Asgerdr, and placed a curse on the entire ruling family of Norway before finally heading back home to Iceland. A few years later, Bergonund’s brother, Atli the Short, made another claim on Asgerdr’s inheritance, so Egil dueled with him as well. In the fight, Egil’s shield and sword got broken, but he killed Atli by tackling him to the turf and biting his throat out.

Over the years, Egil had many other crazy adventures, very few of which can be proven as historical fact. One claims that a feared berserker named Ljot the Pale came to Egil’s best friend’s nephew and challenged him to a duel he had absolutely no chance of winning. Egil went along to watch the duel, and when Ljot started Hulking up and bit a piece off his wooden shield with his teeth, Egil started singing a song to taunt him. Ljot forgot about the nephew and challenged Egil instead. They dueled, and Egil cut the dude’s leg off.

Another tale has him heading through a dense, treacherous, rocky forest where he and his men were ambushed by about fifteen bandits. Egil ran up and hacked eight of them single-handedly in about fifteen seconds, and then he started hurling rocks at the other seven guys, who ran off and returned with even more of their buddies. In the ensuing battle, Egil was jumped by eleven guys at once and defeated them all at the same time, like something out of a kung fu movie.