are my feet in the way: Eyrbyggja saga country

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Eyrbyggja saga country

I've spent the last few weeks at Skógarströnd, an area at the northern entrance to the Snæfellsnes peninsula in Iceland's mid-west. This is Eyrbyggja saga country, the setting of the events of The Saga of the People of Eyri, which in large part is the story of Snorri goði, a tenth-century chieftain whose experiences also found a place in my last book, The Sorrow Stone. In that work, I changed Snorri's name to Sindri, and portrayed him as a twelve-year-old boy on the run with his mother Dísa, whose character was in turn based on the historical figure of Þórdís Súrsdóttir.

I'm back to further my exploration of that story, but I must admit I haven't had a very clear 'research' plan for the time I've spent in Snæfellsnes, apart from wishing to visit sites from the saga and, while I do so, to give more thought to the life and relationships of the main characters. But being here has produced some ideas that I can take away with me, digest at a distance, and perhaps use. As usually is the case, slowing down and absorbing the landscape seems to suggest stories, as well.

For the time being, I am sharing some pictures of those saga sites I've visited. They will have added meaning for those who've read Eyrbyggja saga, and, for others, perhaps form a sort of landscape introduction to the saga, one of the strangest in the corpus of Icelandic family sagas.