378: Norse Sagas: Snowfell (part 1 of 2)

Quick disclaimer: there are some adult situations and stronger-than-usual violence this week. Please see the post on mythpodcast.com for more info.

This week, on myths and legends, we're back in the Norse sagas with the story of a highly trained man, shaped by tragedy, who lives in a cave and spends his time rescuing people.

And yeah, he's basically medieval Icelandic Batman. The creature this time is a turf monster that you can make to annoy your rivals at massive personal cost.
Really, don't do it.

This is Myths and Legends, episode 378, Snowfell, Part 1 of 2.

This is a podcast where we tell stories from mythology and folklore. Some are incredibly popular stories you might think you know, but with surprising origins.

Others are tales that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen. Today we're back in in the Icelandic sagas, a saga being very generally a history of a family and its exploits.

Today's story is about Bard, a son of giants and trolls who goes on to be the father of, well, you'll see. We'll jump in not with Bard, though, but with a very different Icelander who has a problem.

His mom might be a witch, and several guys are about to go tell on her.

Einar heard the news when he arrived at home. Sorcery.
His mother had been charged with sorcery. If there was one thing the people of the North wouldn't abide, it was a sorcerer.

It was anathema to everything they held dear. Strength, honor, willpower, those could all be undone with a spell from someone in a warm house far away.

And to call his mother a sorcerer meant death, should it go unanswered. Einar meant to answer it.
Hildegun handed him his cloak.

She, too, knew the cost of what happened if others heard the accusation. Einar put his arm through the shield and gulped as his mom walked up to him, holding something in her hands.

The sword, his father's sword. It was heavier than he thought it would be, but Einar couldn't dwell on that.

He had to stop Lon's son, also named Einar, we'll just call him Lon's son, from making it home. And Einar had to kill everyone with him.
He slid the sword into his belt and found the waiting horse.

The horse died halfway through the mountains, and Einar's cloak stuck to him when, panting, he found the seven men, Lon's son's traveling companions, near the pass. They laughed at the witch's son.

They stopped laughing when he plunged his sword into one of their hearts. Lon's son staggered back as one by one Einar cut through the seven men.
Soon, only Einar and the son of Lon remained.

Feet made tracks in the snow that was already covering the pass, already dusting and hiding the bodies of Lon's men. This far north, this far from civilization, they were in troll country.

It couldn't be helped. Einar had to do everything he could to save his mother.
And so, this man had to die. But Einar was tired.
A teenager, he was a teenager who had just killed seven men.

Lon's son might not be a warrior, but he saw how his blows rang out and shook Einar's hand. He grinned.
Einar pushed back to the trees, beginning to despair. He would die.
His mother would die.

Then a hope. Bard.

Bard, the god of the snowfell.

There were rumors. rumors of an Icelander who lost someone close to him and became

something else. Someone who stalked the woods, both more and less than a man, someone who would help those in their time of need.
Bard, like when Heda, the troll woman, had cursed Ingjalt.

The trolls were bad in those times. It was the early days when Norse explorers could still land in the island, decide how much farmland they wanted, and it was theirs.

The trolls watched from the woods, stalked the forest, and Heda was a shapeshifter and one of the worst.

If any of the people ventured through her lands, they became her playthings, and their remains were flung out of the forest for their family to find when she was through.

If she didn't have people, she made do with livestock, like Inyald's livestock. A fisherman by trade, one of his cows disappeared, and when Heda was spotted, he followed her alone into the mountains.

Axe in hand, he pushed her back to the cold and craggy places of the world where, wounded, she would weigh the cost of coming into the world of the humans again.

She, though, had a parting gift for Ingyald, a fishing spot, a place teeming with so many fish that they couldn't all fit in the water. He should go alone, too, as was his custom.

A green and yellow smile stayed in the cave where Ingyald paused, hooked his axe on his belt, and left. The village marveled that he alone had returned, but he didn't speak to any of them.

He immediately went from the mountains to his boat, took up his oars, and began rowing. Outward, Ingyald was calm, serene.
Inside, he was screaming. He was prisoner in his own mind.

He couldn't stop himself. Rowing through the fog, Ingyald heard the splashing, that of the fish, the water churning with countless writhing bodies, then Then the traveler.

Ingyald collapsed when, having arrived at the fishing spot, he was released from one curse only to meet another.

A man, a scrawny, scraggly man worked in the next boat over.

His face was an island in a sea of red hair, and his rough, hairy arms seemed to blend with his cloak, and his hands betrayed no distraction by the interloper.

Where are we, and who are you? Ingyald rose in his boat, fish slapping the side. I'm Grimm, the stranger said.

Ingyald saw the flash of a small hammer at the stranger's belt as the fish poured from his net and into his boat.

No, you're not, Ingyald said.

The stranger nodded, looking back to his fish. No,

I'm not. Ingyald reached for his oars, but the stranger told him what he realized pretty quickly.
They wouldn't work. They moved through the water, but they wouldn't push the boat.

And y'all shouldn't know of this place. No human should.
Grim, or so the stranger called himself, said that he wasn't his father. He didn't play games with the humans.

His father kept a stable of them like pets, but what good would a human be against a wolf that would eat the sun, or a monster that encircled the world? Now to him humans were

nothing.

They were mice in the grain store, worms in a dog. They had no ability to think beyond their own appetites.
The fisherman, Ingjald, was going to die here.

So he had time to sit and contemplate his own mortality in the limited way humans could, namely by weeping and screaming.

Ingjald did not want to prove the cruel, red-bearded stranger with the hammer correct. He really didn't.

But Thor was right.

It wasn't long before, after trying to throw his body weight against the ship that wouldn't move no matter what, he craned his neck towards shore and cried out for someone, for anyone, for Bard, the guardian spirit of the snowfell, Bard, who was already on his way.

I wish I had a character to comment on the fact that we keep going deeper without resolving anything, all inception style, but we'll just have to settle for me saying that's what we're doing for anyone who hasn't caught on to my needlessly complicated way of telling the story.

And you can't know the story of Bard, God or spirit of the snow fell, without knowing the story of his father.

Dumb.

Yeah, so before getting into it,

Bard's father is named Dum. Bard's father is literally named D-U-M-B-Dum, and he was a king, so king dumb.

I'm 99% certain that it in no way relates to our modern English word dumb, and it's just an unfortunate homophone on the part of King Dumb, but he's dumb the king. He's king dumb.

Dumb, like most of the figures in Norse myth, Odin himself was part Joten, Dumb has a diverse ancestry.

His father was a Yoten, a giant, and his mother was part troll, which made him, according to the story, strapping, handsome, and good-tempered from his father's side, and shifty and vicious when things didn't go his way from his mother's side.

Basically, the perfect man for his time.

His parents weren't kings, but when the 12-year-old half-giant, half-troll, declares himself king in the north, in a region that no one particularly wanted anyway, because it was not only extremely cold, but infested with giants, ogres, trolls, and quote, other evil things, well, you'll let the 12-year-old have it.

Thus, Dum became King Dum of the North. Demonstrating that even the good guys are questionable, the 12-year-old abducted his first wife, Mjol, a human woman from Finland.

And when they were together for a year, so he was 13, they had their first child, Bard, named such because Dum's father had been Bard the Giant.

At 10, Bard was fostered with a mountain dweller named Dofri, who lived in the mountains of Doverfell, named such because of the mountain man foster dad who also taught magic.

And this is where Bard not only learns how to read and write, but how to fight, how to strategize, how to do magic.

Basically, this is where Christian Bale and Liam Neeson are sword fighting on a frozen lake. But a medieval superhero education wasn't the only thing that Bard found in Dofri's cave.

He also met Flamgerd, Dofri's daughter, the largest and most daring of women, taking the largest title from Bard's own mother.

There may be some stuff to read into there, but this is a quick backstory and I'm not Freud, so we're just going to move on.

Making a very direct point and telling us that Flamgerd was not particularly pretty, the story also seems to claim that it didn't matter.

Bard and Flamgerd married, and he stayed with Dofri until he was 18. When he finally left the protection and training of Dofri, Bard learned that his father was no longer king in the north.

King Dum was lured to a peace talk in the middle of a lake with ogres, and quickly learned why you don't go to a peace talk with ogres on their home turf.

More boats launched from the edges of the lake, ones driven by ogres with iron clubs, and even though Dum fought back with the Zors, having come unarmed, and managed to kill two-thirds of the attacking ogres, he was beaten to death, and his body left in the lake.

Their leader, Hardverk the Ogre, declared himself king in the north. And for about a year, that was true.
In that year, Bard learned two things.

One, that his mom had remarried, and that he had a half-brother named Thorkel, and he learned where Hardverk lived.

He and his brother burned the house down with Hardverk inside, and once again, Dum's family ruled the North. But it wasn't ogres that finally led Bard to Iceland, but the king with the good hair.

We've talked about Harold Fairhair. Harold actually started out Harold Tanglehair, no joke, because he had vowed not to comb his hair until he conquered all of Norway.

When he managed this, he finally combed his hair, and it was, reportedly, so long, luscious, and beautiful that his nickname changed. It also changed the fortunes of everyone in Norway.

Because Harold's ascension was a catalyst in so many stories and history, because Harold gave everyone a choice, pay taxes or get out.

And Bard, seeing that they could either stay and pay tribute to a king while also holding back the murder hordes of the icy north who were mad about their own leader being barbecued, or see what this Iceland place was all about.

Well, they chose the latter. They set sail west.

We'll see what's going on in Iceland and definitely get back to our two already running stories eventually, but that will be right after this.

Every day, it's the same thing for my treatment for opioid addiction. It reminds me of my addiction.

Every day, it's the same thing for my treatment for opioid addiction. Every day, it's the same thing.

Every day.

Day after day, does treatment for opioid addiction leave a bad taste? Visit rethinkyourrecovery.com to learn more and find a doctor. Do you like well-told stories of magic and wizards?

I mean, you are listening to this podcast, so hopefully. Do you like artfully crafted audio, a custom musical score, Dolby Atmos immersive sound, and an all-star full voice cast?

We actually don't have any of those, but that is why I am legitimately so excited for Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions.

These are full cast, unabridged, immersive audiobooks, and they really pull out all the stops. The thing I'm probably most excited about is the cast.

I mean, you have Hugh Laurie as Dumbledore, Matthew McFadden as Voldemort, James McVoy as Mad Eye Moody, Kieran Knightley as Professor Umbridge, Matt Berry and Simon Pegg are in it.

Kush Jumbo absolutely crushes it as narrator. I mean, it's awesome.
All this is in Dolby Atmos, which if you didn't know, makes like a three-dimensional audio environment.

So you can hear footsteps off in the distance and hogwarts and it seems like it's in your house. And you can almost feel the golden snitch whooshing past your head.

This is the perfect way to experience the stories all over again if you know them or to introduce them to a new generation. It is truly Harry Potter like you've never heard it before.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is available now and new audiobooks in the series will release every month. Go to audible.com slash hp1 and start listening today.

That's audible.com slash hp1 to listen on Audible. When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for a Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry and put your twist on tradition.

It's a refreshing way to shake things up this sip in season and only for a limited time. Sprite, obey your thirst.
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Fine. You spent over $600 on takeout last month.
I can't cook. You know this.
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It was a land grab in Iceland.

And while saying that the only people groups present were trolls feels like kind of a mean-spirited colonial thing, as far as I can tell, Iceland was completely uninhabited before the Norse started showing up.

Some writings suggest that there were Irish monks there first, but they were long gone by the time Bard and Company showed up. So they chose their plots and named things.

They set out sacrifices for good fortune at a place that, as of the writing of the saga in the 14th century, became known as the Church of Trolls.

I guess it was a long voyage, and a bunch of Viking guys relieving themselves off the side of the boat was enough volume to wash up on shore to become, in Icelandic, Dritvik, meaning a very particular, very stinky type of inlet.

A cave with an echo became singing cave, and the place where Bard first bathed naked became Bartharlaug.

So the people began to build a society on this island, on the edge of the world. But the trolls had other ideas.

They still lived in the hills and the mountains and the forests, and they stalked the footsteps of all who wandered too far, and they slaughtered beached whales.

Bard had heard of two trolls, Sval and Thufa, members of their own group who had fled from the ships the moment they docked and, quote, turned troll.

I can't seem to find much on this, and Bard's saga is really my first time encountering it.

I thought trolls were a distinct category of mythological creature, but maybe the wilderness, over time, can work on someone until they're starkly different from who they were when they left.

Regardless, Sval and Thufa were trolls now, and they were stealing Bard's whale. A beached whale was like a jackpot.

Meat, oil, and you didn't even have to hunt it, which was why when, late in the afternoon, Bard heard he had a whale down on one of his beaches and he rode for the beach.

And there he found Sval eating his whale. It was a long and brutal fight.
But like the race does not always go to the swiftest, the fight doesn't always go to the strongest.

The troll had a wild and ancient strength coursing through him. Bard, however, had training.
After hours, Bard gained the advantage, and he didn't squander it.

Pleading with him not to, Bard actually broke Sval over his knee, like Bane broke Batman, but unlike Batman, Sval didn't recover in a montage of bodyweight exercises and self-discovery.

He died there, on the beach, drowning slowly as the tide came in. Returning with his meat and oil, Bard was victorious, but found his house in disarray, even at this late slash early hour.

It was there that he learned the news that would change his life forever. His daughter, Helga, was gone.

The children had been playing on the beaches in a place called Barnar Rivers, or Children's Rivers. Bard had remarried after the death of his first wife and, altogether, had six daughters.

His half-brother, Thorkel, had two sons.

Helga led the girls, and Red Cloak led the pair, and they would play a version of King of the Hill, or, I guess, Yarl of the Rivers.

It's said that Thorkel's sons wanted to win because they thought themselves stronger. They didn't, though, and Bard's daughters wouldn't allow themselves to be subdued.

In the end, it was an accident, really. Red Cloak, Thorkel's son, grappled with Helga, and both tumbled down a snowy hill, with Helga rolling to a longer stop in the end.

Even in early spring, it was still cold enough that the ice was breaking up, and as Helga finally pushed to pick herself up, she heard a crack and felt a bob. The ice she was on was moving.

The panic in Red Cloak's eyes almost matched her own as, coming to his senses just just past the crack on the coast, he rose.

The rest of her siblings and cousins nearly tumbled down the hill to come to her aid, but by the time they made it, and when Helga was on her feet, the ice float was twenty feet out.

Too dangerous to swim in these temperatures. Both Helga and her siblings watched each other shrink, knowing that they would never see one another again.

Bard shook with rage. His daughter was dead.

To be marooned marooned in the open ocean with no provisions was difficult enough, but to be marooned on an ice float, which would only stay seaworthy if it stayed in dangerously cold waters, that was it.

His daughter was gone. It was too late to go try to save her, but it wasn't too late to avenge her.
Thorkel at that time was out at sea.

He'd gotten an early start that spring, but his sons, Red Cloak and Sylvie, were outside their house, faces streaked with with tears. They tried to run, but Bard was faster.

They tried to fight, but he was stronger. He shoved one under each arm and made for the mountains.
Red Cloak was thrown down a ravine so deep that he was dead before he hit the bottom, somehow.

Maybe it's worse dying from terror than being dashed against the rocks, but Solvey would know the second. He was thrown from a cliff.

Neither child survived, and I do say child because they were eleven and twelve. And Bard, well,

Bard waited.

He returned to his brother's home, the servants and enslaved people having fled in terror, and Bard simply sat down at his brother's table and waited for Thorkel to return from his journey.

He sat for days until, throwing open his door, Thorkel found Bard there, and the pair not bothering to greet one another, brother flew at brother. Both had lost children.

Both were enraged, but Bard had trained in the mountains while his brother was pampered in a king's house. It wasn't close.
Bard had his brother pinned, but couldn't kill him. Well,

death versus living in the indescribable mental and emotional pain of having both of your children killed by your brother and the astounding physical pain of having your femur shattered when said brother stomped on on it and left you screaming, leaving him alive actually seems kind of worse in the situation.

Thorkel, from that day on, after dragging himself a couple miles for help like Daniel Plainview, was known as Thorkel Boundleg.

Bard, though, disappeared after that day. The richest, strongest, and most powerful man on the island just seemed to fade away, evaporate into the darkness.

The last anyone saw him, he was trudging off into the mountains, wearing a cloak and a cowl, carrying two metal hooks. Everyone who dared to follow said that he simply disappeared.

But the strangest things began happening after that. Well, not really stranger than actual trolls and secret silent elves and really everything else on Iceland.

Anyway, one time, a hunter's perch gave way beneath him, and, dangling on a precipice, his gloved fingers fingers began to unhook from the root, one by one.

As the last few slipped, a hand gripped his wrist and hoisted him, bodily, back onto the ledge. As he caught his breath, he thought he saw a cloaked figure dissolve into the snowstorm.

The hunter was the first who had this experience, but he wasn't the last.

Whether because Bard wanted to make up for what he did to his nephews, or because he didn't want what happened to his daughter to ever happen again, not while he lived and had the power to stop it, people were soon calling out to Bard, Spirit of the Snowfell.

He's also called Bard God of the Snowfell, but I think in the medieval Nordic sense of the word, it works either way.

I like spirit most because while it doesn't necessarily imply more power than the average person, it does give the sense of him being somehow everywhere and nowhere.

But since we've explained Bard, we'll get back to the boat.

Thor was long gone at this point, and Ingjal was left to die, shivering and huddled in the bottom of the boat when, from the mists, he heard the rowing.

Sitting up, he squinted, and darkness took the form of a pointed cowl and a walrus skin cape. Only the man's beard was visible, flowing from the hood.

Bard brought his oars aboard and pulled out one of his hooked staffs to draw Ingyald's boat to him, in order to lash it and tow it in, but it stayed rooted in that spot.

Ingyald heard a Hm as the boat pulled alongside his own, and a gloved hand pulled him aboard. The figure rowed back toward shore.

You're Bard, aren't you? the man said. Bard, spirit of the snowfell.
Bard's gaze didn't leave the approaching shore.

Halting, the man said he heard about him, about his legend, about about his daughter.

Bard sighed, but again, didn't look at the man.

Surviving all that time.

Ending up in Norway of all places.

Who could have imagined? Ingjalt laughed, still trembling, though this time only half from the cold. Bard stopped rowing and turned to the man.
What did he say?

A week. A week of chipping ice off the float and putting it in her mouth, knowing that, in the brutal tug of war between dehydration and hypothermia, Helga was momentarily choosing the latter.

She had no control over where she was going, but she would survive as long as she could.

Sleep was the only place she could find respite, and it was during sleep that her float lurched to a stop in Greenland.

She awoke, confused, to spears at her side and men furiously calling her a troll.

She was larger than everyone, given that she actually had some fraction of troll and Jotun blood, but she didn't fight back when they looped the ropes around her wrists and brought her to their leader.

Eric the Red, and yes, that Eric the Red, father of Leif Erickson, as you can probably guess by his name, Leif Erickson was the first European to set foot on continental North America.

For now, though, he was just a kid running around his father's settlement, the settlement being the first one in Greenland.

And Eric the Red was reasonable, at least in this regard, saying that, guys, she obviously wasn't a troll, just because she showed up in a weird way. Helga ate ravenously.

As Eric announced that he was under her protection, seriously stopped trying to burn her.

And they did, eventually, stop trying to burn her, though she never really shook the reputation that she was a troll.

But for some, like the Icelander Skeggy, who was part of Eric's expedition, it didn't matter. It's said that he took over her protection and that she shared his bed.

While in the modern day, a grown married man, quote-unquote, protecting a girl who obviously wasn't older than a teen by her becoming his lover, would in no way fly, there is a lot to suggest that Helga did, in fact, accept the situation and had love for Skeggy.

Helga, for her part, had now seen more of the world than Iceland.

She had seen a colder, icier place, but really, with Leif and his crew, she was an equal. She was feared.

She was like a Valkyrie, which must be why, the following season when it was time to leave, she didn't go with the merchant ships to Iceland. She went with Skeggy to Norway.

And of course, on the way, they did not stop at Skeggy's home because, you know, wife and children, but instead, they found their place in the north, in a warm cabin where no one would disturb them.

And Helga didn't know this, but she was in her father's father's, remember King Dum's, old kingdom. There, she used her own troll blood to fight those who had killed her grandfather.

Relishing in battle, wild and free, she spent the days fighting, exploring, and adventuring, and the nights with the man she loved. She felt complete until she awoke to her hands bound.

She tried to struggle her way from the gag, but she saw the form darkening the door, one that was thrown open to the night, and Skeggy with a bloody head wound next to her, breathing if unconscious.

The cloak and cowl were darker than the night sky behind it. The figure said he was her father.
He was here to rescue her.

We'll see that Bard and Helga have very different ideas of what it means to be rescued, but that will, once again, be read after this. Do you like well-told stories of magic and wizards?

I mean, you are listening to this podcast, so hopefully. Do you like artfully crafted audio, a custom musical score, Dolby Atmos immersive sound, and an all-star full voice cast?

We actually don't have any of those, but that is why I am legitimately so excited for Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions.

These are full cast, unabridged, immersive audiobooks, and they really pull out all the stops. The thing I'm probably most excited about is the cast.

I mean, you have Hugh Laurie as Dumbledore, Matthew McFadden as Voldemort, James McVoy as Mad Eye Moody, Kiera Knightley as Professor Umbridge, Matt Berry and Simon Pegger in it.

Kush Jumbo absolutely crushes it as narrator. I mean, it's awesome.
All this is in Dolby Atmos, which if you didn't know, makes like a three-dimensional audio environment.

So you can hear footsteps off in the distance and Hogwarts, and it seems like it's in your house. And you can almost feel the golden snitch whooshing past your head.

This is the perfect way to experience the stories all over again if you know them, or to introduce them to a new generation. It is truly Harry Potter like you've never heard it before.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is available now, and new audiobooks in the series will release every month. Go to audible.com/slash hp1 and start listening today.

That's audible.com/slash hp1 to listen on audible. When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for a sprite winter spice cranberry and put your twist on tradition.

It's a refreshing way to shake things up this sip in season and only for a limited time. Sprite, obey your thirst.
Do you like well-told stories of magic and wizards? I mean,

you are listening to this podcast, so hopefully. Do you like artfully crafted audio, a custom musical score, Dolby Atmos immersive sound, and an all-star full-voice cast?

We actually don't have any of those, but that is why I am legitimately so excited for Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions.

These are full cast, unabridged, immersive audiobooks, and they really pull out all the stops. The thing I'm probably most excited about is the cast.

I mean, you have Hugh Laurie as Dumbledore, Matthew McFadden as Voldemort, James McVoy as Matt Eye Moody, Kieran Knightley as Professor Umbridge, Matt Berry and Simon Pegg are in it.

Kush Jumbo absolutely crushes it as narrator. I mean, it's awesome.
All this is in Dolby Atmos, which if you didn't know, makes like a three-dimensional audio environment.

So you can hear footsteps off in the distance and Hogwarts and it seems like it's in your house. And you can almost feel the golden snitch whooshing past your head.

This is the perfect way to experience the stories all over again if you know them or to introduce them to a new generation. It is truly Harry Potter like you've never heard it before.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is available available now and new audiobooks in the series will release every month. Go to audible.com slash HP1 and start listening today.

That's audible.com slash HP1 to listen on Audible.

When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry and put your twist on tradition.

A bold cranberry and winter spice flavors fusion, Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry is a refreshing way to shake things up this sipping season, and only for a limited time.

Sprite, obey your thirst.

That she didn't feel like she needed rescuing was immaterial to Bard. She felt like she was living her best life, hunting trolls and living with the man she loved in the wild north.

Bard was of the opinion that she hadn't thought this through.

He thought that there was no future for her as, essentially, the teenage thrall of a married adult who was, at best, using her for monster extermination and other things that are pretty obvious, but we hopefully don't need to spell them out.

She was coming home. She would thank him for this later.

Oh, and also I killed all your cousins, brutally maimed your uncle, our family hates us, and we live in a cave and do hero work because we feel bad about the first three items on that list.

Exploring the wild frontier with the man you maybe love and having a life of adventure and meaning being very different from remaining stuck in a cave with your surly dad, Helga and Bard had issues.

Bard awoke one morning to Helga. standing in the entryway of the cave, telling her dad that she was leaving and not to follow.

Bard let her go and sat back in his cave, his cave that now felt colder, harder, and more remote than ever.

Everything he had done was for her memory, but now she was alive, and who he had become pushed her away. Bard was alone.

Einar had called upon Bard, guardian spirit of the snowfell, and then, well, he accepted his fate.

If he was to die here, he was to die reflecting on the fact that he had done all this to save his mother and the story that opened the episode, and that, if he fell, Lon's son was always meant to best him.

Then something

kind of silly happened.

Lon's son, his axe aloft, ready to find its resting place in Einar's skull, paused,

and his pants began to fall down.

There was a quiet tearing, only heard because the snow in the clearing muffled all but Einar's panting, and Einar could see that Lon's son's, well, his pants were falling off.

Someone had cut his belt from behind. Lon's son dropped his hands to pull up his pants, and Einar didn't hesitate.

He found his opening and opened up Lon's son's belly with his dagger, the steaming blood cratering the snow underneath him.

When it was all over, Bard, standing behind the body of Lon's son, stepped forward and took the young man's shaking hands, helping him to his feet. He looked like he could use a warm place to sleep.

Einar was

surprised. Bard's cave was warm.
It was happy. It was full of daughters.
Five out of six of Bard's daughters lived in the cave with him. It was surprisingly cozy.
You live here with your family.

I do now, Bard said. He bade the man to sit and asked Thorkel to get the porridge.
Bard's brother limped over.

Thorkel?

But we thought he was dead. Wandered off into the mountains one night.
Everyone thinks you hate each other, right?

Einar was perplexed by the plot developments that seemingly happened during a gap in the narrative. The brothers laughed.
Hated each other. Past tense.

But why and how? How did you ever get past what happened? The how was easier than the why. Thorkel was happy to never speak to Bard again.

His sons were gone, his leg leg was broken, his life was immeasurably more difficult, and his future non-existent because of Bard.

Bard acknowledged all this when, on the day after Helga left him, he visited his brother's farm. Standing with his back to empty barns and weed-ridden fields, Bard said he was sorry.

Telling himself he was doing it as vengeance for his daughter, He had killed Thorkel's sons out of wrath. He did it because it made him feel something else other than despair for losing Helga.

It was wrong. He was sorry, and he would work the rest of his life to earn his brother's forgiveness.
Thorkel sat for a long while, then looked up. He said he didn't forgive Bard.

But if Bard wanted to come back next week, maybe they could have lunch. Bard smiled.
Lunch. Lunch was good.
One lunch turned into another. Dinners turned into drinks.

Soon, Bard did earn Thorkel's forgiveness, and Thorkel limped off to live with his brother in the mountains.

It was with Thorkel's urging that Bard brought his daughters, and the cave brimming with warmth and family, everyone was happy. But Bard still thought about Helga, and

that whole situation made him sad and angry again, but hoped that there would be time for Helga to forgive him. In the meantime, though,

well, how about a little vengeance? He found himself in a place called Reichier, in Midfjord.

I was able to find two places called Midfjord, and one called Reichier, and no Reichiers in either Midfjord's, but essentially, it was in the north, and it was pretty cold.

It was close to December, and Bard saw the cabin of Skeggy, and yes, that's Skeggy.

Having returned from his travels abroad after Helga's mysterious disappearance that time he woke up after all that head trauma, Skeggy decided that he should do the right thing and go home to his family, mainly because he had a wife and children at home waiting for him, also mainly because his giant teenage lover who fought all the trolls was gone and trolls were scary and he didn't want to fight them alone or at all.

When I

Skeggy's 16-year-old son, opened the door, I didn't know any of this. And Bard said hello.
He was a traveler and the mountains to the south were impassable.

He was just looking for a place to stay for the winter.

The winter? Ide, the son of Skeggy asked. Bard's eyes seemed to glow under his cowl.
He was a whole head taller than the scrawny teen and almost twice as wide. Bard said, Yeah.

Was that a problem?

Ide said, no, it was just a a big ask. Bard laughed.
The kid made too little of himself. He was an up-and-coming young man.
He should make good decisions.

Like, say, if a traveler comes by who can spread the kid's reputation far and wide, just for a pittance, a place to sleep for the winter, well, that is better than the alternative.

Come inside, I had swallowed, and Bard ducked as he entered the turf longhouse, the door closing out the wind behind them.

When Skeggy saw his new guest's size and his massive metal hooks that he carried, and also that he was already inside the longhouse, why was he already inside the longhouse?

Skeggy didn't have a problem with it either. Bard introduced himself as GEST Guest,

because he was a guest.

As far as I can tell in Icelandic, it literally means guest, but the hosts could no more get guest to stop being guests by telling him his real name than by getting him to leave, so they accepted the name guest and Skeggy blinked as his daughter, Thordis,

smiled and guest smiled back. As guest took her hand and kissed it.
And she blushed. Um,

what was happening here?

And yes, the story doesn't spell it out, but it's pretty clear why Bard chose the house at the start of the winter. The phrase, turnabout as fair play, would seem to fit here.

Granted, Skeggy's daughter is in a less vulnerable position than Helga was, and the saga is clear to point out that she was 15. which is actually the modern day age of consent in Iceland.

So, in today's world and the medieval world, it would appear it was all above board, legally. It does seem excessively cruel, though, mainly to the parents who were there the whole time.

Ide might have thought it was gross, but he benefited from guest's presence more than anyone else in the long run, because, well, when Guest wasn't beneath a blanket with Thoris, he was teaching Eyde law.

And from the following spring onward, Eyd was known as Law Eyd.

The following spring, the kids said a tearful goodbye to their guest, Guest, and the parents said a tense yet hopeful good riddance when Guest finally ceased being their guest and Skeggy could breathe again for about a month and a half until Thorndis started showing.

Even before the baby was born, Thordis knew that it was a boy. And she wasn't wrong.
Come autumn, her son was born, and she decided to name him after his father.

The baby would be called Guest, and Guest is, well, actually, kind of the main character of this saga.

Next week, we'll get into the story of Guest, son of Bard, in a story that includes Draugr, more giants, and yes, Odin being Odin in the most classically Odin way possible.

If it seems a little annoying that we took so long to get to the hero of the story, and just talked about the hero's father and grandfather, well, that's actually one of the most saga ways we could have told the story.

The only thing that would make it more Norse saga is to stop the action dead in the middle of the story and just talk about a long legal dispute.

This is the type of story I was tempted to skip, but I kept it for two reasons.

One, It's an interesting case of an Icelandic saga finding forgiveness and reconciliation when a lot of times the feuds keep going until everyone is dead.

And two, as a 30-something with strong opinions regarding Batman comics, it was nearly impossible for me to pass on a story of a mysterious hero who, after a tragic event, donned an actual cape and cowl, operated out of a cave, and moved in the shadows to save people so the traumatic event didn't happen again.

Instead of the membership thing, I have a quick request. I have a poll in the site about the best way to connect with everyone outside of the podcast.

For example, I've been getting emails here and there about the feed not working.

Instead of mentioning it on the show and having it be this big thing, oh, please let me know if you're having problems with the feed though. It would be good if we had a different way to connect.

And social media has only gotten more fragmented in the past few years. And I'm curious where everyone is.
So there's a poll on the site where you can tell me what way works for you.

And I really want to know how I can get messages out there, like when we take a week off, and then how to best hear from you. So the poll is up.
There's a link in the show notes.

Please let me know and I'll try to be more active that way. Thanks so much.

The creature this week is the stalo, from Lapland, in Finland.

We've told the story of the golem on this podcast, 107 AMB, and two things really go into the story of the golem, the cost and the purpose.

If the purpose outweighs the cost, you should make that golem. That's definitely the case with the golem of Prague.
I'm not so sure it's the case with the stalo.

The stalo is a golem-like creature, so inanimate objects that from magic or other means come together to make a strong humanoid figure. But instead of being made from dirt or mud, it's made from turf.

You see, a shaman would lay the turf out on the ground in a humanoid form, and this was from a time when the shamans fought each other for power and influence, or, as one source says, out of spite.

Okay, so shaman battles sound really cool, but the actual antagonism was really just petty annoyance.

The extent of the stallow's activities against a rival shaman once it was created was sneaking around their house, knocking food off their plate, or making their fire go out.

And because of the type of magic the Stallo used involved whistling, it was fairly easy for a skilled shaman to detect it. And I'm still, personally, on board.

Sometimes you don't want to hurt someone, you just want to like hide their shoes when they're running late or give them a flat tire or a power outage, say when they have to post a podcast episode and make them stay up until 2 a.m.

waiting for it to come back on. I think it actually shows a good amount of professional courtesy among the Finnish shamans that they just try to annoy each other and not actually hurt everybody.

For me though, it comes down to the cost because to breathe over the stallow and bring it to life, it will cost half of your remaining life, which is a ridiculously high cost for what amounts to an annoying roommate.

Also, if the stallow is discovered and killed, the shaman that kills it gets half of the life from the stallow, which seems like an even worse deal because there is no story in which the stallow isn't discovered by a rival shaman.

I can't fathom a time when the stallow would be worth it except, circling back to one source, out of spite.

It hurts you more than it hurts them, but it still hurts them, so I guess that makes it worth it.

I first encountered this creature as a golem-like monster, but there is another version that lives out in the forest and eats people, and doesn't appear to be made out of turf.

They are not terribly smart, which is why, despite their appetite and strength, humans nearly always outwit them. Which still makes me wonder why you want to make one ever.
Really, I'm asking.

While you're on the website letting me know what social media platform to use, let me know what petty annoyance you would use the stallo for.

That's it for this time. Myths and Legends is by Jason and Carissa Weiser.
Our theme song is by Broke for Free, and the Creature of the Week music is by Steve Colms.

There are links to even more of the music we used in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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