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An Old Norse Saga Guide to Surviving the Holidays

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, but between treacherous weather, family politics, and dietary decisions, it can also be a tricky time to navigate. To help you get through the season, here are some top tips from the Old Norse sagas on surviving the holidays.

Drinking with the Devil. Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, AM 673 a III 4to (Teiknibók), 18v. Image from handrit.is

Pick the right day to celebrate

If you lived in the Middle Ages, deciding when to host your winter festivities could be tricky. For a long time, as Scandinavia gradually converted to Christianity, the winter months saw the coexistence of two different Yule festivals: Christian Christmas and pagan Jól. The latter was likely celebrated differently across the region but said in one king’s saga, Hákonar saga góða, to begin on midwinter night and continue for three nights. These diverging celebrations became a point of friction during the conversion process so, around the middle of the tenth century, the Christian Norwegian king, Hákon the Good, attempted to consolidate the two. According to his saga, he decreed that ‘observance of Yule should begin at the same time as Christian people observed Christmas’ (97).

Although not without its challenges, this was a clever move. We can see its legacy several decades later in Óláfs saga helga, which describes the changing customs of a man named Sigurðr:

During the pagan period, he was accustomed to hold three sacrificial banquets every year, one at the winter nights, the second at midwinter, the third in the summer. And when he accepted Christianity, he still kept up his established custom with the banquets. Then, in the autumn he held a great party for his friends, and also a Yule feast in the winter and then again invited many people; a third banquet he held at Easter. (127)

Once you’ve settled on a date to celebrate, make sure you invite the right people – and if you get an invitation to someone else’s Yule-feast, it’s bad form to not show up. Some time after Sigurðr’s death, his brother Þórir invited his son Ásbjǫrn to a Yule feast, but Ásbjǫrn refused the invitation. Þórir took this as a personal slight and in return made such great mockery of Ásbjǫrn and his expeditions that Ásbjǫrn sullenly ‘stayed at home during the winter and went to no parties’ (131). A sad fate indeed.

Choose the perfect gifts

To be a powerful king in medieval Scandinavia, you had to surround yourself with groups of loyal retainers who would feast with you, fight for you, and uphold your rules. This loyalty needed to be rewarded, and Yule was the perfect time for kings and other powerful men to shower their best retainers with gifts. There’s even a term for gifts given in this season: ‘jólagjǫf’. In Óláfs saga helga, for instance, it is said that the king had a custom of ‘making great preparations, […] gathering together his treasures to give friendly gifts on the eighth evening of Yule’ (199). One of these gifts was a beautiful gold-adorned sword, given to his skald Sigvatr. This was said to be a fine, enviable treasure, though perhaps not as enviable as Óláfr’s earlier gift to Brynjólfr, which he received with a rather unimaginative verse:

Bragningr gaf mér
brand ok Vettaland.

The ruler gave me a sword and Vettaland (an important estate). (51)

Yule-gifts were also an important way to cement friendships and alliances in Scandinavian and Icelandic society, for which clothes appear to have been a popular choice. According to Laxdæla saga, King Haraldr Fairhair once gifted Óláfr Peacock ‘an entire suit of clothes made from scarlet’ (30). Even more impressive is a set of Yule-gifts exchanged between the Norwegian Arinbjǫrn and the Icelander Egill in Egils saga:

As a customary Yuletide gift, [Arinbjorn] gave Egil a silk gown with ornate gold embroidery and gold buttons all the way down, which was cut especially to fit Egil’s frame. He also gave him a complete set of clothes, cut from English cloth in many colours. Arinbjorn gave all manner of tokens of friendship at Yuletide to the people who visited him, since he was exceptionally generous and firm of character. (134)

Of course, before you splash out on expensive swords or clothes, you need to make sure the receiver is worthy of your gift. This is what King Raknarr did on the eve before Yule in the semi-legendary Bárðar saga snæfellsáss, entering the hall of King Óláfr Tryggvason, decked out with armour, helmet, sword, gold necklace, and gold ring. After going round the room to no response, he finally announces scathingly: “Here have I come and nothing at all has been offered to me by this great figure. I shall be more generous for I shall offer to award those treasures that I have here now to that man who dares to take them from me — but there is no one like that here.” (261)

Raknarr’s passive aggressive gifting strategy may not be the best example to follow, particularly as he turns out to be a reanimated corpse who must be slain by the hero Gestr. Instead, why not take inspiration from the troll-woman Hít in the same saga (254), whose Yule party favor for Gestr is a wonderfully loyal dog!

Feast and be merry!

Once you’ve bought and wrapped your presents, the next step is to plan your menu. The sagas are full of Yule feasts, although they rarely provide specific details of what is actually eaten. At one point in Eiríks saga rauða, for example, Eiríkr is hosting a number of voyagers over the winter at his home in Greenland, but starts to become gloomy as Yule approaches for he does not have the resources to throw them all a proper holiday feast. One of the voyagers, Karlsefni, comes to his rescue, offering him use of their provisions:

“[...] We’ve malt and flour and grain aboard our ships, and you may help yourself to them as you will, to prepare a feast worthy of your generous hospitality.”

Eirik accepted this. Preparations for a Yule feast began, which proved to be so bountiful that men could scarcely recall having seen its like. (11)

What exactly was in that grand feast goes entirely unstated, but it clearly involved some kind of malt, flour, and grain.Hákonar saga góða does suggest that horse meat was an important part of pagan Yule and other feasts. One winter, the saga relates, King Hákon attended a Yule feast with a large number of farmers from Þrándheimr, where he was very reluctantly forced to eat a few pieces of horse-liver and ‘drank all the toasts that the farmers poured for him without the sign of the Cross’ (102). It’s never good to offend your hosts — especially when they are armed.

One way to get into the sacred spirit of Christmas in advance of the gluttony to come is to fast in preparation. Indeed, not doing so could have dire consequences. In Grettis saga, the ill-tempered Glámr demanded meat from his wife on the eve of Yule. She tried to dissuade him, saying, “It’s not the Christian custom to eat on this day, because tomorrow is the first day of Christmas. It is our duty to fast today.” (101) Glámr scoffed at this, claiming a preference for the old pagan ways, and tucked into his meat. That very night, he was found dead in the snow and, even worse, eventually rose again to haunt the area.

As Christianity became the dominant religion in Scandinavia, later kings were less accepting of the old customs. One winter, King Óláfr the Holy got word that the farmers of Innþrœndir had been holding forbidden midwinter sacrificial feasts, and summoned a representative to explain themselves. But the quick-thinking man had the perfect excuse:

“We held,” he says, “Yule banquets and in many places in the districts drinking parties. The farmers do not make such scant provision for their Yule banquets that there is not a lot left over, and that was what they were drinking, lord, for a long time afterwards. At Mærin there is a large centre and huge buildings, and extensive settlements round about. People find it good to drink together there for enjoyment in large numbers.” (117)

The king remained suspicious, but could not fault the farmer’s logic. For, if there’s one thing about Christmas that everyone can agree on, it’s the importance of alcohol.

Drink… but not too much

When King Hákon the Good ordered the convergence of Yule and Christmas, he had one condition of how to celebrate: each person was to consume a measure of ale (16.2 litres, according to one estimate) and celebrate for as long as the ale lasted, or else pay a fine (97).

Drinking is a key component of most Yule feasts described across the sagas. Even core principles like seeking vengeance for fallen kin must come second. In Hákonar saga herðibreiðs, for instance, King Ingi relates that he told one man about the killing of another, sure that he would be spurred to vengeance, but ‘those people behaved as if nothing was as important as that Yule drinking feast and it could not be interrupted’ (227).

In fact, throughout the sagas, Yule-drinking (‘jóla-drykkja’) causes all sorts of problems. According to Óláfs saga helga, a Yule drinking competition in Jamtaland naturally led to bickering between Norwegians and Swedes, and the spilling of secrets as ‘the ale spoke through the Jamtr’ (172). In Eyrbyygja saga, Þórólfr bægifótr got his thralls drunk at Yule and convinced them to burn down an enemy’s house (168–69). The troll-woman’s Yule-feast in Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss steadily deteriorated as the drinking got heavier, leading to a rowdy game, a bloody nose, and a long feud (253).

Even without alcohol, Yule became a time of battle and slaughter throughout the sagas of kings. It is only in Magnúss saga blinda ok Haralds gilla that the two titular warring kings accepted a Christmas truce ‘because of the sanctity of the time’, although Magnúss did use this opportunity to fortify his town and ‘no more than three days over Yule were kept sacred so that no work was done’ (175).

This is a good example for academics everywhere: as much as we might feel the need to work over the holidays, there comes a time to put down our books, buy some gifts, and feast with family, friends, and nemeses — even if it is for just three days over Yule. If you manage to do so, you might just make it through the season alive.

Ashley Castelino, DPhil
Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow 
Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame 

Bibliography

Bard’s Saga [Bárðar saga snæfellsáss]. Translated by Sarah M. Anderson. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, edited by Viðar Hreinsson. Vol. 2. Leifur Eiríksson, 1997.

Egil’s Saga [Egils saga]. Translated by Bernard Scudder. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, edited by Viðar Hreinsson. Vol. 1. Leifur Eiríksson, 1997.

Erik the Red’s Saga [Eiríks saga rauða]. Translated by Keneva Kunz. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, edited by Viðar Hreinsson. Vol. 1. Leifur Eiríksson, 1997.

The Saga of Grettir the Strong [Grettis saga]. Translated by Bernard Scudder. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, edited by Viðar Hreinsson. Vol. 2. Leifur Eiríksson, 1997.

The Saga of the People of Eyri [Eyrbyggja saga]. Translated by Judy Quinn. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, edited by Viðar Hreinsson. Vol. 5. Leifur Eiríksson, 1997.

The Saga of the People of Laxardal [Laxdæla saga]. Translated by Keneva Kunz. In The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, edited by Viðar Hreinsson. Vol. 5. Leifur Eiríksson, 1997.

Snorri Sturluson. Hákonar saga góða. In Heimskringla, translated by Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. Vol. 1. Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011.

Snorri Sturluson. Hákonar saga herðibreiðs. In Heimskringla, translated by Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. Vol. 3. Viking Society for Northern Research, 2015.

Snorri Sturluson. Óláfs saga helga. In Heimskringla, translated by Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes. Vol. 2. Viking Society for Northern Research, 2014.

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Facts and Fiction: Rewriting the First Crusade with Dr. Thomas Smith

A few weeks ago, Ben and Will sat down with Dr. Thomas Smith, a leading expert on the Crusades, having authored several books on the subject, including, most recently, Rewriting the First Crusade: Epistolary Culture in the Middle Ages (Boydell Press, 2024) and The Egyptian Crusade: Holy War on the Nile, forthcoming with Yale University Press in 2026. Dr. Smith holds the position of Keeper of the Scholars and Head of Oxbridge at Rugby School, one of the UK’s most historic private boarding schools, founded in 1567. He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.

Ben and Will chat with Dr. Smith about how letter-writing was approached in the medieval world and the role it played during the Crusades. Today, letters are typically written—if they are written at all—by a sole author to be read by a sole addressee, in private. However, while we have discrete channels for public and private communication, in the medieval world—where geography placed real limitations on the sharing of information—the two would often intertwine. And so, letters were more communal, even when addressed by a singular author to a singular addressee. For example, a letter sent by a crusade leader to his wife back home would, first of all, likely be written not just by the husband in isolation but dialogically with his scribes, and, second, would be intended to be read not just by the wife in private but aloud to the entire community, to be copied down and shared widely.

The participatory character of the production and reception of letters not only points to an ambiguity between the private and the public, but also between fact and fiction, as the truth of something emerges in its dynamic narration and re-narration across time and space. Dr. Smith thinks that these ambiguities, when taken seriously, challenge certain modern assumptions we hold about the Crusades and the medieval world in general. For example, we are sometimes inclined to imagine the average medieval person as simpler and more credulous than the average modern person. But what if these ambiguities that infuse the medieval world were owing not to a lack of sophistication but, rather, a different kind of sophistication? Dr. Smith thinks that we have every reason to believe the latter, that the medieval person is just as critical and curious about the world around her as the modern person, but is so through different lenses—theological rather than empirical-scientific, for example. That the medieval person was less inclined to divide fact from fiction is thus not owing to a failure of conviction or capacity for truth—quite the opposite.

In addition to discussing his research, Ben and Will also chat with Dr. Smith about the way he balances a heavy teaching load at the Rugby School with his writing and research, of which he is able to accomplish a great deal, even with his limited time. The conversation concludes with a refreshing note on the importance of self-care in academia.

Thanks for listening, and be sure to stay tuned for more!

Transcript – SmithDownload
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Laycus of Amalfi on the Azymes

As a continuation of sorts to my last post, on Peter Damiani’s reaction to the events of 1054, I’ve decided to take a look at another churchman writing on the same topic a few years later, a certain Laycus of Amalfi, who undertook to compose a defense of the use of unleavened bread (azymes) in the Eucharist around the year 1070 [1]. His work took the form of a letter, addressed to Sergius, a Latin-rite abbot living in Constantinople. According to the text, Laycus had been motivated to write by reports from his correspondent and from other Latins that they had been completely surrounded by those who were trying to persuade them to abandon the Latin liturgical usage in favor of the Greek [2].

Other than his name, virtually nothing else is known about the author of the text. The sole surviving manuscript witness (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale 1360 / 9706-25, 116v-119r) gives only the identification “a letter of Laycus, cleric” (“epistola layci clerici”), a seeming contradiction in terms that leaves us with the assumption that “Laycus” is a given name. Anton Michel, who edited the text in 1939, notes further that monastics of the time tended to identify themselves as such: the absence of a word like “frater” in self-reference suggests that the author was not in monastic orders [3]. Even the origins of the author in the city of Amalfi are conjectural, and they are based more on his presumed links to Abbot Sergius, who was likely the leader of the monastery of St. Mary of the Amalfitans in Constantinople, an establishment attested by Peter Damiani around the same time[4].

The famous bronze doors of the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Amalfi, manufactured in Constantinople around the year 1060. Photo credits Berthold Werner, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The manuscript that preserves this text is also one of the few early copies of the work of Humbert, Cardinal of Silva Candida, and, as it happens, it is from Humbert’s writings that our Laycus drew most of his arguments in favor of the azymes. The core argument, in Laycus as in Humbert, was an appeal to the example set by Christ at the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper. According to the argument, Christ, who came to fulfill the Law of Moses, would have used unleavened bread at the Last Supper since the synoptic Gospel accounts place the event on the first day of the celebration of Pascha (Pesach), when leavened bread was prohibited in observant Jewish households. This act of institution was reinforced during the supper at Emmaus, which likewise occurred during the days of Pascha and is regarded in the text as a celebration of the Eucharist [5]. This practice was preserved by the Roman Church, according to Laycus, who cited Popes Anacletus, Clemens, and Sylvester as uniquely instrumental in this effort [6].

Especially for the period of the pre-Gregorian Reform, the tone of the text is fairly mild. The introductory paragraphs make reference to the “most pious, holy, and wise fathers and doctors [of the Greeks]” who themselves used leavened bread in the Eucharist (but who didn’t, though, attack the Latin use) [7]. And the letter of Laycus appears all the more gentle in comparison with the source material: gone is the spirited, “listen up, stupid” (“audi, stulte”) style of invective found in Cardinal Humbert [8]. Instead, we find almost a plea to avoid rending the garment of Christ by provoking division between the two rites, coupled with an emphatic statement that the one faith could contain various customs within the churches [9].

Does the work of Laycus of Amalfi change our understanding of the azyme debate or the conflict between the Eastern and Western churches more broadly? In terms of theological content, to put it bluntly, not really. The arguments advanced by Laycus were the same as those put forward by Humbert some fifteen years prior, and, while the text written by Laycus was itself copied by Bruno of Segni in another epistle in the early twelfth century, this branch of the post-Humbertine literary tradition does not leave any substantial mark in the theological framework of the Latin church. On the other hand, the very existence of this letter, along with the fact that a Greek prelate took the time to respond to it, does indeed broaden our insight into the East-West conflict more generally [10]. It emphasizes, first of all, that the Humbertine legation in 1054 was not a one-off attempt to open lines of communication between the two churches. Rather, communication was happening, even without the intervention of popes and patriarchs, and it was based on pre-existing and well-established ties connecting East and West. A Latin-rite monastery in Constantinople, staffed by Amalfitans, would naturally be in contact with friends, relatives, and fellow clerics back home.

Second, to return to a point that I’ve made before, this letter makes clear that there was no general sense of schism between East and West in the aftermath of the 1054 legation. Indeed, as noted above, the tone of this letter is notably more civil than the polemics of Humbert. Although Laycus was certainly more of an azyme partisan than was Peter Damiani, the work and its date of composition points to an extended window in which ecumenical dialogue, in the sense that both sides still saw each other as part of the same community, was still possible.

Nick Kamas
PhD in Medieval Studies
University of Notre Dame

  1. Anton Michel has published the only substantial scholarly treatment of the material and the only edition of the text. Amalfi und Jerusalem im Griechischen Kirchenstreit (1054–1090): Kardinal Humbert, Laycus von Amalfi, Niketas Stethatos, Symeon II. von Jerusalem und Bruno von Segni über die Azymen (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1939. See also a short summary in Jonathan Shepard, “Knowledge of the West in Byzantine Sources, c.900–c.1200” in A Companion to Byzantium and the West, 900-1204, ed. Nicolas Drocourt and Sebastian Kolditz (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 67.
  2. Laycus of Amalfi, c. 1, Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 35.
  3. Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 21.
  4. Peter Damani, Letter 131, trans. Owen J. Blum, The Letters of Peter Damian Peter Damian, Vol. 5, Letters 121–150, The Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation 6, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 55. For an assessment on why this monastic house in particular, see Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 18–19.
  5. Laycus of Amalfi, c. 5–11, Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 37–42.
  6. Laycus of Amalfi, c. 14–15, Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 44–45.
  7. Laycus of Amalfi, c. 2, Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 36. “Licet illorum [Graecorum] religiosissimi, sanctissimi atque sapientissimi patres ac doctores fuerint et studuerint ex fermentato pane omnipotenti domino sacrificium offerre, tamen numquam invenimus illos nostram oblationem evacuantes aut deridentes […].”
  8. Humbert, Cardinal of Silva Candida, Responsio sive Contradictio adversus Nicetae Pectorati Libellum, cap. 13, edited in Cornelius Will, Acta et Scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae saeculo undecimo composita extant (Leipzig: N. G. Elwert, 1861), 141.
  9. Laycus of Amalfi, c. 3, Michel, 36–37. “Numquid divisus est dominus in corpore suo, ut alius sit Ihesus Christus in Romano sacrificio, alius in Constantinopolitano? Quis hoc orthodoxus dixerit nisi ille, qui dominicam non veretur scindere vestem? Nos veraciter tenemus, immo firmiter credimus, quia, quamvis diversi mores ęcclesiarum, una est tamen fides […].”
  10. Probably Symeon II of Jerusalem. Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 25–28.