The
Saga of Finnbogi the Strong tells the tale of a farmer’s son who overcomes an ignoble
birth and rises to become one of Iceland's greatest men, or so the saga author
would have you believe. This obscure and rarely discussed 14th
century saga is thought to have been written in response to Vatnsdæla Saga, where Finnbogi comes off
rather poorly. In his own saga, Finnbogi
proves to be an upright and noble figure who almost always does the right
thing. With superhuman strength, he’s
capable of dispatching an angry bull with his bare hands, snapping the spine of
an angry Norwegian bear, and coming out ahead in a seemingly endless feud with Vatnsdæla Saga’s brutish Jokul
Ingimundarsson. Finnbogi’s
Saga deserves more attention than it has gotten in the past. And
that's why you come to Saga Thing.
References:
John Kennedy, Review of Bachman/Erlingsson Translation of The Saga of Finnbogi the Strong, in Scandinavian Studies 64 (1992), 149.
Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf, Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia (1993), 194.
Paul Schach, Icelandic Sagas (Boston, 1980), 155-56.
Music for the brief summary: "Nerves" by Kevin MacLeod (incopetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
