Quick disclaimer, there are some adult situations in 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 in, yeah, he's basically medieval Icelandic Batman. The creature this time is a turf monster that you can make to annoy
arrivals, 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 sprized origins. Others are tales that might be new to you, but are definitely worth listening. Today we're back in the Icelandic
Sagas, Missaga 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. Ina 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. He 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? Ina heard. meant to answer it. Hildegun handed him his cloak. She, too, knew the cost of what happened if others heard
the accusation. Ina 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 Ina couldn't dwell on that. He had to stop Lon's son, also named Ina, we'll just call him Lon's son, for making it home. And Ina 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 Ina'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, Ina cut through the seven men. Soon, only Ina 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. Ina had to do everything he could to save his mother. So this man had to die. But Ina 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 Ina's hand. He grinned. Ina pushed back to the trees, beginning to
despair. He would die. His mother would die. Then, a hope, barred. Barred, the god of the snow fell. 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. Barred. Like when Hedda, the troll woman,
had cursed Injald. The trolls were bad in those times. It was the early days when Norse explorers could still land in the island, beside how much farmland they wanted, and it was theirs. The trolls watch from the woods. Stock the forest. And Hedda was a shape-shifter and one of the worst. If any of the people ventured through her lands, they became her play things. 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 may do with livestock, like Injald's livestock. A fisherman by trade. One of his cows disappeared, and when Hedda was spotted, he followed her alone into the mountains. Axonhand, 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 Injald. A fishing spot.
A place teeming with so many fish, 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 Injald 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 ores, and began rowing. Outward, Injald was calm, serene. Inside, he was screaming.
He was prisoner in his own mind. He couldn't stop himself. Rowing through the fog, Injald heard the splashing. Out of the fish, the water churning with countless, writhing bodies, then the traveler. Injald 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 the sea of red hair, and his rough hairy arms seemed to blend with his cloak, and his hands betrayed no distraction by the interloper. A where are we, and who are you? Injald rose in his boat, fish slapping the side. I'm grim, the stranger said. Injald 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, Injald said. The stranger nodded, looking back to his fish.
No, I'm not. Injald reached for his ores, 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. Injald 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, and a dog. They had no ability to think beyond their own appetites. The fisherman, Injald, was going to die here. So he had time to sit and contemplate his own mortality, and the limited way humans could, namely by weeping and screaming. Injald 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 cramed his neck toward shore, and cried out for someone. For anyone. For Bard. The Guardian's 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 Snowfell, without knowing the story of his father. Dumb. Yeah, so before getting into it, Bard's father is named Dumb. Bard's father is literally
named DUM. And he was a king, so...King Dumb. I'm 99% certain that it is no way relates to our modern English word dumb, and it's just an unfortunate homophone in 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 Yotin. Dumb has a diverse ancestry. His father was a Yotin, a giant, and his mother was part troll, which made him, according to the story, strapping, handsome, and good temper 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 declared 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
at the 12-year-old have it. Thus DUM became King Dumb 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 Dumb's father had been Bard the Giant. At 10, Bard was fostered with a mountain-doller, named Doffrey, 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 Baile and Liam Neeson are sword fighting on a frozen lake. But a medieval superhero education wasn't the only thing that Bard found in Doffrey's cave. He also met Flomgurd, Doffrey'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 in telling us that Flomgurd was not particularly pretty, the story also seems to claim that it didn't matter. Bard and Flomgurd married, and he stayed with Doffrey until he was 18. When he finally left the protection and training of Doffrey, Bard learned
that his father was no longer King in the North. King Dumb was learned to a peacetalk in the middle of the lake with ogres, and quickly learned why you don't go to a peacetalk 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 dumb fought back with his orres, having come unarmed, and managed to kill two-thirds of the attacking ogres, he was beaten to death, in his body
left in the lake. Their leader, Hardwerk 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 Hardwerk lived. He and his brother burned the house down with Hardwerk inside, and, once again, Dumb'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 Fairhare. Harold actually started out Harold Tanglehare, 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 read after this.
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BetterHelp.com slash myths today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelpHELP.com slash myths. 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 north 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 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 were leaving themselves off the side of the boat was enough volume to wash up on shore to become, in Icelandic, Dirtvik, 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 birthrolog. So the people began to build a society on the 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, beeched whales. Bard had heard of two trolls, Sphal 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, Sphal and Thufa were
trolls now, and they were stealing Bard's whale. A beached whale was like a jackpot. Meat whale 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 Sphal eating as well. It was a long, in 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 Sphal over his knee, like Bane broke Batman, but unlike Batman, Sphal 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 Reg Cloak led the pair, and they would play a version of King of the Hill, or, I guess, Yarl of the Rivers. It 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. Reg 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 and Reg Cloak's eyes almost matched her own, as coming to his senses 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 20 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 in the open ocean with
no provisions was difficult enough. But to be marooned on an ice float, which would only stay seeworthy if it stayed in dangerously cold waters, that was it. His daughter was gone. It was too late to go try to safer, but it wasn't too late to avenge her. Thorik Cole at that time was out at sea. He got in an early start that spring, but his sons, Reg Cloak and Solvy, were outside their house. Faces streaked 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. Reg 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 Solvy 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 and terror. And Bard simply sat down at his brother's table and waited for Thorik Cole to return from his journey. He sat for days until, throwing open his door, Thorik Cole found Bard there, and the paired not-bothering to greet one another, brother, flew at brother. Both had lost children. Both were enraged. The Bard had trained in the
mountains, while his brother was pampered in the 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 stopped on it and left you screaming, leaving him alive actually seems kind of worse in the
situation. Thorik Cole, from that day on, after dragging himself a couple of miles for help, like Dingo Plainview, was known as Thorik Cole 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 cow carrying two metal hooks. Everyone who dared to follow said that
he simply disappeared. But the strangest things began happening after that, while 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 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 snow fell. He's also called Bard God of the Snow fell,
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 Injal 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 ores aboard and pulled out one of his hooked staffs to draw Injal's boat to him in order to lash it and tow it in, but it stayed rooted in that spot. Injal heard a, hmm, as the boat pulled alongside his own and a gloved hand pulled him aboard, the figure rode back toward shore.
You're, you're Bard, aren't you, the man said. Bard, spirit of the snow fell. 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 Injal 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 durian 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 njotim 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 leaf Erickson. As you can probably guess by his name, leaf 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, 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. He'll get ate ravenously. As Erick 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 Skeggie, who was part of Erick's expedition, it didn't matter. It 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 Skeggie. Helga, for her part, had now seen more of the world than Iceland. She had seen a colder ice year 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 Skeggie to Norway. And of course, on the way they did not stop at Skeggie's home because, you know, wife and children, but instead, they found their place in the north. And a warm cabin where no one would disturb them. And Helga didn't know this, but she was in her father's fathers, remember King Dums, old kingdom. There, she used her own
troll blood to fight those who had killed her grandfather. Releasing 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 Skeggie, with a bloody head wound next to her, breathing if unconscious.
The cloak and cow 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 right after this. I am So whether you're out there selling scented soaps or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere with their all-in-one e-commerce platform and their in-person POS system.
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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 living and not to follow. Bard let her go and sat back in his cave. This 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. Inaar had called upon Bard, guardian spirit of the Snowfell, and then 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, Lawn's son was always meant to best him. Then something kind of silly happened. Lawn's son, his axel-offed, ready to find its resting place in Inaar'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 Inaar's panting, and Inaar could see that Lawn's son's pants were falling off. Someone had cut his belt from behind. Lawn's son dropped his hands to pull up his pants and Inaar didn't hesitate. He found his opening and opened up Lawn'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 Lawn's son, stepped forward and took the young man's shaking hands, helping him to his feet. He looked like he'd use a warm place to sleep. Inaar 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 porch.
Bard's brother limped over at the Thorkel, but we thought he was dead, wandered off into the mountains one night. Everyone thinks you hate each other, right? Inaar was perplexed by the plot developments that seemingly happened during a gap in the narrative. He did, each other, past tense. But why and 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 was broken, his life was immeasurably more difficult, and his future nonexistent 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. He would have been sad 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, dinner is 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 hope that there will be time for Helga to forgive him. In the meantime, though, how about a little vengeance? He found himself in a place called Reichier in Midfjord.
I was able to find two places called Midfjord, one called Reichier and no Reichier and neither Midfjords, 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 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 this is 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'd, Skeggy's 16 year old son opened the door, I didn't know any of this. And Bard said hello. He was a traveler in the mountains to the south were impassable. He was just looking for a place to stay for the winter.
The winter, I'd, the son of Skeggy asked, Bard's eyes seemed to glow under his cow. He was a whole head taller than the scrawny teen and almost twice his wide. Bard said, yeah. Was that a problem? I'd said, no, it was just a big ask. Part left. 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 piton's, a place to sleep for the winter.
Well that is better than the alternative. Come inside, I'd 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 G-E-S-T guest because he was a guest.
As far as I can tell in Iceland, it literally means guest. But the hosts could no more get guests to stop being guests by telling him his real name, then by getting him to leave. So they accepted the name guest and Skeggy blinked as his daughter, Thorntus, smiled, and guest smiled back as guest took her hand and kissed it. And she blushed. 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, turn about his 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 to 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.
I might have thought it was gross, but he'd been at fit from guests' presence more than anyone else in the long run. As well when guest wasn't beneath a blanket with Thorntus, he was teaching I'd law. And from the following spring onward, I'd was known as law I'd.
The following spring, the kids set a tearful goodbye to their guest, and the parents set 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 Thorntus started showing. Even before the baby was born, Thorntus 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 actually 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 networking, instead of mentioning it on the show and having it be this big thing, 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. I'm curious where everyone is, so there's a poll in 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 Courage of this Week is the Stala from Lapland, in Finland. We've told the story of the Golem on this podcast, 107AMB, 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 in an item in objects that from magic or other means come together to make a strong humanoid figure. 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 shaman's fought each other for power and influence, or, as one source says, out of spite. OK, so shaman battles sound really cool, but the actual antagonism was really just petty annoyance. The extent to the Stalo'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 Stalo 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 hide their shoes when they're running late or giving them a flat tire or a power outage, say when they have to post a podcast episode and make them stay up until 2am waiting for it to come back on, I think it actually shows a good amount of professional courtesy among the Finnish shaman's that they just tried to annoy each other and not actually hurt everybody.
For me though, it comes down to the cost because to breathe over the Stalo 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 Stalo is discovered and killed, the shaman that kills it gets half of the life from the Stalo, which seems like an even worse deal because there is no story in which the Stalo isn't discovered by a rival shaman.
I can't fathom a time when the Stalo 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 out with 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 Stalo for. That's it for this time. Myths and Legends is by Jason and Currisawiser. Our theme song is by Broke For Free and the creature the weak music is by Steve Combs. 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.