I just realized I should have shared this with the Sagas community. Here it is!
Originally shared by Kit La Touche
So, last night I played Gregor Vuga’s Sagas of the Icelanders. I am totally in love with this game. When I first played Apocalypse World, I knew it had to be used for a norse game, and Gregor has made the game I hope I would have made if I could, and am glad he made so I didn’t have to try.
Here’s what happened. First, the backstory we set up, then the play, then some analysis.
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The Saga of the People of Súrfjörðr
There was a wealthy man and goði named Hrafn who lived in Súrfjörðr in Iceland. His farm was named Gullinn, and he had inherited it from his uncle, Gamli, who first settled that area. During his life, though, Gamli had divided the farm to settle a dispute. The poorer portion of the land, but the portion containing the only landing on the fjord, had been given to a man named Kuggi. Kuggi had named this farm Höfn, and when he died he left it to his son Skúmr.
Skúmr and Hrafn were not great friends, but neither were they enemies. Hrafn hated to see how Skúmr let his meagre land go to seed, but though Skúmr was no farmer, he was too proud to sell his land back to Hrafn.
Skúmr was, however, a warrior. Hrafn’s valued húskarl Yngvar had taken Skúmr viking with him many times, and had saved him and been saved by him from many an Irish spear. It was in this pursuit that he found glory and the means to live, while his farm languished.
Skúmr had a daughter he raised as a son. She was called Helga, sometimes known as “Skúmarsson” behind her back, for she was known to dress and act like a man. After killing five men who had been outlawed in Breiðafjörðr and had come to steal her father’s cattle, she was called Blood-Axe, for the wood-axe she killed them with. Helga had no interest in suitors.
Skúmr, being such a bad farmer, came to owe Hrafn a debt, but he died with his debt unpaid. Hrafn decided that, though the debt was even greater than the value of Höfn, he would take that farm and be satisfied. Of course, though the land was not valuable for farming, he knew it would be valuable as a landing, and help increase his fame and wealth as his húskarls could more easily set out a-viking, and he could more easily trade for wood and other goods with Norwegians.
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One night, near to midsummer, as they sat drinking in his mead-hall, Hrafn pulled Yngvar to him, and said that he should talk Helga Blood-Axe into giving Höfn to Hrafn. Yngvar boasted that, as he was an experienced man in matters of the world, and he and Skúmr had fought well beside each other, none other of Hrafn’s men was better-suited to the task at hand.
He set out from Gullinn towards Höfn, and there, at the wall that divided the two farms, he met the seiðkona Ingrid. Ingrid had been summering at Höfn, rejecting Hrafn’s hospitality in favor of a mean and poor-kept house. But she was a strange one, strong in the ways of seiðr, and no one begruged her choice.
She called out to Yngvar, speaking many strange rhymes and stopping just short of accusing him of ergi. But Yngvar was a practical man, and had no love for the gods or seiðr, so he kept walking.
He came to Höfn and saw Helga there, guttin an enormous cod. He spoke to her in fair words, saying that Hrafn would offer her six fine cows for her land. Helga scoffed at this, saying that the land was hers and no offer would suffice. Yngvar countered that Hrafn could take the land as payment for his debt, and no one would think twice. Helga paused, her fish-knife in hand, blood on her arms. She spoke these words:
If Hrafn would have Höfn, hólmganga
must be his means. Meet me on Mjaldaey
and answer to my axe.
Yngvar scoffed at this, and left without a word.
While this was happening, Ingrid had watched the fish’s entrails, and seen a vision among them: the matter of Höfn coming to arms, and Helga looking back from the far side of Súrfjörðr at her father’s home, now in the hands of Hrafn’s men.
Yngvar returned to Gullinn, and there, he found the goði outside the temple to Sýr-Frejya. The húskarl spoke to Hrafn thus: “The shield-maiden is stubborn, and will not yield, not for promise of silver nor threat of legal action.” At these words, the goði was furious. “You promised you would make Höfn mine, make good that promise! But I’ll hear you out. What do you advise?”
Yngvar considered this for some moments. “We have two courses: the law, or violence.”
Hrafn spoke: “The law is with us, but my cousin Ásbjörn has sworn to thwart all my efforts, and he sits on the quarter-court this summer. What of violence? Bring me the seiðkona who is in these parts, that she may tell me how it will go for us if we take Höfn by force.”
Yngvar, as has been said, had no love of seiðr, but Hrafn trusted in it deeply.
The seiðkona Ingrid came to the hall at Gullinn, and there she cast the runes and read them. The same vision of Helga cast out of Höfn came before her eyes, but she could not speak it. She and Helga had met as lovers, and she saw that the only way to protect Höfn would be to give Hrafn an ill omen. She spoke lying words of Gullinn lying in embers and ruins, and Hrafn was swayed. But Yngvar had seen how she and Helga had looked at each other when he was at Höfn, and saw now how she lied.
At this time, Helga talked with her mother, an Irish concubine of Skúmr’s named Kaðlín. She sought wisdom and advice on how to keep hold of the farm. Kaðlín considered carefully. Skúmr had cousins across the fjord, but Þórbrandr was a selfish man and cowardly, and unlikely to help. There was, however, an outlaw named Óláfr in the mountains around Súrfjörðr who was a mighty warrior and might help defend Höfn if Helga could find a way to convince him it was worth his time. Helga set out into the mountains to find this man.
At Gullinn, Ingrid the seiðkona knew that the Lady would not look kindly on the fact that she had lied about a vision she had been given. She went into Sýr-Freyja’s temple and asked the Lady how she might atone. She knew then that there was only one way: she must give Hrafn a gift even greater than Höfn. Had he wanted Höfn for the land only that would have been simple, but of what value was the unbounded sea to a man of ambition like Hrafn?
At the first light of day, Helga found Óláfr asleep and well-hidden in the mountains. She spoke to him boldly, and demanded his help. The outlaw was awake and with his sword in hand in moments, demanding who she was and what she wanted with him.
She explained that her farm was under threat from Hrafn. Óláfr bore Hrafn no love, but he had not lived this long as an outlaw in Iceland by trusting strange women.
Helga offered to prove herself by a challenge: “I will wrestle you, and if I prevail, you will fight by my side and earn my support in all things. If you prevail, I will leave and tell no man where you are.”
Óláfr laughed at this, the idea of wrestling a woman, but was so amused that he agreed. Helga won swiftly, dropping the warrior and placing her knee upon his neck.
That night at Gullinn, Yngvar told Hrafn all that was on his mind: that he knew what existed between the seiðkona and the shield-maiden, and that he did not believe that the seiðkona spoke the truth about her visions.
Hrafn considered this deeply. He eventually decided that he must therefore find another seer. By the end of the night, he decided that he must ask his Irish slave, Dúfa, or Colm as he called himself. Dúfa was a priest of the White Christ, and surely this White Christ would know the future in this matter, or he wouldn’t be much of a god.
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First, pardon the horrible Icelandic. I don’t speak it at all, but I enjoy it.
This game did everything I hoped for. Lots of use of gendered moves, the presence of the shield-maiden meant gender-bent moves, too, and a couple custom moves that I defined on the spot: “when you search for Óláfr in the mountains, roll +versed…” and “when you seek forgiveness from Freyja, roll +wyrd…”
Bonds vs. relationships were a bit confusing to folks; I should have explained that better at the outset. Relationships are special stats that determine advancement, and also give you this special resource called bonds that you spend to make certain kinds of awesome happen. But once that came across, people drove action towards their relationships.
I asked lots of questions, tried to cast aside history panic where I saw it, and definitely ended up using some of Freyja’s Ceremonial Moves.
Almost every roll ended up in the 7-9 range. A couple were failures, but not many. Only one was a 10+, when Helga wrestled Óláfr. All of the difficult choices that arose from this drove things forward in the right way.
So, given that my Icelandic is nonexistent, I did try to have some fun with names. First, this is Súrfjörðr, “sour-fjord”, but also the very-similar-sounding Sýr (sow) is one of the names of Freyja, clearly the patron goddess of this area.
The farm Höfn’s name means “haven”, or “harbor”. Gullinn means “golden”. Mjaldaey means “Beluga Island” (as islands were a traditional site for hólmganga duels).
Skúmr, Helga’s dead father, has a particularly interesting name: it might mean “gossip” or it might mean “skua”. I foresee a challenge issued where someone speaks a verse that insults Helga as gossip-daughter (since she’s so manly, she does attract a lot of gossip), and she retorts that she is skua-daughter, a powerful predator.