Out-Thoring Thor in the
Longest Saga of Óláfr Tryggvason: Akkerisfrakki,
Raudr inn rammi, and Hit Rauda Skegg

by Merrill Kaplan, The Ohio State University

Óláfr Tryggvason was not a friend to Thor. Numerous passages in The Longest Saga tell of the missionary king's antipathy towards the red-bearded god. Several conversion pættir pit the king against acolytes of Thor or against the demonic spirit himself. At the Frostaping assembly, for example, the king smashes an elaborate statue of Thor in Járnskeggi's temple (chapter 167).2 The same episode is expanded in manuscripts where the king is incensed at being called a servant of Thor and waxes eloquent at great volume on just how ill disposed he is towards this evil spirit. The antagonism portrayed between Óláfr Tryggvason and Thor is not news, nor is it restricted to Mesta. Less remarked upon are the episodes in The Longest Saga that show the king not only opposed to Thor but surpassing him on his own terms. Óláfr both overcomes that which Thor could not and excels in the Thoronic sphere. In his dealings with Raudr inn rammi of Godeyjar the king does in an acolyte of Thor in a manner resonant with Thor's end at Ragnarok. He meets Thor face-to-face and shows the old god up as a smiter of trolls and female monsters and as cleanser of the land. There and in the Akkerisfrakki episode earlier in the saga, we find the missionary king outdoing Thor at his signature activities and replacing him in the cosmic order. Some of these episodes appear in other, earlier sagas of the king in forms more or less similar to those in Mesta, but it is in The Longest Saga that old and new material is brought together to highlight a special form of competition between Thor and Óláfr. When the king is victorious, as of course he always is, that victory is meaningful not only in the context of the hagiographical tradition but also against the background of the mythological narratives in which Thor was first at home.