Yggdrasil · Humankind

Helgi the Lean: Christ, Thor, and a Difficult Voyage

A settler in the Book of Settlements who believes in Christ yet asks Thor where to land in Iceland.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Ellwood’s translation

Helgi was very shifty in his faith; he believed in Christ, but made vows to Thor for sea-faring and hardy deeds. Then when Helgi sighted Iceland, he went to inquire of Thor where he should make land, the answer directed him northward round the land; then Hrolf, his son, asked whether Helgi must hold into Dumbshaf (=the foggy seat) if Thor should direct him thither, because the crew thought that now it was high time to leave the sea, inasmuch as the summer was in a great measure spent.

Myth and literature

The story

Poetic account: a medieval Icelandic record of the settlers tells of a man whose faith mixed Christ and Thor, and the account is a later settlement tradition.

Landnámabók, the Book of Settlements, says that Helgi, called the Lean, believed in Christ but made vows to Thor for sea journeys and hard deeds. As he came in sight of Iceland he asked Thor where to make land, and the answer sent him north around the coast. His son Hrólfr asked what to do if Thor sent them into the fog-bound sea, since the crew thought summer was largely gone. Helgi took land near Hrísey, spent a very hard first winter, and in time moved his household to a farm that he called Kristnes, “Christ’s headland”. Thor gives the course, and Christ is honoured in the place name.

Myth and literature · Context

What we know, and what we do not

What is recorded: a settler who believed in Christ and still called on Thor at sea, an answer from Thor about where to land, and a home named for Christ. The Ellwood text says Helgi gave his dwelling a name because he believed in Christ.

What is not recorded: the often-repeated saying that Helgi trusted Christ on land and Thor at sea is a later summary, not a quotation of Helgi or of the Book. The text does not say how he put his question to Thor, what he did when the answer came, or how common his habit was beyond the translator’s note.

Historical evidence

The evidence

The account is in Landnámabók, the “Book of Settlements”, a medieval Icelandic record of the first settlers and their land-claims. The version used here is the Rev. T. Ellwood’s English translation of 1898, which is in the public domain; in the scan it is printed under Part III, Chapter XII. The Hurstwic page on Helgi, which follows the later translation by Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards, retells the same events. Ellwood adds a footnote that the mixed faith seems to have been common among early settlers, and that the Book later says this uncertain Christian belief faded within generations. That footnote is the translator’s comment, not part of the text.