The Saga of Ref the Sly

I really liked the character Ref in this saga. I was surprised at the beginning to see a main character described as being "unuseful [and] loll[ing] underfoot," and his mother certainly cemented the Nordic dissaproval of idleness when she tells him she wishes he were never born and she would have rather had a daughter.

My favorite part about Ref is that every murder he commits is done for a solid reason, and his tactics overall seem honerable for the standards of the day. The only questionable part that I saw was that he killed the five men during the evening (we have previously heard in Egil Saga that killing during the night was murder, but killing during the day was revenge).

I think the fact that he killed for good reasons and with logic in mind was a big part of the reason his killings were so often praised thereafter. His mother was only proud of him when he avenged her stolen hay supply, and in the end King Svein calls his devious and clever actions "valient and magananimous," even though he killed his own men. It was his cunning disguises and alias',tricky stategies with the boats, and clever craftsmenship in creation and protection of his buildings that added glory to his victories.

The sucession of names he undergoes throughout the story amused me, and I was surprised to see him referred to as Ref the Gay, meaning homosexual, because I was unaware that gay was ever a synonym for homosexual that early in history. The slander the saga refers to reminded me a lot of high school gossip, espeically because it assaulted his sexuality and masculinity.