The Sagas of Early Icelanders usually depict dramatic chains of events involving prominent families, from their (Norwegian) origins to their descendants in Iceland. Even if they are not as aristocratic as the elaborate romances and fancy castles of medieval courtly literature, the narratives of the Icelandic sagas still unfold around the highest strata of medieval Icelandic society, namely, the goðar (chieftains) and prominent bændr (landowners). However, the Old Norse literary corpus shows some exceptions to this focus, such as Ǫlkofra þáttr and Hænsa-Þóris saga, two stories dealing with socially unimportant characters: a brewer and a chicken merchant. Neither story follows the typical genealogical structure that is characteristic of the Islendingasögur as a genre, instead they are short and focused narratives. These figures have been associated to the ‘nouveaux riches’ or the ‘middle class’, and other social types dependent on profit, all on the rise in Iceland by the end of the thirteenth century. In both stories, these self-made men get into serious conflict with well-known key figures in the saga literature and face legal charges before disappearing from their own stories. What exactly is at stake here with the stories of a brewer and a chicken merchant?

This chapter aims to discuss two commercial activities in relation to the legal troubles encountered by their entrepreneurs. This will help further analysis of how the food trade was perceived in the saga world, and also questions the place of small entrepreneurs within medieval Icelandic society. Finally, these case studies will shed light on the underlying ideology of social mobility and legal responsibility in the saga discourse.