Glethi and its associated adjectives and verbs meaning 'joy, happiness, merriment' largely denote a social emotion in the pslendingasögur. Often collocating with skemmtun, the noun signals a festive gathering is in progress - a feast or communal games. A high-status individual must create glethi in order to maintain honour and reputation. A lack of glethi in a hall or court suggests that something is seriously amiss; this indicates an external problem or challenge that the saga hero may need to solve. The social importance of glethi in this sense is made clear in a number of sagas; Grettis saga in particular is interested in the different ways that this socially cohesive emotion can be created and maintained beyond the feast in the hall. Hávamál st. 15 suggests that every man should try to be glathr until his dying day. In eddic poetry, to be glathr suggests a temperamental disposition; individuals in pslendingasögur can exhibit the emotion in response to a given stimulus, or else habitually; a lack of cheerfulness causes comment by the narrator or other characters. Unhappiness can be performed strategically; this often has a gendered connotation and is closely connected with vengeance. People are said to be made happy (feginn) by particular events, while to be glathr is a more generalised emotion. This chapter investigates both social and individual aspects of this highly positive emotion, its production, loss, recovery and its simulation across a number of works, including key pslendingasögur and kings' sagas.
