Abstract This chapter is the first of two in a part that examines the nexus between anger, gender, and sex in the sagas, in particular the link between anger and masculinity. Using Gareth Lloyd Evans’s application of R. W. Connell’s concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ to saga literature and drawing on Skarpheðinn’s remark in Brennu-Njáls saga ‘we do not have the disposition of women […] that we become angry over everything’, the chapter argues that male characters who qualify for pursuit of the hegemonic masculine ideal are expected to mask their anger and act unemotionally, and that those who fail to do so are frequently met with opprobrium and destabilize their masculine status. Thus, it concludes that anger is seen as a weakness for most men in the sagas. The chapter analyses, in turn, anger and masculinity in Brennu-Njáls saga; characters’ exhortations of emotional moderation; advocations of slow-burning vengeance rather than rash, angry action; Grettir Ásmundarson’s striving for emotional self-control; the persistent yoking of anger and male characters’ demise; the casting of anger as a mental defect; and instances where emotional self-restraint is ostensibly discouraged.