Gripla - 01.01.1975, Side 156

Gripla - 01.01.1975, Side 156
152 GRIPLA Þundr are used; small divinities like Gerðr, Njörun, Rán or Hlín, or valkyries like Guðr, Göndul, Mist, Hildr, Sigrlöð; even mythological sea-kings like Gylfi, Áli, Sigarr, are present. What is more remark- able is the very strong sense of the artistic potential of this mythology which is there displayed: the employment of certain legends attached to heroes like Hamðir, Hrólfr kraki, Heðinn or giants like Suttungr and Iði, is very conscious and clever in the same way as the refer- ences to the myth of the origin of poetry with the two vessels Boðn and Són. I want to state here that the purely decorative value of these references is prominent, and admirable as well. But, to take an ex- ample: calling Bishop Guðmundr (íslendinga Saga, vísa 2) the maple of the fire of Gylfi’s ground: Gylfa láðs báls hlynr (Gylfi’s ground being the sea, the fire of the sea being gold, the tree of the gold being the man, here Guðmundr) is certainly very satisfying for a lover of technical acrobatics, but it is difficult to attach a religious value to the image, the link between Guðmundr and Gylfi being hard to see. One might even speak here of inadequacy. Let us add that these mythological kenningar represent only one fifth of the total number of kenningar in Síurlunga (53 of 246). All the other are ‘neutral’, that is to say, without precise references to mythology, as for example geirnets hyrjar hreggmildr (jslendinga Saga, vísa 13) for a man inclined to fighting, literally: liberal in the storm of the fire of the net of the spears. There may be cases which look mythological at first view, but are in fact not. For instance, Hrafns Saga Sveinbjarnarsonar, ch. 19, tells us that, at the place where Hrafn was beheaded, the grass grew green the following summer, a detail which reminds us immediately of a simi- lar remark about the burial mound of Þorgrímr in Gísla Saga Súrsson- ar (because, this last text says, there had been a strong friendship between Þorgrímr and the god Freyr).3 But, as A. Tjomsland noticed4 this is a point which approaches the banal in the Saints’ or Martyrs’ lives in Latin. Here we are confronted with a ‘reverse movement’: a detail has been taken from Church literature and adapted to the vernacular (Hrafn is clearly presented as a kind of saint in his saga), s See ÍF VI, p. 57. 4 Introduction to Tlie Saga of Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson, Ithaca, 1951, p. XIV.
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