Gripla

						NORSE-CHRISTIAN SYNCRETISM                            257

affecting the poem, inasmuch as the seer must then be genuflecting to

the West; but as a Christ symbol the sun does not go down in stanza

39, it merely 'droops' with sorrow (cf. st. 44), presumably at the

dreadful spectacle of Hell, which the clangorous gates of Death are

unfolding, or at the imminent death of the seer.26 Otherwise as the

heavenly body it sparkles so brightly (st. 42) that the seer momentarily

loses consciousness. We are not told in what quarter of the sky the sun

is located, but one would say that it is in the ascendant rather than in

decline - 'Máttug hón leizk / á marga vegu / frá því er fyrri var' (st.

40). Wherever its exact location overhead, it is not invalidated reli-

giously as a syncretic object of worship for the seer.

This trace of syncretism is instructive for what it betrays of the con-

ditions under which religions will or will not mix together. Sun-wor-

ship was not objectionable to Icelandic Christianity, which was re-

markably tolerant of double-faith modes of observance,27 whereas in

the Roman Church of late Antiquity it had been suspect before it was

absorbed into the Church's regular devotions and exegetically ratio-

nalized. The unobjectionable combination of sun-worship and Chris-

tian prayer in medieval Iceland is exceptional not only in the Church

missions to northern Europe but also in the Church's own struggles

with Graeco-Roman paganism in the Mediterranean sphere. To speak

here of 'the positive and respectful union of elements from different

religions,' as between Norse paganism and northern European Chris-

tianity, would be to miss the point to this syncretism, in which the bad

Christian associations with sun worship have been conveniently forgot-

ten.

Another likely bit of syncretism in Sólarljóð is to hand in the first

Cf. the arabiguous lines in stanza 43, 'Sól ek sá / á sjónum skjálfandi . . .,' which

mean either 'I saw the sun with faltering eyes,' or 'I saw the sun trembling visibly,' but

hardly 'I saw the sun trembling on the sea' (so Björn M. Ólsen, Sljð. II, p. 43). It might

be most logical that the eyes of the seer should falter, but in a verse from the saga of

Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson (Membrana Regia Deperdita, ed. A. Loth, in Editiones Arna-

magnœanœ ser. A. 5, Copenhagen 1960, p. 219) even the natural sun 'shudders' while

the souls of men are being devoured by the serpent, Satan - 'skelfr ramr roðull' (quoted

by Falk, Sljð. I, p. 23). Baumgartner's German translation of stanza 39 has misled Döl-

ger at p. 386 of Sol Salutis to view the sun as setting.

27

On the borderline believers in Iceland and elsewhere, see Walter Baetke's article,

'Stufen und Typen in der Germanenbekehrung' (1939), as in Vom Geist und Erbe

Thules, Göttingen 1944, pp. 131-33.