Gripla

						314                                                 GRIPLA

The Conversion brought a total change of this conceptual system.

The Norse gods vanished from the scene, but many other products of

Norse belief continued to thrive, and turned into superstition as it was

called, as soon as the one true religion had entered the country. The

way Víga-Glúrrís saga uses the practice of encircling land with fire is

especially arresting. This custom, which had been a legal method of

taking possession, one of the links between religion and law, becomes

in this narrative a kind of aversion-charm, the cunning contrivance of

an old woman safeguarding the interest of her son.34 It is a frequent

feature of religious history that various practices of an older religion

will, under the new dispensation, become means of sorcery. This is

what might have happened here.35

In view of these matters, it is natural that mention of the god Frey

falls into the background in Víga-Glúm's saga, and exercises no motive

power in the development of the story. Instances of superstition ac-

cord better with the range of ideas in the eleventh, twelfth and thir-

teenth centuries, and with the state of things confronting people at

that time. The fact that traditions of Frey are nevertheless preserved

in Víga-Glúm's saga strongly suggests to me that they had at some

time played an effective part in traditions about Víga-Glúm. The inner

logic of these accounts, where the result follows on the cause, can

most plausibly be traced to the tenth century, when Norse religion was

a living force and Frey was actively worshipped. This, it seems to me,

is a basis for dating the initial formation of traditions in the Sagas of

Icelanders all the way back to the tenth century. It is harder to estab-

lish just when Frey gave way before the instances of superstition, but I

would think that this happened at least to some extent while traditions

about Glúm were circulating orally. All the same, it can never be firm-

ly decided what changes occurred in oral tradition, or what was there-

after the work of the author of Víga-Glúm's saga.

There are some references to Frey in the saga of Gísli Súrsson. It is

said of the chieftain Þorgrím Porsteinsson, also called Freysgoði

(priest of Frey):

Þorgrímr ætlaði at hafa haustboð at vetrnóttum ok fagna vetri ok

Cf. Dag Strömback, 'Att helga land', p. 150 f. and references where slightly differ-

ent view is expressed.

35 Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, Under the Cloak (1978), p. 21 and works there cited.