Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1979, Page 120

TÖÐUGJÖLD OG SLÁTTULOK
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48) Hafnarstúdentar skrifa heim, Reykjavík 1963, bls. 234.
49) Sjá tilvísun 21).
50) Breiðdæla. Drög til sögu Breiðdals, Reykjavík 1948, bls. 168.
51) Jón Pálsson, Austantórur III, Reykjavík 1952, bls. 139.
52) Bjarki 1897, bls. 86.
53) ÞÞ 2372, 2519, 3692, 3713, 3715, 3910.
54) Brand. Et dramatisk Digt af Henrik Ibsen, Kjöbenhavn 1866, bls. 108.
55) Brandur. Sjónleikur í hendingum eftir Henrik Ibsen. Þýtt hefur Matthías
Jochumsson, Reykjavík 1898, bls. 99—100.
56) ÞÞ 2500.
57) ÞÞ 3704.
58) ÞÞ 2343.
SUMMARY
Harvest homes in Iceland
Harvest homes, like those known among populations cultivating cereals, have
not been frequent in Iceland for obvious reasons. In the first place Icelandic
agriculture was more or less restricted to animal husbandry, the livestock being
sheep, cattle and horses. Secondly, the long distances between farms and differ-
ent timing of the end of the hay season was an obstacle to such festivities.
However, two modest feasts of this kind have been practised on individual
fanns. Their most usual names are töðugjöld, when the hay from the home
field had been secured, and slagi or slægjur, when the whole hay harvest was
over, i. e. from the home field and other grass-lands.
The latter one seems to be of much older origin and is aiready mentioned in
various saga versions about King Olaf the Saint’s last battle, 1030 A. D. We
also come across it in verses and descriptions from the 17th and 18th centuries.
Near the middle of the 19th century its importance is already markedly di-
minishing, and this development contin,ues into the first docade of the present
century. The olcl harvest home kept the ground best in the Southeast and
Eastern parts of the country, and in the North-Western Fjords. It was usually
celebrated around the middle or in the second half of September.
Around 1900 people in Þingeyjarsýsla in the Northeast of Iceland started
special harvest-feasts for a whole district. This custom, however, hardiy spread
outside that county.
In 1776 a new Agricultural Law was passed, and after that the farmers
intensified the cultivation of their home fields in order to get more and better
hay. So, efter ca 1800, a new kind of harvest home, the socalled töðugjöld,
seems to have come up and developed steadily from then on. At these feasts
people were celebrating the securing of the home field hay, and usually it took
place in August. Gradually this feast replaced the older one, which in its turn
got more or less mixed up with the merry-making connected with the great
rounding-up of the sheep from the summer pastures in the mountains.