Gripla - 01.01.1975, Síða 148

144
GRIPLA
pret it as a Northern version of the ecclesiastical new view about the
monarchy of divine origin (la monarchie de droit divin)?
b) We can now study features where the instances of adaptation or
assimilation by the Church are more clearly visible. We have just seen
cases in which the transference into a Christian context has already
been completed. Here are a number of examples in which this transi-
tion is even more evident:
Let us take first the word blót. The sacrifice, as everybody knows,
was the very centre of Northern paganism, the real moment when the
whole pagan assembly felt united in a communion with the gods. In
its successive phases, it represented the religion itself, certainly far
more than the myths or individual practices. The Landnámabók could
bear witness of its importance, if it did not also occur in a series of
texts which do not belong to samtíðarsögur and show a remarkable
tendency to archaism. What must be stated here is that there is no
mention at all of blót in our texts. The word blótmaðr occurs in Geir-
mundar Þáttr Heljarskinns, ch. 5, but we shall see that this is a text
which does not deserve a place among the contemporary sagas and is
in fact already an íslendingasaga. For the rest, the word blót which
occurs in íslendinga Saga, ch. 67, 71 and 95, has suffered such a de-
valuation that it means simply swear or revile (blót ok bölvurí). And
the term blótskapr used in Jóns Saga Helga II, ch. 12, is a pure syn-
onym of idolatry, copied down from some Latin text by Gunnlaugr
the monk.
The sacrificial banquet or veizla (in its original form) could be
long-lived, since it included practices which were other than sacred.
Its importance in the Sturlung Age has remained considerable, and it
is still the ‘communion in drinking’ defined by M. Cahen.13 Its general
form has not been altered: placing people according to their rank,
bringing tables and food, pronouncing the old formáli til árs ok friðar,
drinking to the memory of the dead, eating and drinking until drunk-
enness; during the veizla, entertainment of the guests with plays,
dances, reading or recitations of sagas and poems: all this is often
shown, the best instance being the veizla in Reykjahólar in Þorgils
Saga ok Hafliða, ch. 10 (but see also íslendinga Saga, ch. 39 or 170).
13 La Libation, op. cit., p. 29.