Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 156

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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.