Gripla - 01.01.1975, Síða 160

156
GRIPLA
grounds. As regards the kenningar and the heiti, the greatest number
of them reflects an attentive reading of the Skáldskaparmál.
I think one may conclude that, as far as mythology is concerned in
the samtíðarsögur, the so-called pagan revival or pagan survivals are
a purely literary feature devoid of all living religious significance.
III. THE OTHER WORLD
Obviously, it cannot be possible to draw such radical conclusions
from a study of the ideas that the Icelanders may have had of the
other world, and of the beings who were supposed to inhabit it. For
here, we reach the deepest of all religious structures. Nevertheless, I
feel somewhat inclined to contest E. Ó. Sveinsson’s view when he
writes that
the old belief in spiritualism, dreams, apparitions and ghosts has maintained
itself, without fully agreeing with the Christian faith.1
We know that the other world was a reality for the Old Germanic
Peoples, that they had a cult for the dead as supporters and protectors
of the family, that they belived in the migration of souls, and that
their religion was highly eschatological.2 The notion of hugr corre-
sponds fairly well to our conception of a soul foreign to the body it
inhabits, capable of freeing itself from it and of acting independently.
In that case, it could take a proper shape, hamr, which was like the
symbolical figure of the internal ego. Certain individuals had this
property like our modern werewolves: at night, they could escape
from their bodies which remained inert as dead, and go elsewhere to
commit mischiefs. Such a man was said to be hamrammr or ramm-
aukinn. Landnámabók gives many instances of this.
We must notice that there is only one mention, however, of such
an event in the samtíðarsögur, and that in Geirmundar Þáttr Heljar-
skinns, a rather late text. In this connection an important observation
must be made. It may be true that the hamrammr phenomenon is of
shamanistic origin3 and Snorri’s Ynglinga Saga tells us things about
1 Um íslenzkar þjóðsögur, op. cit., p. 66.
2 See F. Ström: Nordisk Hedendom, op. cit., pp. 146-148.
3 Ibidem, p. 81.