Gripla - 01.01.1975, Page 162

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GRIPLA
As there are similarities between landvœttir and álfar,7 we shall,
perhaps, be more lucky if we seek for the latter in the samtíðarsögur.
But here too, the harvest is poor. Prestssaga Guðmundar Góða, ch. 4,
borrows probably from German annals, for the year 1167, the men-
tion of strange beings—kynjamenn—riding in the sky. Two kenningar
for warrior use the word álfr (sword’s álfr in Þórðar Saga Kakala,
vísa 3, fight’s álfr in Hákonar Saga Hákonarsonar, p. 192). And, if we
accept E. Ó. Sveinsson’s suggestion that references to álfar are in-
tended in two different tales of miracles (in Þorláks Saga Byskups, ch.
51 and in Jóns Saga Helga I, ch. 30), then the examination of these
passages shows close links with the impish creatures and devils fam-
iliar in European saints’ lives in latin. Here, par excellence, a foreign
literary influence has superseded what may originally have been a
genuine belief. The visible effort of the Church has clearly been to
assimilate all possible pagan creatures of the other world, genuine or
not, to the Christian images of devils. And in many a case, the inter-
vention of such beings either seems invented for the sake of edifica-
tion, especially in the jarteinabœkr, or has been placed there for purely
artistic purposes.
The situation with regard to reincamation is complex. There is in
Þorgils Saga Skarða, ch. 62, a passage which seems to indicate a
genuine belief in the migration of souls. The text says that, once Þor-
gils skarði has become, after Kolbeinn ungi, the chief of the Skaga-
fjörðr, the inhabitants of this district thought that ‘Kolbeinn ungi was
back (aftr kominrí) and reborn (endrborinrí)'. Snorri Sturluson says
exactly the same about Hákon the Good, who was Haraldr hárfagri
endrborinn, in Heimskringla (ÍF XXVI, p. 150).8 There is a good
means of verifying this belief: it consists in studying the choice of
names given to children. Everyone knows that, according to special-
ists,9 in the Germanic world this custom obeyed strong principles: one
had to give children part of the names of their parents: Ásgeirr and
7 F. Jónsson: Álfatrúin á íslandi, in Eimreiðin I, 1895, pp. 95-103; K. B. Ólafs-
son, art. cit., pp. 269-270.
8 See also de Vries: Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, op. cit., § 138.
9 M. Keil: Altislandische Namenwahl, Leipzig, 1931; E. Wessén: Nordiska
namnstudier; J. Jónsson: Um íslenzk mannanöfn, in Safn til sögu íslands III, 1896
-1902, pp. 569-700.