Gripla - 01.01.1975, Qupperneq 164

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GRIPLA
bjarnarsonar, vísa 3, who probably does not belong to the genuine
pagan mythology but is, on the contrary, very frequent in the Latin
vitae. He resembles the horrible Járngrímr who appears to Guðmundr
guðiþekkr in íslendinga Saga, ch. 141: all these figures remind us very
strongly of the numerous Danses macabres or Vers de la Mort, so
popular during the Middle Ages throughout Europe.
One word more about the difficult and complex notion of fylgja
and/or hamingja, a kind of protective spirit attendant on one individ-
ual, or one family. It is highly probable that these figures go back to
pagan sources. We find, unfortunately, or typically enough, four men-
tions only of fylgjur (or hamingjur) in our texts: these are Þorgils
Saga Skarða, ch. 12, where Þórðr Sturluson appears in a dream to his
son Sturla to inform him of the arrival of the viðbjörn (that is Þorgils
skarði), then íslendinga Saga, ch. 90, where Sighvatr Sturluson guesses
that Valgarðr Styrmisson is feigr by looking at the latter’s horse. The
word fylgjur itself occurs in Sturlunga Saga II, p. 287 (óvina fylgjur)
and in íslendinga Saga, ch. 70 (ófriðarfylgjur). This is very little evi-
dence of an element which all specialists consider to be one of the
most important in Northern paganism.11 How are we to interpret this
scantiness?
The answer may be that the concept of fylgja fused conveniently
with the Christian notion of a guardian angel. Through the intermedi-
ary of such anglo-norman texts as Henri d’Arci’s Vitas Patrum12 we
can quite clearly see how the two notions can be confused or amalga-
mated. Besides this, the Icelanders were early acquainted with the
notion of fylgjuengill, and this would facilitate the eradication of the
pagan image.
What we may conclude from this section of the study is that the
Church had brought with itself to Iceland a lot of stories and beliefs
which could assimilate or replace the ancient Northern beliefs con-
cerning the other world. The ground was firm: in both camps there
was the same certainty that the other world existed and was inhabited.
Judging from the samtíðarsögur, one must very often wonder whether
the details given of the other world are not in fact taken from Latin
11 See B. Melsteð: íslendinga saga, Kaupmannahöfn, 1903-1930, vol. II, p. 102;
G. Turville-Petre: Dreams in Icelandic Tradition, in Folklore 69, 1958.
12 Lines 5960-5961.