Gripla - 01.01.1980, Page 169

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GRIPLA
becomes pregnant with a boychild—the child later becoming a paragon of virtue
and strength. In Skíðaríma a vagabond is invited to Valhalla where he receives
some gifts but is wounded in a fight. When he regains consciousness he finds that
he has marks on him from that fight and that the gifts are lying beside him. Jón
seems to be alone in believing that Skíðaríma is a true tale but I am inclined to
believe that it is a parody of a vision. In Scandinavia the Norwegian Draumkvœde
is the best known of all visions. It was held for a long time that the visions of
Gottskalk (1189) and Thurkill (1206) had influenced the Draumkvœde but none
of these three visions was known at that time in Iceland. Visions appear in Gre-
gory’s Dialogues, which were translated in the twelfth century. Duggal was leiddur
(‘led’) in 1149 and that vision was translated as was Visio Pauli. Two visions occur-
red in Iceland in the latter half of the twelfth century. Some other translated
visions are found in Icelandic but not mentioned here.
A rather doubtful paragraph in a chronicle (Gottskálksannáll) for the year
1195 says ‘dreymdi Skíða’ (Skíði dreamt). The people named in Skíðaríma are
from the latter half of the twelfth century although Skíðaríma itself is thought to
have been composed in the fifteenth century and is thus perhaps a parody account
of Skíði’s dream from the peak period of vision literature: this however is only
conjecture.
VII. This begins with an attempt to explain why this story had been interpo-
lated into one of the Tíðfordríf manuscripts. A factor common to this story and
Tíðfordríf is the mention of Odáinsakur which is also to be found in the History
of the cross-tree in Tíðfordríf. Tíðfordríf and the above-mentioned Edda by Jón
lærði (the Learned) were both written by the order of Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson
who at the time was himself engaged in writing an exegesis to the works of Saxo
for Stephanius. Moreover in Stephanius’ Notœ uberiores in Historiam Danicam
Saxonis (1645) he quotes Brynjólfur on Odáinsakur and yet nothing of what he
quotes derives from Jón lærði (the Learned). Odáinsakur is referred to in Eiríks
saga víðförla (Eric the Far-Travelled) and in Hervarar saga. The exegesis which
Brynjólfur sent to Stephanius is now lost and Odáinsakur is not mentioned at all
in later exegeses by Brynjólfur.
In a very remote area in the north of Iceland called Hvanndalir, which lies
between Héðinsfjörður and Olafsfjörður, there is a place called Odáinsakur. As
the name indicates it was reputed to be a place where it was impossible to die. The
oldest account of this folk-belief is from 1689 in the work of Thomas Bartholin.
He gives no explanation for the immortality tale and his sources are unknown.
Eggert Ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson did not actually go to Hvanndalir on their
travels in 1755, and they mention some plants which grew there but no rnore. In
1777 Ólafur Olavius visited Hvanndalir, referred to Ódáinsakur and then records
that there were plants which made people live forever. In 1890 Stefán Stefánsson,
later a headmaster, arrived at Hvanndalir already knowing Ólafur Olavius’ version,
but whoever informed him strangely enough did not know the reason for the
belief in Ódáinsakur. Stefán’s informant had in other words similar ideas to
Bartholin’s informant. In the same parish as Hvanndalir, to the west of Siglu-
fjörður, there is another Ódáinsakur which has a similiar folk-belief—sources for