Gripla - 01.01.1990, Qupperneq 318

314
GRIPLA
The Conversion brought a total change of this conceptual system.
The Norse gods vanished from the scene, but many other products of
Norse belief continued to thrive, and turned into superstition as it was
called, as soon as the one true religion had entered the country. The
way Víga-Glúm’s saga uses the practice of encircling land with fire is
especially arresting. This custom, which had been a legal method of
taking possession, one of the links between religion and law, becomes
in this narrative a kind of aversion-charm, the cunning contrivance of
an old woman safeguarding the interest of her son.34 It is a frequent
feature of religious history that various practices of an older religion
will, under the new dispensation, become means of sorcery. This is
what might have happened here.35
In view of these matters, it is natural that mention of the god Frey
falls into the background in Víga-Glúm's saga, and exercises no motive
power in the development of the story. Instances of superstition ac-
cord better with the range of ideas in the eleventh, twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries, and with the state of things confronting people at
that time. The fact that traditions of Frey are nevertheless preserved
in Víga-Glúm's saga strongly suggests to me that they had at some
time played an effective part in traditions about Víga-Glúm. The inner
logic of these accounts, where the result follows on the cause, can
most plausibly be traced to the tenth century, when Norse religion was
a living force and Frey was actively worshipped. This, it seems to me,
is a basis for dating the initial formation of traditions in the Sagas of
Icelanders all the way back to the tenth century. It is harder to estab-
lish just when Frey gave way before the instances of superstition, but I
would think that this happened at least to some extent while traditions
about Glúm were circulating orally. All the same, it can never be firm-
ly decided what changes occurred in oral tradition, or what was there-
after the work of the author of Víga-Glúm's saga.
There are some references to Frey in the saga of Gísli Súrsson. It is
said of the chieftain Þorgrím Þorsteinsson, also called Freysgoði
(priest of Frey):
Þorgrímr ætlaði at hafa haustboð at vetrnóttum ok fagna vetri ok
34 Cf. Dag Strömback, ‘Att helga land’, p. 150 f. and references where slightly differ-
ent view is expressed.
35 Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, Under the Cloak (1978), p. 21 and works there cited.