Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 218

GRIPLA218
8vo and Add. 11.177.22 the eponymous Þóra of Þóruljóð is a towering and
not entirely human gatecrasher who arrives at a pre-Christian yule feast in
denmark and demands hospitality from her host, Þorkell. unlike Grýla,
Þóra does not declare an interest in eating the household, but she is a terri-
fying sight all the same and complains that everyone who has encountered
her in her travels has been repulsed by her appearance. Þorkell treats Þóra
with greater respect than Grýla encounters in sléttuhlíð, and while alms
given to Grýla meet with little thanks, Þóra rewards Þorkell’s generosity
with the gift of a magnificent golden sail. In a recently published critical
edition of Þóruljóð, Haukur Þorgeirsson dates the poem to the fourteenth
century and suggests that it represents a form of midwinter drama in
Iceland that possibly involved acting out Þóra’s visit.23 the same need not
be true of Grýlukvæði, but its inclusion in the collection does confirm that
despite a localised setting in sléttuhlíð, the poem was known to a wider
audience in Iceland by the mid-seventeenth century.
Gissur sveinsson’s life was largely spent in the West fjords, and there
is no reason to believe that the scribe and ballad collector had any per-
sonal connection with either Guðmundur erlendsson or sléttuhlíð. He
was born and raised in Holt in Önundarfjörður, where his father, sveinn
símonarson, was the minister and provost for the Vestur-ísafjörður region.
unlike his ambitious and widely travelled younger brother Brynjólfur, who
spent over a decade in denmark and was appointed bishop of skálholt in
1639, Gissur seems to have been content to move back to the region of his
birth following several years of study at skálholt. In 1628, he was ordained
as the parson for Álftamýri in Arnarfjörður — a comfortable distance
from his aging parents and three older half-brothers and their families in
Önundarfjörður — and held this position for the rest of his life. A fourth
half-brother, jón Gissurarson, lived at núpur in dýrafjörður, where he
engaged in extensive scribal work, sharing manuscripts with Brynjólfur
and perhaps also with Gissur.24
22 jón Helgason omitted Þóruljóð from his edition of Icelandic ballads (Íslenzk fornkvæði)
because it uses an eddic metre, fornyrðislag, cf. Íslenzk fornkvæði / Islanske folkeviser, ed.
jón Helgason, vol. 1, editiones Arnamagnæanæ, series B, vol. 10 (Copenhagen: ejnar
Munksgaard, 1962), xl.
23 Haukur Þorgeirsson, “Þóruljóð og Háu-Þóruleikur,” 222–25.
24 It is worth noting that Gissur’s first wife, Guðrún finnsdóttir, came from the fam-
ily who owned Flateyjarbók. Guðrún’s brother jón presented Brynjólfur sveinsson with