Gripla - 20.12.2013, Qupperneq 226

GRIPLA226
a younger daughter was probably named after his sister Þóra.38 In AM 147
8vo, however, the girls are identified somewhat cryptically as móðir — and
hardly in a biological sense of ‘female parent’, as Grýla speaks of hin móðir
prests. this could, of course, be a misreading (or mishearing) of dóttir,
but móðir is a fairly illogical substitution for dóttir — in modern Icelandic
at least. If, like út að Tjörnum, this is a corruption of the text (as ólafur
davíðsson interprets it), why do multiple manuscripts from the seven-
teenth century onwards contain a reading that goes against the semantic
better sense of the scribe? Given the context, Grýla could be cynically re-
ferring to the young girls as future mothers, although the word may also be
used in a broader, non-maternal sense (cf. matmóðir, húsmóðir).
Comparatively little is known of Ásgrímur Magnússon’s family, but
he and his second wife, Þuríður jónsdóttir, had at least two daughters
who survived to adulthood: Valgerður (1636–1706) and Herdís (1638–d.
after 1709). A son, erlendur, was born about 1644, but it seems likely that
Grýlukvæði had already been composed by the time of his birth; erlendur
was roughly the same age as Hallgrímur’s daughter steinunn, who is men-
tioned in Leppalúðakvæði. that the Valka and Herdís of Grýlukvæði are
none other than Ásgrímur Magnússon’s two daughters seems likely, espe-
cially as there are no other known contenders in Guðmundur erlendsson’s
extended family.39 the two sisters were daughters of a farmer rather than
a minister, but they might certainly be expected to become wives and/or
mothers of clergymen given their advantageous ties to the families on the
church farms of fell and Barð. the age difference between the pair also
agrees with the description given in Grýlukvæði: Valka, as the older sister,
is old enough to sing, while Herdís can still only wail.
38 Guðmundur erlendsson and his wife Guðrún Gunnarsdóttir had eight children together,
at least five of whom were boys. their eighth child is mentioned only in a commemorative
poem he composed after his wife’s death in 1668, where it can be seen that this child died
very young (probably in infancy), and it would be somewhat tenuous to suppose that this
unnamed child was one of the girls mentioned here.
39 the latter name in particular was relatively uncommon: only 20 of 1823 women living in
the skagafjörður region in 1703 were named Herdís, cf. ólafur Lárusson, Nöfn Íslendinga
árið 1703, safn til sögu íslands og íslenzkra bókmennta, 2nd series, vol. 2 (Reykjavík: Hið
íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1960), 35. solveig, by contrast, is a member of the parson’s house-
hold; her identity and relationship to the parson remains uncertain, and she could well be
a foster child. solveig may be the keipótt móðir mentioned later in the poem, but this is not
clarified.