Gripla - 20.12.2004, Page 99

THE PAST AS GUEST 97
Gíslason 1870:135–137), Gangleri (fiulur, Grm. 46), and Vegtamr (Bdr.), such
that we may conclude that the appearance in narrative of a stranger using the
name Gestr would have struck the medieval audience in much the same way.
This is hardly likely to have been an anxiety-limiting association.5
Still, as much as the name Gestr would have brought Ó›inn to mind, it is
worth noting that the frame of hospitality might even mitigate some of the
danger posed by this treacherous figure. Ó›inn after all shows special interest
in hospitality, perhaps even especially royal hospitality. He habitually appears
in the role of the guest himself. And if we may judge by Grímnismál and its
surrounding prose in Konungsbók Eddukvæ›a, should one be so unfortunate
as to have Ó›inn as one’s guest, the best shot at surviving the experience
would seem to lie in showing him good hospitality. The social frame of hospi-
tality may allow one to be on the good side of a distressing figure who does
not otherwise seem to have a good side.
4. LEGAL SOURCES ON GESTIR
4.1 Inheritance: gesterf›
With the social and mythological background of the hospitality contract thus
in mind, we may now turn to the legal sources that are the true focus of this
essay. Hospitality has legal ramifications. Inheritance law as recorded in Gula-
flingslög shows that gestir, that is, people on a visit, should their mortality
come into play, also have a role in the system of inheritance. The curious word
gesterf› appears in Gulaflingslög 113:
Ef ma›r gistir mann ok ver›r flar dau›r, flá skal hann halda fé hans vetr
.iij. ef eigi kemr erfingi til, flá hafi ef eigi er meira en .iii. merkr. En ef
meira er, flá a hann hálft en konungr hálft (NgL I:51).
5 The etymologically inclined will wonder if the related Latin hostis, ‘stranger, enemy,’ exerted
influence on the semantics of gestr through the medium of translation of Latin texts, but I
find no evidence in the 58 citation slips for gestr kindly provided to me by the Dictionary of
Old Norse Prose in Copenhagen (AMKO) for this having been the case. Neither does gestr
seem to have absorbed the rather different ambiguity of Latin hospes, ‘guest, host,’ though it
at least occasionally was used to gloss that word. For example, Jesus’s ‘Hospes fui, et sus-
cepistis me’ (Mt. 25.35) in the Vitæ Patrum is rendered as ‘Gestr var ek, ok tóku flér vi› mér’
(Heilagra manna søgur II 1877:403): ‘I was a stranger, and you took me in.’ For a short over-
view of the historical relations among gestr-hospes-hostis see (Beck 1997:462–3).