Gripla - 20.12.2008, Blaðsíða 132

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and 1234, his búð is called Valhöll.16 This is probably not a new name for
a new búð, but a new name for the búð that belonged to Snorrungagoðorð,
the family chieftaincy of the Sturlungar. Snorri had strived for quite some
time to pull Snorrungagoðorð out of the hands of Sturla Sighvatsson, his
nephew and political opponent, and succeeded in summer of 1227.17 In the
summer of 1228 Þorvaldur Vatnsfirðingur, Snorri’s son-in-law, “tjaldaði
Valhallardilk”, which seems then to be a búð attached to Snorri’s Valhöll.
Sturlunga shows no special attention to the name as such, and it is probably
only a coincidence that we learn of it. Therefore we are not in a position
to know if this particular búð was already called Valhöll before it came into
Snorri’s hands (if it really was a búð adjunct to the Sturlungar chieftaincy),
whose idea it was to name it so, and why Valhöll was believed, by some-
one at least, to be a fitting name for a chieftain’s búð. However, since this
is the only búð we know that had a name derived from Norse mythology,
and we know that it was the búð of Snorri Sturluson, we can reasonably
assume that he was the name giver. Otherwise, it would be too bizarre a
coincidence. We can also conclude from his other búð’s name, Grýla, that
it was his practice to give his búð a clever and strange name. If Grýla was
to refer to fear and force, to terrify Snorri’s opponents, Valhöll must also
have been a reference to characteristics Snorri thought fitting for a politi-
cian and a chieftain. In Snorra-Edda, which Snorri had probably completed
at this point, poetic skills, wisdom, and immense cleverness are the main
positive characteristics of Óðinn, the ruler of Valhöll.
Is Snorri likening himself to the heathen deity Óðinn or to the
euhemerized and deified Óðinn? Inevitably it must have been a little bit
of both. That Snorri chose to link himself to Óðinn in this fashion is
highly interesting, not to say more, given the fact that all other references
to Óðinn recorded in Sturlunga show an extremely negative view of that
giantess in Þulur, preserved in AM 748 Ib 4to; Ibid, 281, 324; Sturlunga saga II, 186, 307;
Þórðar saga hreðu, ed. Jóhannes Halldórsson, Íslenzk fornrit 14 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka
fornritafélag, 1959), 188; Heilagra manna søgur I: Fortællinger og legender om hellige mænd og
kvinde, ed. C. R. Unger (Christiania, 1877), 683; Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning IA., ed.
Finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1912–15), 655; Terry Gunnell, “Grýla, Grýlur,
‘Grøleks’ and skeklers: Medieval Disguise Traditions in the North Atlantic,” Arv: Nordic
Yearbook of Folklore 57 (2001): 33–54.
16 Sturlunga saga I, 319, 344, 374.
17 On Þórsnessþing in spring 1227 “tók Jón [murtur Snorrason] vit tveim hlutum [of
Snorrungagoðorð], en Þórðr [Sturluson] hafði þriðjung.” Ibid., 315.