Gripla - 20.12.2008, Page 139

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Þeir gengu at hvílu Solveigar [Sturla’s wife] með brugðnum ok
blóðgum vápnum ok hristu at henni ok sögðu, at þar váru þau
vápn in, er þeir höfðu litat lokkinn á honum Dala-Frey með.38
Unfortunately for Þorvaldssynir Sturla was not home. He was at home,
however, three years later, when Þorvaldssynir rode not far from his farm
as if to goad him to violate the grið granted to them. And that Sturla did:
he caught them, had them worked over in an uneven fight, and finally
had them axed. During the fight Sturla, standing by, picks up a stone and
makes himself ready to throw, then pauses, and lets the stone fall to the
ground. Þorvaldssynir goad Sturla, using the former níð as the whip: “Hví
sækir hann Sturla eigi at? Ok ætla ek, at Dala-Freyr sanni nú nafn sitt ok
standi eigi nær.”39 The exact term Dala-Freyr does not appear elsewhere
but straightforwardly translates literally into Freyr of Dalir. Its actual
meaning in this context is also quite clear: do not hide yourself, loverboy!
One of Sturla’s main duties is, of course, to be on guard and protect his
household; catching him off guard, and in bed at that, would have been
quite dishonorable. The níð plays on these opposites: on-guard protection
and off-guard ars amandi. During their last defense Þorvaldssynir use it
again, quite explicitly, to mock Sturla for his inactiveness and passivity, a
serious níð and eggjun at once. In the background is Freyr, associated with
love and fertility. Guðrún Nordal attempted to read further into the term
in an article in 1992, and touched on it again in her dissertation.40 She
argues that the term originated around Snorri Sturluson, whom rumors
held might have been in connivance with Þorvaldssynir, and that it was
intended to underscore Sturla’s ofsi and ofmetnaður, in addition to its obvi-
ous meaning. Her argument rests on an interpretation of Snorri’s Freyr
as exemplifying the personal defects of ofsi and ofmetnaður, and ties in
with her thesis, laid out in the dissertation, that Íslendinga saga as a whole
revolves around Sturla/Freyr and Gissur/Óðinn.41 Whether the níð’s sub-
reference is sufficiently argued for is debatable, but what matters here is
38 Ibid., 327.
39 Ibid., 348–357.
40 Guðrún Nordal, “Freyr fífldur,” Skírnir 166:2 (1992): 271–294; Guðrún Nordal, Ethics and
action in thirteenth-century Iceland, The Viking Collection: Studies in Northern Civilization
11 (Odense: Odense University Press, 1998), 179.
41 Ibid., 166–169, 182 passim, for Sturla as a wolf and Sturla’s ofsi; Ibid., 58, 178–179 passim,
for Sturla/Freyr-Gissur/Óðinn.
PAGAN MYTHOLOGY IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY