Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Qupperneq 167

Hostellers in Landnámabók
165
Geirríðr’s land-holdings, as we have seen, were modest, as was the gift of her
brother; the area around Eyrr had numerous prominent settlers with antecedents
in the Western Sea: Auðr djúpúðga, her brother Bjprn Ketilsson, and Hallsteinn
Þórólfsson. Langaholts-Þóra may have owed her nickname to the fact that the
property of Þórutópt in that district came with her into the marriage with
Ásmundr, and it stayed with her, and she on it, when her husband retired to Qxl
in his old age. As initially part of a dowry and then later released by the husband
(unless this is an overreading), the land-holding is unlikely to have been large.
While Þorbrandr, on the other hand, is a land-taker, he is not shown as
sufficiently landed or empowered as to make grants in turn to his companions or
men. No information on his wife is offered, which may mean that he did not
marry into a prominent family that could have supplemented his own resources.
Þorbrandr has a nickname, orrek (manuscript variants orrekr, otrekur), that is not
transparent. Against earlier interpretations that associated the byname with pr
‘arrow’ or a prepositional prefix (Landnámabók 1968, 234n4), Hermann Pálsson
(1952, 203) has proposed the Old Irish name Orach. But this would have meant
‘of gold, golden’ (órach) or ‘pertaining to the shore’ (orach), with the latter chiefly
used as an epithet of toponyms (Dictionary of the Lrish Language 1913-76, s. v. v.:).
And if any sense of its original meaning had been retained, it seems unlikely to
have been subsequently attached to an inland heath area, Orreksheiðr. But an Irish
connection, evident in the names and nicknames of numerous other settlers, is
perhaps not to be dismissed out of hand. Olr. errach/errech ‘enforced loan,
requisition,’ is one alternative etymology but a closer tie to social station and the
hospitality anecdote appears possible. Old Irish had a number ofwords based on
the root aire, one ofwhose meanings was ‘noble, chief,’ e.g., airech ‘distinguished’.
Another meaning of aireas a verbal noun was ‘guarding, tending, caring for,’ again
with a derivative airech ‘heedful, attentive’. Neither property would be out of
place in a hostel-owner. I return to these and related terms in a more specific
context below. In the first mentioned sense, aire also figured in noun phrases
descriptive of the various grades of Irish freemen and nobility. Along with aire
forgill ‘lord ofsuperior testimony,’ aire tuiseo ‘lord of leadership, precedence,’ aire
ard ‘high lord,’ aire déso ‘lord of clients,’ we find aire échta which translates as
‘lord of vengeance’ or ‘slaughter’.5 While denoting rank within the Irish social
hierarchy, several of these terms also identify jural functions, and the ‘lord of
vengeance’ would appear to have been ‘not . . . a lord in terms of normal
clientship, but to have been a professional fighter supported by the túath [lordship
or petty kingdom] élite as a whole, in order to prosecute feuds in other territories.’6
As this lowest among the noble functionaries was often recruited from outside
5 The following discussion relies on recent studies by Kelly (1988) and Patterson (1994), based
in turn on Binchy’s modern edition of the early Irish legal tracts {Corpus Iurís Hibernici 1978).
6 Patterson 1994, 204, supporting the view in McCone 1990, 211-12. See Patterson 365n52 on
the aire échtás optional role as single combatant in jural disputes in addition to that of leader
of the posse.