Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 176

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William Sayers
legal provision by which property, stock-holding and the function of hosteller
might lead to social status comparable with that of the local executive power, in
Ireland the tribal king.
Do the three entries in the settlement history contain a nucleus of historical
fact, whether of some hostels in the early period or, more precisely, of hostels
operated by these three individuals? Or, with the faint incongruity of the
situations (the building astride the road with the woman on a chair in front) well
in accord with the sense of‘other times,’ almost the mythic in illo tempore that is
characteristic of Landnámabók, do we have a cluster of story-telling motifs, either
Celtic in origin or with a slight Celtic overlay?32 These two options are, of course,
not mutually exclusive, as historical fact soon enough attracts literary trappings
in all ages.
Whatever the reasons for the failure of the hostels to continue into the period
depicted in the family sagas, the institution - if it was Celtic in origin and sensed
as having a Celtic flavor to it, as Þorbrandr’s nickname and the Western Quarter
background of Langaholts-Þóra and Geirríðr may imply- seems, in the context
of Landnámabók, yet another statement on the essentially inconsequential nature
of the Celtic admixture to Icelandic ethnogenesis (Sayers 1994b). In this ideolo-
gically managed account, well-born Celts are quickly assimilated, while mutinous
slaves are executed; some prominent land-takers from Ireland and the Hebrides
were Christian, but their descendants lapsed into the surrounding paganism and
the Christian faith would have to be reintroduced under more amenable circum-
stances when the nation had matured spiritually; gifts from Ireland, like the
wolfliound Sámr that Óláfr pái gives Gunnarr, do not fully meet the rigours of
Icelandic existence.33 Elsewhere the Celtic human and cultural heritage, like
Þórgunna’s bedclothes, is seen as problematic, e.g., the Hebridean sorcerers
Kotkell and family in Laxdœla saga, the Irish slave Melkólfr and the ‘unrecon-
structed’ viking from the Hebrides, Þjóstólfr, in Njáls saga. But even one so fully
and typically engaged in the Icelandic ethos as the skald Kormákr Qgmundarson
would be tagged with an Irish name as revelatory of his temperamental other-
31 Gelsinger 1981 ofFers a statement on the economy and population growth that might be
applicable to the three hostellers and their short-lived ventures, and where we might substitute
‘travelling guests’ for ‘farnily members’: ‘Until about 965, pastureland held even by a family not
of the chieftain class might have been adequate to raise the additional livestock required for
support of increasing numbers of family members. But later, by about 1000, there might not
be enough land to support whole families’ (27f.). On socio-economic niches that may have
closed up, he goes on (32f.) to speculate on the failure of another trial economic institution, the
mercantile guild - if, indeed, it is guilds that the scant evidence points to.
32 This is the view advanced by Bo Almquist in a work that came to my attention after the
submission of this article; see Gaelic/Norse Folklore Contacts: Some Reflections on their Scope
and Character, in Irland undEuropa im fruheren Mittelalter, 1996, eds Pro’inse’as Ni’ Chatha’in
and Michael Richter (Klett-Cotta), pp. 139-72, at 161 ff.
33 See the initial exploration of this motif as deployed in Laxdœla saga in Meulengracht Sorensen
1987.