Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 177

Hostellers in Landnámabók
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ness.34 As Landnámabók makes clearly evident, the human Celtic component in
the settlement of Iceland and the resulting Celtic coloration of a portion of the
narrative are not suppressed, and a later patron of the work like Haukr Erlendsson
would trace his descent back to Irish kings.35 But in the positive advance toward
national social organization, a common law and common Christian faith, and
eventually incorporation in the larger Christian European community, only the
best and most functional parts of the Celtic contribution, like the best ‘blood-li-
nes,’ are maintained. The roadside eldhús or skáli, open to all travellers and
providing food at no cost but possibly in return for information and other social
advantage, was not to be among the survivors.
But in a slightly different way, Geirríðr’s hostel and some Celtic matter do live
on in Eyrbyggja saga. Where she had been generous, perhaps on a Celtic model,
her son Þórólfr is extortionate in challenging and killing Ulfarr for his land, with
viking skills likely honed in the West. Þórólfr is a contentious, menacing and
finally murderous presence throughout the saga: in life as a bitter old man, in
death as a draugr, and in yet a third manifestation when some of his malevolent
spirit is ingested with his ashes by a cow that is serviced by a supernatural animal
from the sea near the saga’s end (Ch. 63). Traditional narrative devices of
parallelism and inversion tie the story together in taut and pointed fashion. The
cow had broken a leg and had been set to pasture on Úlfarsfell; Þórólfr had been
known in life as bægifótr from the injury suffered in the duel with Úlfarr. The cow
under normal circumstances would have been slaughtered; Þórólfr on the other
hand had refused to stay dead. While well enough at home in Norse tradition,
the dapple-grey animal from the sea also has Celtic antecedents in the tarb uisce
‘water bull’ (cf. Auðun and his aquatic horse, supra). Thus Þórólfr, in his last
appearance in the preternatural bull Glæsir that is the offspring of this union, is
the cause of the death of yet another good man before the story closes, Þóroddr
Þorbrandsson, who had sought to lay Þórólfr’s restless spirit by having the body
burned.
Þórólfr bœgifótr had a daughter, Geirríðr, named after his mother. Her skills as
a sorceress seem both stronger and more positive than those of her rival Katla,
but both willingly receive young men, at least Gunnlaugr, into their homes.
Sorcery is not exclusive to those with Celtic antecedents but is often found in the
saga world in common with them. Eyrbyggja saga has otherwise a considerable
volume of both supernatural and Celtic-related material, well in evidence too in
the corresponding block of Landnámabók entries (roughly S68-90) dealing with
the Snæfellsnes and Breiðafjgrðr areas.36 The hostel motif and succeeding events
i4 Here I reverse historical sequence, with name-giving at birth, in favour of narrative logic and
see Kormákr’s Irish name as consonant with the persona created in his saga.
■i5 Seejakob Benediktsson’s introduction to Landnámabók 1968, lxxx and following, and Rafnsson
1974, 78.
36 Correspondences between the Irish account of the formation of Loch Neagh and that of the
land-taking of Grímr Ingjaldsson, his son Sel-Þórir, and the packhorse Skálm (Landnámabók
1968, S68, H56) will be explored in a future article.