Gripla - 2019, Side 88

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In such cases, they emphasise their nature as non-Scandinavian and non-
familiar.31 In Þorvalds þáttr tasalda, the figure Bárðr digri boasts that he
is far-travelled, and claims that “ek hefi farit land af landi ok mœtt bæði
risum ok blámǫnnum”32 [I have gone from land to land and encountered
both risar and blámenn]. In this example it is taken for granted that risar
are markers of the foreign and strange, as meeting one is an indication of
having travelled great distances. This is heightened by their grouping with
blámenn, who also came to be associated with culturally and geographi-
cally distant places in Old Icelandic literature.33 Risar are associated with
blámenn in Kirjalax saga; with blámenn, dularfólk and regintröll in Sigurðar
saga þögla; and with blámenn and, interestingly, dvergar in the prologue of
Heimskringla. In Hjálmþés saga ok Ölvis, risar appear alongside blámenn,
dvergar, tröll, berserkir and fítónsandafólk as wondrous beings.34 Further,
risar are regarded as the progenitors of the Serkir “Saracens” in Alexanders
saga, and are included in an encyclopedic section on strange groups of
beings in Hauksbók. Jötnar, in contrast, appear only once in such a list,
in Kirjalax saga. Risar, then, not only lack distinctly Scandinavian associa-
tions: they are also used as a device to signify that which is un-Scandina-
vian. In this sense, their function is sharply distinguished from that of the
jötnar.
Risi was also the preferred term to refer to giantlike beings in trans-
lated romances – narratives which also have a distinctly non-Scandinavian
31 Such lists owe a debt to the encyclopedic tradition of Isidore of Seville. See Schulz, Riesen,
44.
32 Þorvalds þáttr tasalda, in Eyfirðinga sögur, ed. by Jónas Kristjánsson, íslenzk Fornrit IX
(Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1961), 124.
33 Blámenn (sg. blámaðr, “black man”) are men with black skin who appear in a variety of
Icelandic works. Blámenn in saga material and translated works are typically said to live
in regions south of the Mediterranean, and the term likely refers to Africans. However,
blámenn took on a variety of characteristics that range from the supernatural to the
monstrous. Icelandic authors followed wider European traditions in construing men from
Africa and Asia as Other. The Anglo-Norman work La Chanson de Roland is perhaps the
most notable example of this tradition. See Richard Cole, “Racial Thinking in Old Norse
Literature: The Case of the Blámaðr,” Saga-Book 30 (2015): 21–40; Arngrímur Vídalín,
“Skuggsjá sjálfsins,” (PhD diss., The University of Iceland, 2017), 161–189; John Lindow,
“Supernatural Others and Ethnic Others: A Millennium of World View,” Scandinavian
Studies 67 (1995): 13–18 and Schulz, Riesen, 159.
34 The precise meaning of the element fíton- or phíton- is unclear, but it appears to denote
some kind of magical ability in the sources in which it appears. A fítonsandi would therefore
be a magical spirit.