Gripla - 2020, Síða 201

GRIPLA200
of the afterlife. Moreover, the dreams provide insight into the tormented
mind of Gísli, and thus add a deeper psychological dimension to the saga.
The first of these dream sequences is placed within the saga narra-
tive six years after Gísli is outlawed, in ch. 22 of the saga (following the
edition in íslenzk fornrit). After staying at home in Geirþjófsfjörður for
three years and wandering around Iceland without finding any chieftain
who will give him shelter, Gísli is now back in Geirþjófsfjörður at his wife
Auðr’s farm, where he has made two hiding places for himself. Bǫrkr, the
brother of Þorgrímr whom Gísli killed and who is now married to Þórdís,
Þorgrímr’ widow and the sister of Gísli, has started to search for Gísli, and
two men whom Bǫrkr has hired, Eyjolfr inn grái and Njósnar­Helgi, have
been in Geirþjófsfjörður and looked for him. Gísli now clearly realizes
that he is living on borrowed time, and at this point the saga introduces his
bad dreams. The saga tells that one night, as he awakens from another bad
dream, he explains to Auðr that there are two dream women (“ek á draum-
konur tvær”) who repeatedly come to visit him in his sleep. While one of
the women is friendly, the other prophesies his downfall.2 This concept
of one good and one bad dream woman may be an invention of the saga
author, and there is in fact nothing in the stanzas themselves to suggest the
existence of two separate women.3 In one of his dreams, Gísli enters a hall
where many of his relatives and friends are sitting and where seven fires
are lit. The “good” dream woman tells him that the fires symbolize the
remaining years of his life, and she advises him to abandon heathendom
and to do good for the deaf, lame, poor and powerless. “Eigi var draumrinn
lengri”, Gísli ends his retelling of the dream, and the saga author adds: “Þá
kvað Gísli vísur nǫkkurar” and cites four stanzas in a row, without further
comment.4
The four stanzas that make up this first poetical dream sequence are
somewhat diverse from a formal perspective. Whereas in the first three
2 Vestfirðinga sǫgur, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, 70.
3 See further Klaus Johan Myrvoll, “The Authenticity of Gísli’s Verse”, journal of English and
Germanic Philology 119 (2020): 220–57, at p. 256. For recent discussions of Gísli’s dreams
and dream women, see P.S. Langeslag, “The Dream Women of Gísla saga”, scandinavian
studies 81 (2009): 47–72, and Christopher Crocker, “All I Do the Whole Night Through.
On the Dreams of Gísli Súrsson”, scandinavian studies 84 (2012): 143–62. None of them
discuss, however, the possibility of merging the saga’s two dream women into one.
4 Vestfirðinga sǫgur, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson, 70–73.