Gripla - 2020, Síða 226
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Hafrsfjord and came “late” to Iceland. Þrándr took land between Þjórsá
and Laxá and lived at Þrándarholt.85
Finally, there were some people from Agder within the area claimed
by Ingolfr on the Reykjanes peninsula, among them a certain Alfr inn
egzki who “stǫkk fyrir Haraldi konungi af Ǫgðum ór Nóregi”.86 He
lived at Gnúpar in Ölfus in Southwest Iceland. Alfr had no children
but brought with him to Iceland a brother’s son, Þorgrímr Grímolfsson,
who would inherit from him. Þorgrímr was the paternal grandfather of
Þóroddr goði (the maternal grandfather of Bishop Ísleifr) and Ǫzurr, who
married Bera, the daughter of Egill Skalla-Grímsson.87 Just before Alfr
inn egzki, Landnámabók (both S and H) mentions Ormr inn gamli, “son
Eyvindar jarls, Arnmóðssonar jarls, Nereiðssonar jarls ens gamla”, who
took land in the same area; he lived at Hvammur in Ölfus. It is told of his
father Eyvindr jarl that he “var með Kjǫtva auðga mót Haraldi konungi
í Hafrsfirði”.88 This Ormr Eyvindarson probably came from Agder as
well; Magnus Olsen has placed him among the members of the aristo-
cratic Oddernes-family, which he reconstructs on the basis of two runic
inscriptions on one and the same stone monument in the central church
site Oddernes outside today’s Kristiansand.89 The oldest of these inscrip-
tions, from the tenth century, however fragmentary, mentions a (n)iriþs
sun, and the other, from ca. 1025–1050, an ayintr (= Æy[v]indr), who
states that he karþi kirkiu þisa (= gærði kirkju þessa ‘made this church’) …
aoþali sinu (= á óðali sínu ‘on his property’) and adds that he was kosunr
olafs hins hala (= go[ð]sunr óláfs hins hæl[g]a ‘godson of St óláfr’).90 This
Eyvindr is probably identical with the Eyvindr úrarhorn who, according
to Heimskringla, was a close friend of óláfr inn helgi.91 The similar names
(nereiðr, Eyvindr), the place (Agder) and the high positions that these men
85 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, 379.
86 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, 390, cf. pp. 391, 393.
87 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, 392–93.
88 Íslendingabók. Landnámabók, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, 390.
89 norges innskrifter med de yngre runer (= nIyR), ed. by Magnus Olsen, 5 vols (Oslo 1941–
1960), vol. 3, 97–100.
90 nIyR, vol. 3, 78, 80.
91 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla II, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, íslenzk fornrit XXVII
(Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1945), 82–85.
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