Studia Islandica - 01.07.1966, Blaðsíða 84

82
The author illustrates the appearance of the toes of the cruci-
fix with a startlingly vivid reference to a children’s game
(“to make rams with the fingers”) which is among those
collected by Icelandic folklorists in the nineteenth century
from popular tradition.1 Throughout the story the author
shows that he has a strong visual imagination, and he seems
to have been especially interested in the visual arts and to
have taken particular delight in pictures: he mentions de-
corations depicting angels, the sun, moon, stars, plants, and
animals twice each, once in the scheme of decoration on the
roof of the sleeping chamber, and once as part of the decora-
tions on the different parts of the dream-figure. He mentions
depictions of ancient stories (fornar sggur, fornsggur: the
equivalent modem term is fornaldar sögur) twice too, once
on the lower roof of the sleeping chamber, and again on the
belt of the dream-figure (the stories of Sigurðr the dragon-
slayer, Haraldr Wartooth, and Haraldr Fine-hair2).
One detail in the description of the dream-figure shows
that the author of the þáttr was acquainted with and oh-
servant of the religious art style of his time. Around the
head of the figure was a ring coloured like a rainbow and
shaped like God’s aureole (“vaxinn sem veldishringr guðs”).
A similar phrase is used in one of the miracle stories attached
to the Virgin Mary of a halo completely surrounding a
figure of the Virgin and the infant Jesus on a tabula given
1 See Jón Árnason and Ólafur Davíðsson, Islenzkar gátur, skemmt-
anir, vikivakar og þulur (Kaupmannahöfn 1887-1903), II 163.
2 Note the use of the word saga for a story in pictures. A tapestry
representing Sigurðr slaying the dragon is mentioned in the Oldest saga
of St Óláfr (Otte Brudstykker af den ældste Saga om Olav den Hellige,
ed. Gustav Storm (Christiania 1893), first fragment, p. 2); and carvings of
scenes from legends about him survive from Norway from the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, see E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of
the North (London 1964), plates 32-34; Haakon Shetelig, “Billedfremstil-
linger i Jemalderens Kunst,” Kunst, Nordisk Kultur XXVII (Stockholm
1931), pp. 214 ff. The association of Haraldr Harðráði and Sigurðr the
dragon-slayer is also made in a poem by Illugi Bryndœlaskáld, Skj A I
384.