Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 15

S I Ð R , RELIGION AND MORALITY 13
mander,” Hauksbók presents sigðreynir “sword-reynir” (early fourteenth
century), and the fifteenth-century AM 466 4to and seventeenth-century
GKS 1003 fol. read sigreynir “victory-reynir” (on the relationships between
some of these manuscripts, see Hall and Zeevaert 2018). Gráskinna is the
outlier, but both its elements are common in kennings, and it fits as well
with the violent themes of the stanza, as siðreynir does with the religious,
potentially providing a third warrior kenning to a stanza that already has
two. The other (also martial) readings may reflect influence from sigtólum,
which metrically falls on the previous line of GuðLaus but is only two
words away and on the same line in all three manuscripts. Nevertheless,
reynir itself is repeated from the lausavísa’s first line, and it is impossible to
know if that repetition is intentional or not. Siðreynir’s popularity makes
it the preferred reading here, but question marks remain. Much the same
could be said for the lausavísa in general: arguments can be made to the
contrary, but the most likely scenario is that it contains the earliest instance
of siðr with a religious denotation in the corpus.
Along with Geisli, the next earliest secure religious appearances of siðr
appear in the twelfth-century Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar and Plácitusdrápa.8
According to stanza ten of the former, Óláfr Tryggvason’s subjects turned
“frá sið vǫndum… / ok illum… / goðum nítti” (from wicked siðr and denied
evil gods),9 the reference to pagan deities making clear the religious con-
text of siðr, while stanza fifteen apposes Óláfr’s offering of “siðir góðir”
(good siðir) to Norwegians with the hatred heathens have for him, again
suggesting that the siðir are religious in character. In Plácitusdrápa, siðr
most obviously has a religious dimension in stanza eight, which refers to
“siðr heiðinn” (heathen siðr). Some scholars use siðr as an all-encompassing
terminology, embracing some element of myth as well as behaviours
and traditions (e.g. Jennbert 2011, 23–24, 164; Raudvere 2005, 196; cf.
Sundqvist 2005, 175). This poetry does not support that, but equally it
expounds so little that it is difficult to be sure that siðr only refers here to
tradition-upheld religious praxis. That praxis does have a moral dimension
8 On the dating of these poems, see Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar, 1031 and Plácitusdrápa, 179.
Siðr also survives in the earliest prose texts, which date to around this period. In the Old
Icelandic Homily Book from c. 1200 (de Leeuw van Weenen 1993, 12v, 25r, 57v, 65v, 73r), its
senses vary, moving from customs, to religion generally, to specific rites. On its use to refer
to rites, see Sundqvist 2005, 273–74, and for a broader overview of the term’s religious
semantics where it appears in prose and legal texts, Sundqvist 2005, 273–74, 275–76.
9 On the addition of nítti to this line, see Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar, st. 10n.