Gripla - 2023, Side 19

S I Ð R , RELIGION AND MORALITY 17
dition of others; yet the simple notion of individual action runs through
each of them and fits well with the lausavísa (even closer parallels exist
in prose: e.g. Driscoll 2008, 36; Snorri Sturluson 1911, 528). Given the
precedent in Hallfreðr’s own work and these comparisons, as well as the
extra mental gymnastics required to attach siðr to religion in the lausavísa,
it seems best to understand siðr as “(individual) practice.”
Even if the primary sense of siðr is not “religion,” however, Hallfreðr is
a sophisticated enough poet that religious connotations could be inferred,
given the context of siðr’s usage. In a stanza about conversion, those con-
notations would add extra weight to the push and pull of alliances being
described, especially as the first two lines balance Óláfr’s personal practice
with the social practice of sacrificing to gods; in a lausavísa and within a
series of lausavísur that often sketches the new in conflict with the old, the
Christian with the heathen, this opposition could be intentional.12
Moral
Sundqvist (2005, 274) refers to the above-cited twelfth stanza of Háttalykill
and first stanza of Erfidrápa Óláfs Tryggvasonar (though following a ques-
tionable edition of the text: see fn. 11) to distinguish between the moral
semantics of siðr and those that are particular to “the warrior ethos and
exemplary military conduct.” In light of the other examples adduced above
as comparison for Hallfreðr’s lausavísa, relating to the obligations of a poet
and a king, Sundqvist’s formulation should be expanded. Siðr can refer to
the expectations of anyone in society, based on their perceived station or
function (cf. Taggart 2022a, 441–43, 449; Taggart 2022b, 310–11).
This is already attested in Þórarinn loftunga’s Tøgdrápa (c. 1028–30
CE), in which the compound siðnæmr “siðr-learned” (st. 1) characteriz-
es King Knútr Sveinsson. Matthew Townend suggests that it refers to
“Knútr’s Christian courtliness” (Tøgdrápa, 853), and Knútr was a Christian
given to signalling his devotion, yet siðnæmr would be unique in the ex-
tant stanzas of Tøgdrápa in referring to religion; the compliments paid
12 The helmingr ends with reference to the “fornhaldin skǫp norna”, and the adjective forn-
haldinn “time-honoured” may be an understated criticism of Óláfr’s practice, which lacks
the obligation to tradition that siðr can come with elsewhere. The element forn- “ancient”
may also signal wordplay, the time-honoured fates of the nornir a metonymy for forn siðr,
implying that the Old Norse religion was already known by that name during the Viking
Age (cf. Nordberg 2018, 131).