Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Side 79

Færeyinga saga, chapter forty
87
chief function of the big fires built up on f>ránd’s orders
is a hilastic one. They attract the men who were wet, cold
and exhausted when they died.1)
f>ránd’s command that nothing is to be said to him is
paralleled in many other descriptions of divination and
spelhworking. There must be no disturbance and it is
especially dangerous if the name of a man is spoken at
such a time.2) Similarly, f>ránd’s weary sigh when the mani*
festation of the dead is over is a stock piece of descrip^
tion for such an occasion.3) Commerce with the other world
is both perilous and toilsome.
Translators and commentators have not all agreed over
the interpretation of the sentence: ok grindr fiorar lætr
hann gera med fiorum hornnum ok .ix. ræita ristr f>randr
alla uega vt fra grindunum.
Although we cannot tell exactly what form of grind the
writer had in mind, we may safely assume that it was a
rectangular frame of wood with enough bars or rails to
produce a lattice«work effect, a hurdle of some kind. (Closely
woven wickerwork is not likely to have been found in
Iceland.) The grind was a portable barrier, chiefly used
for fencing. Slung from a post in some way, it made a
gate, and it is this sense of the word that is now coramo*
nest in Norway. Put together in a square or other shape,
grindr made a pen or fold for animals. Although the use
*) Cf. the description of the return to Fróðá of the drowned í>ór*
oddr and his companions in Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 54 (íslenzk fornrit IV
(1935), 148-9).
2) Cf. e. g. K. Nyrop, ‘Navnets Magt’, Mindre Afhandlinger udg. af
Det philologisk-historiske Samfund (1887), 118—209; W. H. Vogt, Vatns-
dcela Saga (Altnordische Saga-Bibliothek 16, 1921), 8 notes to 3—4, 35
note to 3; I. Reichborn-Kjennerud, Vir gamle trolldomsmedisin (Oslo
Skrifter, 1927, no. 6), 134, 137—44; Dehmer, op. cit., 96. Sjødraugen in
Rogaland dislikes noise (Birkeli, op. cit., 179); dragging for a drowned
man on the Swedish coast must be done in the strictest silence (L. Hag=
berg, Nar ddden gastar (1937), 593).
3) See especially Strómbak, 182—6.