Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1964, Page 83

Færeyinga saga, chapter forty
91
»around«. That the phrase is synonymous with umhverfis
here can be seen from the variant readings in a passage
often quoted in connection with this text from the saga.
This is the story about St Barbatus found among the
legends of the Blessed Virgin in Icelandic collections of her
miracles. The saint accuses Romaldus of conjuring up the
devil and describes his practice. The oldest text, AM 655
4to II, from the early thirteenth century, has: oc bredder
Jjar nijir blojaga navts hvj) oc settisc J)ar nij)r oc gorjíer nio
reta alla vega fra vt mej) sverj)i J)ino. Compare these younger
texts: ok rístr umhverfis á iórðunni hiá J)er með blóðrefli
sverðs J)íns níu reita (AM 234 and 232 fol., fourteenth
century); giorir J)u med blodrefli J)ess sverdz, er J)u ert
gyrdr, niu reita umhuerfis hudina (Stock. perg. 4:0 nr 1,
fifteenth century); ok reist umhuerfis aa iordinni hia J)ier
.ix. reita med blodrefli suerdsins (AM 635 4to, c. 1700 from
a fourteenth*century original).1)
The references in other Icelandic writings are in full
agreement with the sense of reitr as an enclosing line and
an enclosed space and with the use of such to confer magic
protection. Most often, as is also the case with the usual
»magic circle«, it is the living person who is protected
within the limits of the reitr, but sometimes it is the beings
from the other world who are safely trapped within them.2)
■) Konráð Gíslason, Um frum-parta íslenzkrar túngu (1846), lxixsxx;
C. R. Unger, Mariu saga (1871), xxxiii-iv, 147—8, 730, 737.
2) Apart frora the passages in Færeyinga saga and Mariu saga, the
best known instances are the reitar that surround the place where the
judges sit (Grágás udg. af Vilhjálmur Finsen (1852), I 72) and those
around the cloak on which the duel was fought according to the rules
given in Kormáks saga, ch. 10 (tslenzk fornrit VIII (1939), 237); cf. also
Jón Árnason, fslenzkar [jjóðsógur (1954-61), I 166—7, 254, and I 56—7,
II 18—19, where reitur and hringur appear to have the same signifi*
cance. On the power of such reitar see G. Holmgren, ‘Ting och ring’,
Rig 12 (1929), 19—36, and on magic circles and the like see the mate=
rial in S. Eitrem, op. cit., 6 ff.; H. Feilberg, Ordbog over jyske almuesmál
(1886-1914), s.v. kreds; Hwb. III 524.