The article argues that Jómsvíkinga saga, despite its mixed modality, should be included in Old Norse historiography. A comparison with kings’ sagas and legendary sagas — in this case Yngvars saga víðfǫrla — shows how these modes were used in Jómsvíkinga saga. The saga is often grouped with Orkneyinga saga and Færeyinga saga, which were also written around the year 1200; all deal in some way with the relationship between kings and aristocrats. The reason for this may be found in contemporary events: The Scandinavian kings were strengthening their position, while the aristocracy was trying to maintain its influence. Therefore, the sagas have also been called political sagas. The oldest extant versions of Jómsvíkinga saga contain the first part of the saga, which deals with the history of the Danish Kings; this shows that the saga was intended to be perceived as history. However, a later version (AM 510 4to) omits this part, which suggests that the historicity of the saga had eroded. The fact that Jómsvíkinga saga was incorporated into manuscripts containing legendary sagas also shows that the saga may have been valued for its entertaining plot and not because of its connections to real events and historical characters.

Discussion of the ritual known as the ‘blood-eagle’ in Old Norse religion has a long tradition behind it. In the disciplines of philology and literary history there has been much scepticism as to whether such a ritual ever actually existed. Orkneyinga saga, ch. 8, describes the carving of a blood-eagle on the back of an enemy, presenting this as a sacrifice to Óðinn following the celebrant’s victory in battle. The description has parallels in other sources, including a skaldic verse by Sigvatr Þórðarson, but the question of their authenticity is problematic. The Orkneyinga saga episode shows several important similarities to other accounts of human sacrifices in Old Norse sources. The overall picture seems to stengthen the supposition that the ritual known as the blood-eagle was a genuine Old Norse religious practice, albeit an exceptional one, and was perhaps bound up with the overthrowing of a ruling personage.

The medieval Icelandic sagas known as fornaldarsögur usually take place in Norway and Denmark. Some of them, however, are set in Eastern Scandinavia, especially in Gautland. It is of interest, for its own sake, that Icelandic authors chose to write about the Gautar (Old English Geatas, modern English Geats), people whom they seem to have known little about. Accordingly, there is a reason to ask where they got the material for their stories from. Was it entirely made up, or did they perhaps know of some Geatish narrative tradition? This article seeks not to answer these questions in general terms, but rather to throw light on the topic by a case study, and deals with one of the fornaldarsögur, Úlfhams saga, which seems to have exceptionally strong connections to Eastern Scandinavia, or even Gautland specifically. Some aspects of the saga will be considered: its personal names and placenames, individual narrative motifs, its plot and its connection with images on the famous Sparlösa Stone from Viste region, Västergötland. The article reveals the possibility of an underlying Geatish story-telling tradition that might have influenced the author of the saga – and possibly also the person who carved the images on the stone.

In September 1704 a man named Sæmundur Þórarinsson was murdered by the river Elliðaá (fig. 1). Steinunn Guðmundsdóttir, his 43-year old wife, and Sigur­ður Arason, a 26-year-old man who lived with his mother, had had an affair and when Sæmundur was found dead in the river, rumours arose that he had been murdered. Sigurður was arrested for the murder. He first denied all allegations, but eventually he confessed and said that Steinunn had urged him to kill her hus­band. On November 14tth they were both sentenced to death at Kópavogur’s assembly and executed the following day. He was beheaded and his head put on a stake. She was drowned. Both were buried in unconsecrated ground on the opposite side of the road (fig. 2).

In the spring of 1988, the archaeologists Guðmundur Ólafsson, Lise Gjedssø Bertelsen and Sigurður Bergsteinsson excavated their remains.

The excavation uncovered a pair of barrows (fig. 3). A lot of small stones had been thrown on top of the original layer by passers-by, a custom which prevented revenance according to Icelandic folklore.

Grave 1. Under the pile of stones, in a shallow grave, with no traces of a coffin, lay the skeleton of a woman (figs. 4–6). Her legs were crossed, and most of the bones from the toes were not found. The left arm was slanted down towards the stomach, the right arm inclined up towards the chest. The fists were clenched. The skull was in a strange distorted position. Two cervical vertebrae lay outside normal position, and the two front upper teeth were missing, but one was found in the grave behind the skull. She had been drowned with a sack covering her upper body. Although the missing toes and teeth raised the suspicion of torture, there is, no written evidence of torture in Kópavogur and by civil law, torture of the accused, but yet not convicted was banned and recent analysis showed no signs of torture. A confession given under torture could not be used as evidence in a lawsuit, however, when a person had been sentenced to death, he or she could be tortured, as an addition to the punishment in Denmark as well as in Iceland.

Grave 2. On top of the second pile of stones a lower jaw of a man’s skull was found and some loose teeth, the grim remains of the skull that had been placed on a stake, and eventually fallen down (fig. 7). In a shallow grave under the stones lay the skeleton of the beheaded man (figs. 6 & 8), with the skull and the upper 2½ cervical vertebrae missing. The legs were crossed (figs. 6 & 8). By his feet was a 9 cm wide round hole for the stake, supported by several stones. The decapitated head had been placed at the top of the stake to intimidate passers-by on the road (figs. 6 & 8). There were no traces of a coffin.

From literary sources we know that at least 12 death sentences were carried out at Kópavogur’s assembly. The last one was carried out in 1704 over Steinunn and Sigurður in accordance to Icelandic law.

The Kópavogur gravesite is the only excavated execution site in Iceland, but comparable cases have been found in Denmark, such as one from 1822. Thomas Thoma­sen Bisp was executed in Vendsyssel for the murder of his wife Maren Just­datter. He had an affair with his maid Ane Margrethe Christensdatter and poisoned his wife. Thomas was sentenced to death by beheading and penalty on wheels and steep. Thomas’s body, including the head pierced by an iron nail, was soon removed and buried in a nearby hill, where it lay undisturbed for 78 years until road workers discovered it (fig. 9). Then the bones came at Vendsyssel Historical Museum. Ane Margrethe was sentenced to lifelong work detention in Viborg Prison, but after many years she was pardoned.

Jón Halldórsson (1838–1919) was born at Neslönd by Lake Mývatn, North Iceland. He was a farm hand at Grenjaðarstaður and Stóruvellir, North Iceland, before he emigrated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1872. He settled in Nebraska in 1875 as a farmer. Jón Halldórsson died in Chicago in 1919. Jón Halldórsson had no formal education but he was an ardent reader. As a farm hand at the Grenjaðarstaður vicarage he had access to the pastor’s library. He also became a member of the local reading society. Furthermore he and his closest male friends formed a reading circle, borrowed books from bookish men in the neighbourhood, and ordered books from Copenhagen. The article deals with Halldórsson’s informal education, his and his reading circle, the subject of their readings and reading experience, based on information derived from their personal correspondence.

The article discusses archaeological material regarding the Viking-Age settlement of Wolin (Wollin) identified as the Jómsborg of the Icelandic sagas. The study shows that Wolin stands out among other Scandinavian settlements on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea such as Gross Strömkendorf, Rostock-Dierkow, Menzlin, and Ralswiek. Firstly, Wolin was founded later than other emporia in the region. Secondly, the character of the Scandinavian presence is different. Wolin is characterized by a distinct Slavic core and a short-lived presence of a Scandi­navian elite with a clear underrepresentation of Norse women. Other emporia bear evidence of a continuous Scandinavian presence and wholly Norse character, including families, with a very clear presence of Norse women, and graves with rich inventories. Thirdly, Wolin was fortified while none of the other afore­mentioned emporia was protected by a wall. Another striking element of the archaeology of Wolin includes plait-work of “the Pomeranian School of Insular-Scan­dinavian Art”.

In Romantic Studies, poetical responses to nature have often been placed under such rubrics as pastoral, sublime and even scientific, depending on the general views or characteristics of individual poems, poets or literary traditions. Such rubrics can be questioned on philosophical or ecocritical grounds, especially if they are used to divide poetry into separate categories or fields. However, if taken as co-existing and interconnected discourses or literary modulations, instead of being seen as representing fixed categories, they can be useful in defining the nuanced and often contradictory representation of nature in literature. This understanding of the pastoral, sublime and scientific is put to the test in this article by looking at the poetry of Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807–45), who grew up on a country farm in Iceland and later became a geologist by education and profession. As is the case with many a Nordic poet who enjoyed formal education but had rural roots, Jónas’s poetry does not fit easily into any single category, but can be seen to modulate constantly between what we can call pastoral, sublime and scientific, and thus reflects a complicated and creative vision of nature in all its diversity. It bears witness to an ongoing conversation between the poet and nature, and it reveals the constant interplay between an inner and an outer nature, between the subject and material reality.

The article focuses on representations of the Pastoral as a landscape aesthetic and literary convention in 19th century Icelandic poetry. Although originating in Classical Greece and Rome, and more attuned to warmer climes, the Pastoral has found its way to the far North. It enters Icelandic poetry sporadically in the 17th and 18th century through translations and parts of Enlightenment Georgica, but comes into its own in the 19th century, as the article shows. The Pastoral appears as a mode in the poetry of Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807–1845), though often fleeting and even elegiac, perhaps owing to the fact that Icelandic summers are short and rather cold. It can have a dark side in such poems, invoked in images of Et in Arcadia ego or an imminent death in nature. The idealized or idyllic version of Pastoral finds its clearest voice in the poems of Steingrímur Thorsteinsson (1831–1913). He wrote poems in which there is perpetual spring or summer in the Nordic Arcadia, lambs gambolling around Icelandic shepherds, who sing their songs and are as gentle and sanguine as their southern counterparts. But Steingrímur’s idyllic descriptions of Nordic nature do often have an interesting symbolic side. A traveller in one of his poems is riding across an Icelandic heath when he suddenly hears the beautiful song of a distant swan, which almost seems to be coming from another world. As is the case in many Romantic poems of various European nations, such encounters with natural phenomena lift the mind of the modern man and often result in a temporary mystical union with the creation. The traveller in Steingrímur’s poem returns to civilization with an elevated spirit, filled with natural harmony. This, in fact, is one of the principal functions of the Pastoral in literature, as scholars have pointed out. On the one hand, the Pastoral is based on the city dweller’s desire to find a retreat in nature, and on the other hand, it depicts his return to civilization, having benefitted from his encounter with nature. The Pastoral view and its artistic conventions were formed during Steingrímur’s extended stay in Denmark, where he was influenced by Danish poets and artists of the Biedermeier period, who idealized nature and presented it as a harmonious whole. Such Biedermeier descriptions included feminine attributes and personifications of nature, as often witnessed in Steingrímur’s own poems.

Jómsvíkinga saga is difficult to classify generically. Modern conceptions of history and fiction in any case rely on different assumptions from those of medi­eval authors. Recent attempts to relocate another anomalous text, Yngvars saga víð­fǫrla, within the fornaldarsögur has implications for Jómsvíkinga saga. The saga has an intricate two-way relationship with the konungasögur, and is set against a back­ground of historical events, but its narrative is ahistorical, particularly in its personalization of events. The saga shows a development over time, with later versions including more fantastic elements; the inclusion of verse, on the model of the konunga­sögur, was also a later development. The saga shows a particular interest in the dynamics of relationships within a warrior group, rather than sin­­gling out an individual hero. There is a polarity between the heroic Vagn and the treacherous Sigvaldi, whose defection brings about the downfall of the group. Despite sharing material with the konungasögur, the saga’s preoccupations are distinctive and defy genre classification.

The rise of interest in the orality of eddic poetry has tended to view the preserved corpus as oral poems without considering their transition into writing and its poten­tial implications. The present article is an exploratory study of variation in the ordinal inventories of questions and knowledge in Vafþrúðnismál and Grímnis­mál. Variation in formula usage might reflect individual creativity and a dynamic handling of the poetic system. The two cases in focus, however, show a correlation between the variations and indicators that the expressions or their organi­zation were not ideal. In both cases, indicators in the poem’s text suggest that it is a product of oral presentation transcribed by a second individual. A detailed examination of formulae in Vafþrúðnismál point to difficulties where a b-line for vocalic alliteration is expected, for which the solutions seem to get worse rather than better, leading to the possibility that the presenter was bored or disinterested. Several features point to difficulties at the beginning of Grímnis­mál’s inventory, while exceptional variation in formula use leads to a possibility that some variation may be linked to the transcriber rather than the presenter. That blunders of presentation have been preserved in both poems rather than revised, either during the initial documentation or in later copying, reflecting ideas of what these texts are in relation to the tradition. 

This article deals with heroic legends that were widely known in the Nordic countries and further south in Europe for many centuries. Though many of these legends were first written down in the thirteenth century, they had been circulating for a long time before that time in the form of poetry and their subject-matter was depicted in art; images of the most popular heroes were carved in stone and wood and woven into tapestries, especially in Sweden and Norway. As is well known, the Icelanders preserved the old legends in their poetry and literature, but the motifs seem to have been less prominent in their art. In scholarly debate about pictorial sources of this kind, Icelandic artifacts are barely mentioned, except for the famous carving on the door from the church at Valþjófsstaður. It is therefore reasonable to ask: Did the Icelanders use motifs from the heroic tradition in their visual arts, as their neighbours did? And is it possible that there are some preserved artifacts with heroic motifs in Iceland which have not so far been discussed? These possibilities are explored, and an attempt is made to shed new light on some Icelandic images that are strongly reminiscent of figures or incidents from the heroic legends of past centuries.

The present contribution briefly discusses specific terms for parts of the female body in the Old Norse lexicon. To what degree and how are parts of the body specified lexically, it is asked. In adition the semantics of the compound konulær (‘woman’s thigh’), not at all frequent in texts, is highlighted and discussed in more detail.

Bautasteinn – a phallic symbol? On an interpretation of an Old Norse word 

A widespread interpretation of the word bautasteinn is ‘phallic symbol’. However, the interpretation rests on a weak foundation and should, therefore, be rejected. The starting point for the phallic interpretation is that the prefix form bautaðar- (genitive of bautuðr) is the original form of the prefix in bauta(ðar)steinn. The word bautuðr only appears in the Snorre Edda as heiti for ‘horse’, ‘ox’, and these meanings are central for the phallic interpretation of the word bautasteinn.

     In the article I show that there is nothing in the Old Norse manuscripts that supports that bautaðar- is the original prefix form in bauta(ðar)steinn. Instead, the manuscripts show that the form bauta- is the oldest and the most certain form of the prefix.

      One of the most important sources for the word bautasteinn, and for the original form of the prefix, is Egils saga Skallagrímssonar and its main manuscript, Möðruvallabók from 1330–1370. In the article I show how the source value of some manuscripts of Egils saga previously have been misjudged, and I describe why the reading of the form bauta- in Möðruvallabók is the most certain. As a result of this, the phallic interpretation of the word bautasteinn can be rejected.

The last Edda manuscripts written on vellum were created in the seventeenth century. One was an attractive manuscript of Eddic poetry commissioned by Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson. The manuscript was lost in the fire of 1728 but we attempt to reconstruct its contents. It turns out that all extant early copies of the Eddic Poems are derived from the same lost archetype. This archetype contained an inexact copy of the Codex Regius of the Eddic Poems, supplemented with material from at least six other sources. We argue that this lost archetype is prob­a­bly identical with Brynjólfur Sveinsson’s lost vellum manuscript.

The other vellum manuscript discussed here is the extant Codex Sparfven­feldianus, an attractive mid-seventeenth-century manuscript of the Prose Edda, based principally on the Codex Regius of the Prose Edda but supplemented with other sources. The manuscript has been linked with Bishop Þorlákur Skúlason but we argue that this connection lacks any firm basis. A connection to Bishop Brynjólfur is much more likely.

The two manuscripts required significant scholarly resources and reflect a sophis­ti­cated editorial conception of the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. Modern edi­tions of these works have much in common with these seventeenth-century creations.

This article attempts to explain why the Latin genre designation visio, which literally means ‘sight, something seen, vision’, is translated into Old Norse predominantly as leizla, which literally means ‘leading, guiding’ (leið-sla). At thetime, visio, when used as a generic term, most often referred to Christian morally instructive narratives about people who journey to Heaven, Purgatory and Helland about what they see and experience there. Such journeys are undertaken involuntarily by the soul (anima, spiritus) of the person who is experiencing the vision while the body remains behind, lying still and usually lifeless because the person is close to death, dreaming or in some sort of trance. The author suggests that the term leizla was chosen in order to provide a contrast to the pre-existing Norse tradition of similar journeys. This included narratives similar tosuch visions, namely narratives about journeys to the realm of the dead and back again and about journeys undertaken during a trance with only the soul going abroad while the body remains behind. Yet while the Christian visio narratives at the time of the earliest Old Norse translations usually feature a guide, often an angel or a saint, leading the visionary through the otherworld, there is no guide featured in the indigenous Norse narratives; in these, people always travel alone. This difference may be exactly what is indicated by the term leið-sla. The author evaluates this theory in relation to the translation of vision narratives from Latin into other Northern, Eastern and Western European languages during the Middle Ages and concludes that, within the (West) Norse area, visionary narratives of this kind were translated during a period of time when the need for a precisedesignation – leizla, ‘guiding’ – was greater there than in other geographical-linguistic areas.

Vafþrúðnismál is composed as a wisdom contest between a god and a giant. The genre itself has parallells elsewhere. Medieval literature often used the dialogue form to convey knowledge on religious matters. An influence on the eddic poem from Christian texts has been argued. Closer correspondances are found in the Indo-Iranian tradition, however. The author concludes that the framework of Vafþrúðnismál represents an ancient genre with roots in the Indo-European past.

Using theories of intertextuality the paper explores the implications of the complex transmission of Jómsvíkinga saga, with its multiple manuscripts, versions and cross-references in other texts. It then concentrates on the story-complex about the Jóms­víkings and the battle of Hjǫrungavágr, rather than the first part of the saga with its focus on Danish kings. The paper explores how this story-complex was realized in skaldic poetry, ostensibly a major source for the prose accounts. Following a survey of all the relevant poetry, the four drápur which treat the Jóms­víkings are analysed in detail. Two of these are roughly contemporary with the events, while two are retrospective, narrative accounts, and there is some evidence of influence from the earlier poems to the later ones. Overall, the analysis show how the story of the battle of Hjǫrungavágr was narrated in both verse and prose, and reveals the complex intertextual relationships between these narratives.

This a survey of all the preserved manuscripts of Jómsvíkinga saga, serving as a background to the articles of the volume. The saga is preserved in four pre-Refor­mation vellum manuscripts, one sixteenth-century Latin translation by Arngrímur Jóns­son the Learned, and in about twenty paper manuscripts. None of the vellum manu­scripts contains exactly the same text, and the Latin translation does not derive directly from the text found in any of the preserved manuscripts. Moreover, accounts of the Jómsvíkings can be found in the kings’ sagas Fagrskinna, Heims­kringla, and the so-called Greatest saga of Óláfr Tryggvason. The text tradition is therefore very complex. No copies exist of the oldest manuscript, AM 291 4to, and only a few of the paper manuscripts were copied in Iceland. As far as scholarly discussion on the manuscripts is concerned, the article deals with researchers’ ideas about the text tradition and preservation. No agreement has been established on the origins of the saga and the article reflects these different opinions.

The Rev. Sæmundur Magnússon Hólm (1749–1821) is mostly known for portraits of prominent Icelanders as well as for several colourful pictures of volcanoes and phantasmagoric landscapes. He spent fifteen years in Copenhagen where he studied theology at the University and fine arts at the Royal Academy of Arts – the first Icelander to graduate from that school. He wrote some poetry, most of it still unpublished, but the most noteworthy item of his writings is a notebook containing a diary of his dreams or noctuary, preserved from the year 1794. Indeed, Sæmundur seems to have made such notes over many decades, though only this notebook and a few later accounts survive. These texts have now been published and this article presents an overview of their contents as they relate to Sæmundur Hólm’s life and works, most importantly the period from his traumatic arrival at the parish of Helgafell in the autumn of 1789 to his dreams of 1794. Most of those dreams concerned his worries and quarrels in daily life at Helgafell, some of them interspersed with fantastic elements, or they echoed childhood memories or his longing for some sort of return to his former and more enjoyable life in Copenhagen. Very few of them are meant to be predictive and hardly any contain religious undertones. Numerous of the dreams are illustrated with small and simple drawings or signs, a few of them included here.

This article examines the transmission history of Griplur, a medieval set of rímur of Hrómundur Gripsson (Greipsson), a legendary hero from Norway and, according to Landnámabók, a forefather of the first settlers of Iceland, Ingólfur and Leifur. The rímur, which originate in the late Middle Ages, are preserved mainly in post-medieval manuscripts, and many of them have been ignored in the previous scholarship. The article presents the first study of all Griplur manuscripts with the focus on their contents and textual relationships, which lays the ground for a new critical edition of this work.