The Folk-Stories of Iceland
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VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH TEXT SERIES GENERAL EDITORS Anthony Faulkes and Richard Perkins VOLUME XVI EINAR ÓLAFUR SVEINSSON THE FOLK-STORIES OF ICELAND Einar Ólafur Sveinsson THE FOLK-STORIES OF ICELAND Revised by Einar G. Pétursson Translated by Benedikt Benedikz Edited by Anthony Faulkes VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON 2003 ISBN 0 903521 53 9 © Viking Society for Northern Research 2003 The cover illustration is of Valkyries (from Vƒlundarkvi›a), 1975, oil painting by Jóhann Briem (Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi), reproduced by kind permission of Katrín Briem Printed by Short Run Press Limited, Exeter CONTENTS PREFACE ............................................................................................ 7 PART I: SURVEY ............................................................................... 9 I: Prologue .................................................................................................... 9 II: What is a folk-story? .............................................................................. 13 III: Categories of folk-story ........................................................................ 16 IV: Stories, variants, motifs ........................................................................ 23 V: Characteristics of oral stories (Olrik’s ‘narrative laws’) ........................ 26 VI: Notes on the origin of particular classes of folk-story ......................... 31 VII: Wonder-tales in ancient times ............................................................. 32 VIII: Theories of origin .............................................................................. 38 IX: Folk-belief, folk-legend and fantasy: the history of wonder-tales ....... 50 X: Remnants of folk belief in folk-legends and wonder-tales .................... 56 XI: The origin of folk-legends, historical events, spontaneous changes; story-tellers and audiences ................................................................. 63 XII: Conclusion .......................................................................................... 69 PART II: SOURCES .......................................................................... 71 I: Folk-stories in pagan Iceland .................................................................. 71 II: The Commonwealth in the Christian period .......................................... 74 III: The late Middle Ages ............................................................................ 79 IV: Sixteenth century .................................................................................. 82 V: Seventeenth century ............................................................................... 91 VI: Eighteenth century .............................................................................. 117 VII: Eiríkur Laxdal ................................................................................... 122 VIII: Early nineteenth century .................................................................. 131 IX: Jón Árnason and Magnús Grímsson ................................................... 134 X: Collections of Icelandic folk-stories .................................................... 141 PART III: FOLK-BELIEF AND FOLK-LEGENDS ....................... 149 I: Superstition comes to Iceland; beliefs and legends about land and law 149 II: Non-human beings in Iceland and elsewhere; ‘land-spirits’................ 159 III: Trolls and giants ................................................................................. 163 IV: Elves ................................................................................................... 170 V: Ghosts and revenants ........................................................................... 183 VI: Second sight and magic ...................................................................... 188 VII: Stories of magicians of various periods ............................................ 195 VIII: Magicians and books of magic; Galdra-Loftur ................................ 204 IX: Historical events in Iceland and the historicity of folk-stories ........... 213 X: Outlaw stories ...................................................................................... 217 PART IV: ICELANDIC WONDER-TALES ................................... 226 I: The word ævint‡ri.................................................................................. 226 II: Before 1200; myths of the gods and legends of heroes ....................... 227 III: The earliest step-mother story: Grógaldr and Fjƒlsvinnsmál; Celtic influence; wonder-tales in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries .... 230 IV: The age of wonder-tales in Iceland; criteria of age ............................ 235 V: Imported wonder-tales—from where? Changes in Iceland; ‘periphery phenomena’; Icelandicisation: Búkolla, Cupid and Psyche............. 239 VI: Bjarka fláttr; folk-beliefs combined with wonder-tale motifs; wide- spread use of stepmother-motif and casting of spells ...................... 243 VII: Personal names in Icelandic wonder-tales ........................................ 247 VIII: Folk-story style, wonder-tale style; narrative formulas; small narrative details ................................................................................ 249 IX: Geographical and social setting and description ................................ 259 X: Saints’ legends, Novellen, comic stories ............................................. 264 PART V: THE WORLD OF MEN AND THE HIDDEN WORLD ... 267 I: Eiríkur of Brúnir’s stories of elves; sightings and sounds of elves ....... 267 II: Mysterious or supernatural phenomena the basis of many folk-stories .. 270 III: The cultivation of supernatural gifts and second sight ....................... 272 IV: Various influences on the content of what is seen; accounts modified by local culture................................................................................. 275 V: Some stories invented, others created to account for strange (but natural) occurrences ......................................................................... 276 VI: Folk-stories a mirror of social life ...................................................... 277 VII: Satire, vengeance, social class, wealth and poverty .......................... 279 VIII: Folk-stories as wish-fulfilment; desires and fears; curses ............... 284 IX: Symbolism; objectives of wishes; influence of childhood experiences ....................................................................................... 291 X: Strong colours and poweful antitheses in Icelandic folk-stories ......... 304 XI: Written stories..................................................................................... 307 XII: Some characteristics of Icelandic folk-stories .................................. 310 ABBREVIATED REFERENCES ................................................... 314 ICELANDIC FOLK-STORIES IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION ... 319 PREFACE This English translation of Einar Ólafur Sveinsson’s book Um íslenzkar fljó›sögur, originally published in Icelandic in 1940, has a long his- tory. First of all, Benedikt S. Benedikz began the translation in about 1970, assisted by Jacqueline Simpson, especially with the verse quo- tations, and the author himself at that time made some revisions to the Icelandic text. Einar G. Pétursson contributed to the author’s revi- sions up to 1980, especially as regards the sources for folk-stories in Iceland after the Reformation. Einar Ólafur died in 1984, having been ill for some time, and was not able to attend to the revision as much as he had hoped. Contributions to the translation of Part I and the first two sections of Part II were made by Peter Foote and Rosemary Power in the 1990s. The whole translation was then edited and revised by Anthony Faulkes and Einar G. Pétursson, with contributions to the bibliography by Richard Perkins, and is now published as volume XVI of the Viking Society Text Series. The text of the book naturally shows clear signs of having been originally compiled at the beginning of the Second World War. It was not practicable to rewrite it completely, and anyway it is doubtful whether that would have been desirable. My role in the final prepara- tion of this publication has mainly been to try to bring up to date and make consistent the footnotes, and to check and supplement the refer- ences, bearing in mind that they were now intended for a non-Icelandic readership. An attempt has also been made to a certain extent to provide fuller refences than were in the original book, by, for instance, giving the full names of authors and titles of articles, instead of just letting the name of the periodical suffice, though entire consistency has not been possible throughout the book. Even so, it ought now to be fairly easy to locate the writings referred to, and such inconsistencies as remain should not cause too much difficulty. An attempt has been made to include references to works published after the original book came out, and in the footnotes the chief of the more recent pieces of research on particular topics, such as, for exam- ple, tilberar (magical beings that stole milk from ewes and cows) and exposure of infants, have been referred to. Though these references are undoubtedly incomplete, they may perhaps be of use to some. 8 THE FOLK-STORIES OF ICELAND Particular care has been taken to extend the coverage of Icelandic material in Part II, on sources, and Part III, on Icelandic folk-belief and folk-legends. A good deal