Einn atburður og leiðsla um Ódáinsakur

Leiðsla Drycthelms eða CI. œventýri í safni Gerings

Abstract

I. ATTENTION is first drawn to the fact that œvintýri means exemplum, i.e. religious tale but not folk-tale. These tales (ævintýri) are Christian in content and exist as translations, the most important collection being íslendzk œventýri edited by Hugo Gering in 1882-3. There is a list of major publications which have appeared subsequent to Gering's edition but almost all of them date from the last twenty years and a good deal of research remains to be done. Poems were composed out of exempla.

II. In the manuscript AM 200, 8vo we have the first part of Gering's exemplum no. CI, of which he only prints the last part. This part is not in 200, a manuscript the majority of which was written by Hálfdan Jónsson, lögréttumaður (legislator) at Reykir in Ölfus about 1690. Árni Magnússon obtained the manuscript some time after 1707. It contains, among other things, the main part of Tíðfordríf (1644) by Jón Guðmundsson lærði (the Learned). Following Gering's exempla XVI and XVII (which are also in Tíðfordríf) are tales CI and XXVII. These exempla appear to be reckoned as part of Tíðfordríf here but in no other manuscripts. There is in addition a short note on the spelling of this manuscript.

III. There is a brief description here of AM 657 a-b, 4to, the last part of Gering's exemplum no. CI being taken from it and here reprinted. Arni Magnússon says that the manuscript was once the property of the church in Bólstaðahlíð in Húnavatnssýsla. A short note on the peculiarities of the spelling is also included.

IV. It is concluded here that the relationship between 200 and 657 is of such a nature that one can be certain that the text in 200 was not taken from 657 while 657 was still complete. It is more probable that the two manuscripts have a common source. The date of the translation cannot be fixed and could be older than the text in 657 which itself dates from about the middle of the 14th century.

V. A note on the author and his other writings is recorded here. Gering thought that this exemplum was translated from Speculum historiale, and thus from Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Bede calls the main character Drycthelm and the name of the vision comes from that. In 1922 K. Vrátný correctly pointed out the source in Speculum ecclesiœ by Honorius Augustodunensis who was working in the former half of the 12th century in England and Germany. His Elucidarius was translated into Old Norse before 1200. References to and translations from the following works of Honorius: Gemma animœ, Imago mundi, Philosophia mundi, Sacramentarium and Summa totius de omnimodo historia are to be found in Old Norse writings. A fragment of a Latin manuscript of Spcculum ecclesiœ can be found in Oslo. Immediately preceding the printed texts there is a list of the additional Latin material as well as the material which the Icelandic text has in excess of the Latin.

VI. This exemplum is a leiðsla (vision) and here is a general discussion of visions which are now generating considerable interest. They reached their high point in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Jón Guðmundsson lærði (the Learned) in his work Samantektir um skilning á Eddu (1641) counts both Kötludraumur and Skíðaríma as visions. In Kötludraumur a woman is leidd ('led') to the elves and becomes pregnant with a boychild—the child later becoming a paragon of virtue and strength. In Skíðaríma a vagabond is invited to Valhalla where he receives some gifts but is wounded in a fight. When he regains consciousness he finds that he has marks on him from that fight and that the gifts are lying beside him. Jón seems to be alone in believing that Skíðaríma is a true tale but I am inclined to believe that it is a parody of a vision. In Scandinavia the Norwegian Draumkvœde is the best known of all visions. It was held for a long time that the visions of Gottskalk (1189) and Thurkill (1206) had influenced the Draumkvœde but none of these three visions was known at that time in Iceland. Visions appear in Gregory's Dialogues, which were translated in the twelfth century. Duggal was leiddur ('led') in 1149 and that vision was translated as was Visio Pauli. Two visions occurred in Iceland in the latter half of the twelfth century. Some other translated visions are found in Icelandic but not mentioned here. A rather doubtful paragraph in a chronicle (Gottskálksannáll) for the year 1195 says 'dreymdi Skíða' (Skíði dreamt). The people named in Skíðaríma are from the latter half of the twelfth century although Skíðaríma itself is thought to have been composed in the fifteenth century and is thus perhaps a parody account of Skíði's dream from the peak period of vision literature: this however is only conjecture.

VII. This begins with an attempt to explain why this story had been interpolated into one of the Tíðfordríf manuscripts. A factor common to this story and Tíðfordríf is the mention of Ódáinsakur which is also to be found in the History of the cross-tree in Tíðfordríf. Tíðfordríf and the above-mentioned Edda by Jón lærði (the Learned) were both written by the order of Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson who at the time was himself engaged in writing an exegesis to the works of Saxo for Stephanius. Moreover in Stephanius' Notœ uberiores in Historiam Danicam Saxonis (1645) he quotes Brynjólfur on Ódáinsakur and yet nothing of what he quotes derives from Jón lærði (the Learned). Ódáinsakur is referred to in Eiríks saga víðförla (Eric the Far-Travelled) and in Hervarar saga. The exegesis which Brynjólfur sent to Stephanius is now lost and Ódáinsakur is not mentioned at all in later exegeses by Brynjólfur. In a very remote area in the north of Iceland called Hvanndalir, which lies between Héðinsfjörður and Ólafsfjörður, there is a place called Ódáinsakur. As the name indicates it was reputed to be a place where it was impossible to die. The oldest account of this folk-belief is from 1689 in the work of Thomas Bartholin. He gives no explanation for the immortality tale and his sources are unknown. Eggert Ólafsson and Bjarni Pálsson did not actually go to Hvanndalir on their travels in 1755, and they mention some plants which grew there but no more. In 1777 Ólafur Olavius visited Hvanndalir, referred to Ódáinsakur and then records that there were plants which made people live forever. In 1890 Stefán Stefánsson, later a headmaster, arrived at Hvanndalir already knowing Ólafur Olavius' version, but whoever informed him strangely enough did not know the reason for the belief in Ódáinsakur. Stefán's informant had in other words similar ideas to Bartholin's informant. In the same parish as Hvanndalir, to the west of Siglufjörður, there is another Ódáinsakur which has a similiar folk-belief—sources for that, however, date only from this century. In a Norwegian land register c. 1400 there is the name of a farm (Vdadensakr) which has been claimed to be a variation on Ódáinsakur. I have come across two sources dating from the last forty years concerning the Ódáinsakur in Hvanndalir where there is no allusion at all to plants. Hvanndalir was thought to be such an undesirable place for habitation that the parish bought the land just before the turn of the last century in order to prevent anyone from even trying to live there. And yet in Landnámabók there is an account of a dispute over Hvanndalir which cost sixteen or seventeen people their lives. Why?