[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Grettis saga and Kjalnesinga saga. In some of these sagas it is clear
that the size and strength of these creatures are admired, and so the
race of risar (benevolent giants) are separated from fl’g: (ogres) and
given good looks, strength, wealth and wisdom so that an element of
wish-fulfilment enters into their portrayal. In late, fantastic sagas ele-
ments of savage wildness and polished elegance are combined in vari-
ous ways. Along with all these narrative types there were also the oral
wonder-tales, also not much concerned with folk-belief in this respect
and, indeed, their depiction of giants is very different from that of
folk-legends. One might assume that contact with these sagas would
have had an effect on both folk-legends and folk-belief in this regard,
and this may be so, but I am not prepared to go into this possibility.
Stories from later times tell of both friendly and hostile dealings
between men and trolls. The mythology has a similar variety to offer,
though there enmity predominates. Less can be said for certain about
ancient folk-legends about trolls, as they are so little known, but most
likely they were not very full of friendship between men and such
beings.1 But there must have been numerous land-spirits, fairly big
and burly, with whom people became friends, and I believe that the
majority of this very miscellaneous group must gradually have be-
come more homogeneous and taken on a single aspect, that of trolls,
during the first centuries of Christianity.
1
This is implied by most of the early folk-stories about trolls. Consider for
instance the troll-wife who attacked Snorri of Skálavík; the troll-wives who
made Kerlingafjör: ur uninhabitable; Eydís járnsaxa, who carried a woman
off; the giant who was responsible for volcanic eruptions, cf. p. 155 above.
FOLK-BELIEF AND FOLK-LEGENDS 167
As time passed, real men from the early history of Iceland began to
take larger than human shape in the legends that gathered around them,
and eventually some of them became troll-like in appearance. Special
attention is paid to Grettir s strength in Grettis saga, and the strength
of the heroic figures in Bár: ar saga and Orms fláttr Stórólfssonar is
exaggerated to excess, while in later stories some of these men of
ancient times become very troll-like, though some of them are known
from no other ancient sources than place-names.1 Some of these stories
tell of men of former times who trylltust, that is went wild and turned
into trolls, a phenomenon seen in Bár: ar saga, in the story of Jóra
who is connected with Jórukleif (this story is known in the seven-
teenth century), and in later stories.2 Parallels to this tendency to think
of men of the distant past as giants are found outside Iceland. Thus
Danish folk-stories have numerous Kæmper, heroic giants , who cor-
respond closely to the big heroes of Iceland, and local legends of such
British worthies as King Arthur and Robin Hood often exhibit the
same tendencies. It is, after all, a common day-dream to think of people
of the past as bigger, better and happier than those of the present.
Finally we must note how clerics tried to identify trolls with evil
demons, and there are plenty of examples of this in the Bishops Sagas.
This was the more straightforward in that the word troll had become
vague in meaning around 1200, but the attempt had no effect on folk-
belief, and it is difficult to see that it made much progress once land-
spirits had been frankly absorbed into the ranks of either trolls or hidden
folk, until the belief in trolls itself began to decay.
This appears to have happened around the year 1600. At that point
writers begin to state that though old women believe in the existence
of trolls, they reckon that their numbers do not increase much, the
male trolls being all dead or past procreation.3 Moreover, the troll-
1
In the time of Árni Magnússon there were stories about Gullbrá of Hvammur,
JÁ I xxi, cf. I 146 50. There are a lot of nineteenth-century stories about the
troll-like size and behaviour of people of ancient times, see JÁ I 211, II 95;
Jfiork. 32; in connection with place-names JÁ I 146, 150, 510, II 76 77, 91
92; Jfiork. 380 81; BBj. II 31, 67.
2
On Jóra see Jón lær: i, Tí: fordríf; Hálfdan Jónsson in Ölfusl! sing 1703
(Landnám Ingólfs III 16, 18); Árni Magnússon in JÁ I xxii; JÁ2 II 701 (tryllast);
ÓDav.3 II 272 74, ÓDav.5 I 185 86.
3
See QDI 14 (Icelandic translation 47 48), De mirab. 74 (Icelandic
168 THE FOLK-STORIES OF ICELAND
legends about events that are said to have happened after the Refor-
mation are rather limited in number, and it is usually certain that motifs
in them were taken from older stories and transferred to men of later
times. Admittedly people went on thinking that trolls had once existed,
though by then they were extinct, and it is also possible that belief in
them did not disappear simultaneously throughout Iceland; it prob-
ably survived longest in the south-east.1
Folk-legends can of course be created after folk-belief begins to
fade, but I think it most likely that nearly all the stories about trolls are
from before the Reformation. This view can be supported by various
pieces of evidence, first the fact that quite a number of the troll-stories
that are mentioned in writings from the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries2 are extant in many sharply-defined variants, which is a sign
of their age. Then there are many similarities between stories of trolls
from Norway and Iceland; they include the voices in the hills crying:
Sister, lend me a pot! , a giant in a rage flinging a rock at a church, a
troll who turns to stone when caught by the dawn. Such story-elements
occur in both countries. There are also various factors that are relevant
to this situation. Similar story-motifs can arise in places where there
are similar folk-beliefs and rather similar terrain. The settlers of Ice-
land must also not merely have brought their beliefs, but brought them
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plalternate.pev.pl
|
