#laxdæla saga

[laugamenn]

Kjartan Cosplay

[lasagras]

Me seeing anything with a love triangle: this is so Laxdæla coded

[broomsick]

As attested in the Landnámabók - The Book of Settlements, the Helgafell mountain (Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Iceland) was declared a holy site of Thórr by the very first man to settle in the area. Thórólfr Mostrarskegg, whose biography is detailed in the Eyrbyggja saga, had a shrine built to his God on the site. According to the Laxdæla saga, the hero Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir was buried at the foot of the Helgafell mountain.

Folk tradition has it if one climbs the mountain without saying a word or looking back once, one will be granted three wishes.

“You can make three wishes at the top of the mountain if you follow these exact rules:

First, find the grave of Guðrún. It is north of the church and the cemetery.

Make sure that your mind is free of bad thoughts.

Make a cross over Guðrún´s grave with your right hand.

It is important that you climb the mountain with good thoughts.

Make sure that you are not dirty and that you have washed your face.

Do not talk at all on the way to the wishing place.

Do not look to the right or to the left – just look straight ahead.

Go into the small enclosure (maybe this was once a chapel of the monastery and they prayed from here. A part of the wall has been dated at 1184).

Face to the east. (The town of Stykkishólmur can be seen to the north).

When you make your wishes, they must be only for the good.

Make three wishes.”

Source

[ceionia]

the sea bunny - Jorunna parva

i spent TOO LONG with a friend looking through an 19th century book in german about sea slugs to track down what "Jorunna" is and i have to share it with anyone who will listen

Jórunn Bjarnadóttir - a character from the Icelandic Laxdæla saga - "a good-looking woman, very proud, and no less clever. She was considered the best match in the entire West Fjords." (wikipedia my beloved)

the sea bunny is therefore "Little Jórunn" and i think thats just. so cool icelandic saga girlboss bunny slug <3

[sekkitsune]

The sagas are historical, not mythological

By which I mean, yes, "myths are not stories that are untrue; rather they are tales that don't fit neatly into the historical record, which serve as the foundation of a culture". The sagas do fit neatly into the historical record.

• • •

In Eiríks saga rauða, Erik the Red's saga, there's this bit where Auðr djúpúðga, better known to many as Unn the Deep-Minded, has to flee Scotland after her son is killed and his many enemies come looking for her. So she builds a ship in secret, no small undertaking, and escapes.

Later, someone shows up in Greenland and says "I am a descendant of that same Auðr!" and everyone's duly impressed.

Now, when I read this, it was after I had already read Orkneyinga saga, where this is mentioned in passing—Auðr does this in Caithness, the part of Scotland immediately south of Orkney, and so the story is mentioned in passing as an impressive deed.

So having read first an allusion to it in Orkneyinga saga, then the details and some consequences in Eiriks saga rauða, I was impressed with "oh yeah, this fits together because it's real history."

Then, I read Laxdæla saga and it turns out the entire opening part of it concerns Auðr/Unn directly, and the historicity got even thicker.

• • •

When I was in Iceland, I stayed in the part of the country that is Egils saga land. I mentioned how… let's say, impressively violent Egil is to an Icelandic friend over chat, and he immediately replied with a list of ~49 names, the first being an Egilsdóttir, and the last name his. He just happened to have his direct line of descent handy.

[queenbeyondthewalll]

Tagged by: @stanfordsweater (the Cabbage)

Last song: Jacob From the Bible by Jake Wesley

Currently watching: I’ve been watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds with my dad the last few nights

Currently reading: Laxdæla saga, but also Out of Thin Air by Anthony Adeane (do not judge that one is an Icelandic saga and one is about Iceland. I know what I’m about)

Current obsession: sort of lacking one tbh, I keep bouncing back and forth but nothing’s really grabbed me

No pressure tagging: @meyerlansky @goatsandgangsters @of-aesa @pixievivi

[historia-vitae-magistras]

I've heard sigurd and magnus put forth as more accurate names for norway and denmark, while I haven't really heard any popular alternatives to berwald and emil for sweden and iceland

Oh thank you! Eyyy, there's a King Magnus in the Laxdæla Saga. Sigurd is really good too. Thanks 💚.

[ihaveonlymydreams]

Hi this is Gracie btw and ages ago you said you needed recs on where to start with Norse religion/mythology so I was thinking if you still needed those recs here are some! idk what you've already read but these are the best I know of.

The Viking Achievement. Look unfortunately a number of these are ancient textbooks but they are like, the classics. This one is a decent overview of many aspects of Norse culture, but it's got a decent section on religion.

Hilda Ellis Davidson was a massively influential Norse scholar, her THESIS is considered the defining work on Norse conception of death (The Road to Hel is what it's called), her Gods and Myths of Northern Europe is also very notable and she did a lot of work on Old English and Celtic stuff too!

Probably one of the best things is just reading a bunch of the sagas, many of them have been translated into English and are widely available. Njal's Saga is one of the most popular, Egill's saga is one of the most famous, so is Laxdæla saga and I personally love Vatnsdæla saga.

For religion, the majority of Norse religion can be found in the Prose Edda and the older Poetic Edda.

Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia - Turville-Petre. When I was doing my research on it, this book is like the holy grail of norse religion books. It's also impossible to find irl but it can be found online, it's from 1964 so it's a little dated but it is one of the most iconic texts in the field.

I can also send you random articles in a variety of areas depending on what you're interested in.

Ok so this is a webpage - the Viking Answer Lady, visually it doesn't look like the info will be that great. But I promise it's actually super in depth, everything is referenced and cited really well, it was a major help to me in my research and she uses so many sources you can find some really good articles and books in there. You can find myth/religion related stuff under sections that aren't Myth also, this article on berserkers is under war and it's really good.

Another website - Norse Mythology for Smart People also pretty good and also can link you to some good more academic works if you want. Tends to be pretty short articles though.

Norse Mythology by John Lindow was also really good I think? It was a while ago

That's all I can think of right now!

Ooooh thank you! 💚💚💚 This is exactly what I was looking for. I will save this list and start looking for these books 😊

[kainoliero]

This happens in Laxdæla saga by the way! Án hrísmaga (Án brushwood belly) has two dreams, where in the first one he gets disemboweled and stuffed full of brushwood, and in the second one he gets disbrushwooded and boweled.

[linguistlist-blog]

TOC: NOWELE - North-Western European Evolution Vol. 77, No. 1 (2024)

2024. iii, 86 pp. Table of Contents ARTICLES Óláfr pái Hǫskuldsson’s landing in Ireland (Laxdæla saga) in light of the Irish law of the shore William Sayers pp. 1–13 The Old English gerund in ‑enne or ‑anne Arjen P. Versloot pp. 14–22 Addenda zum Etymologischen Wörterbuch der friesischen Adjektiva, Teil III Volkert F. Faltings pp. 23–48 Stationen der frühen nordgermanischen Sprachgeschichte: Zu einer neuen Periodisierung des Urnordischen Michael Schulte pp. 49–80 BOOK REVIEW Olga Timofe http://dlvr.it/T6Vn5s

[duhragonball]

Luffa Annual #4: Red Christmas

Got the second chunk of this year’s Christmas annual posted, which you can read right here.  

I was kind of in a funk about how well this was going, but reading it back, I think it works pretty well.  One thing I’ve really enjoyed is the real-world images I’ve been able to work into the story.  For example, I set much of this section in a hotel in Reykjavik, so I decided to look up a real one for this story, and then I ran across the Alda Hotel, seen in the photo above.  As soon as I saw the vampire mural I was like “Whoa man, I gotta use that.”

In case you’re interested, the image is entitled “Bend Embrace”, painted by English street artist D*Face in 2015 around the time the hotel set up in this building.  From what I can tell, the little wings are something he works into all his compositions.  There’s an inscription at the bottom that reads “þeim var eg verster eg unni mest,” which translates to “The one I treated the worst is the one I loved the best.” This is a line from the 13th century Icelandic saga Laxdæla.  So that was a cool rabbit hole to fall down this month. 

Still, it’s not a very red image to use for this post.  Luckily I’ve got another one here. 

It’d be cool to commission a piece with the red aurora overlooking the above shot of the building at night.  I guess it could be photoshopped reasonably well, but I don’t know that I have the skills to pull that off. 

Anyway, I got about 2/3 of the Christmas special posted by Christmas Day, so I’m calling that a win.   Pretty sure I can get the conclusion up by the 27th, so stay tuned.

[cibolasburn]

i wanted to reread laxdæla saga while i had time to process but you know I’m not even sure i own it and it’s not exactly like. just on the shelves at bookstores. the bright side is i’ll finally be able to finish both middlegame AND hellbent. books that came out recently!!

was like ah man with all this time off i could reread one of my sagas but alas. they being held hostage by my boyfriend in another country until i return

[luciferetlucia]

[goodmistakes]

A hungry wolf is bound to wage a hard battle.

Jorunn, Laxdæla Saga

[darkelfchicksick]

all i want to do is a good&queer retelling of völsunga saga idk yet how exactly it would work out but it could be done

[nimblermortal]

Ah, the famous “I do not know how thief’s eyes came into our family” line. Hrut is trying to be tactful, but he’s really, really not.

Calling Hoskuld’s prized daughter a thief is one thing, but he’s also implying that either Hoskuld is a thief; or his wife is a thief; or he’s raising his daughter to be a thief; or Hoskuld is perhaps a cuckold, and while I think thief is worse than cuckold, there’s really no win here.

Also, I always forget that Hallgerd is Kjartan’s aunt. It’s that close. The burning of Njal is one generation before Kjartan, that probably happened while he was growing up.