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Dr Triin Laidoner
‘Wetting’ the Mothers’ Mounds in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar? A Study of kumbla brjótr in Egill’s lausavísa (no. 4)
Abstract: Dísir are accepted by many scholars to represent dead foremothers who were widely known and celebrated in Scandinavia. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that the activities revolving around them were at least initially linked to gravemounds. Written evidence confirming that the rituals and celebrations dedicated to the dísir actually took place at gravemounds has, however, hitherto been lacking. This paper suggests a reinterpretation of a lausavísa contained in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar (ch. 44, p. 108, st. 8) which arguably supplies a small but potentially significant piece of such written evidence. A man who dutifully organises a dísablót in the saga appears to be called a worshipper of gravemounds in the lausavísa. This is expressed in a phrase which is rendered kumbla brjótr (‘breaker of cairns’, i.e. ‘grave-plunderer’) in existing editions of the stanza. It is argued that this form of the text – used in modern editions and translations of Egils saga, going back to Finnur Jónsson’s Den Norsk-Islandske Skjaldediktning B collection – represents only one possible reading of the manuscript sources. Examination of the surviving manuscripts containing the stanza – including both Möðruvallabók and Wolfenbüttelbuch, which are the main sources – demonstrates that in the majority of them the word brjótr does not actually occur; instead, the word that is used alongside kumbl is bljótr. The presentation will give a summary of the story in Egils saga and an overview of how this verse has been interpreted in previous scholarship, followed by a survey of the manuscripts that contain the relevant stanza, as well as a possible reinterpretation of the phrase; if accepted, this would support the logical yet hitherto undocumented idea that the dísir were seen as dead ancestors whose cult had once been associated with gravemounds.
- Venue
- CB009
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For further details please contact hannah.burrows@abdn.ac.uk