VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCHTEXT SERIESGENERAL EDITORS

Anthony Faulkes and Richard Perkins

VOLUME XIIGUTA SAGATHE HISTORY OF THE GOTLANDERSThe ﬁrst page of Guta saga in B 64 (reduced)(reproduced by permission of Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm)

GUTA SAGATHE HISTORY OF THE
GOTLANDERS

Edited by Christine Peel

VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
1999

© Christine Peel 1999
Reprinted with minor corrections 2010

ISBN: 978 0 903521 44 4

The cover illustration is from a photograph (by K. Peel) of a miniature
replica in silver by Hans Helmer of a pierced disc, about two and ahalf inches in diameter, which was found in a woman’s grave at Ihre in
Hellvi parish, in north-eastern Gotland. The disc has been dated to theeighth century; cf. Note to 2/8. The illustration shows the disc rather
larger than the actual size of the original, which is held in Statens
Historiska Museum, Stockholm.

Printed by Short Run Press Limited, Exeter

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION(i) Historical background(ii) Title(iii) Preservation(iv) Content(v) Oral and written sources(vi) Date and place of composition(vii) Authorship and circumstances of authorship(viii) Value as a source of history(ix) Language(x) Editions of Guta saga
TEXT AND TRANSLATIONNOTESGLOSSARY
INDEX OF PROPER NAMESBIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS
MAPS
Gotland
The Baltic
Southern Scandinavia and south-eastern Europe

vii
ix
x
xiv
xv
xlix
liii
liv
lvi
lvii
2–3
16
61
82
85
98
99
100

PREFACE
This book started life as an MPhil thesis, written under the exacting
but always encouraging and enthusiastic supervision of Dr Richard
Perkins. He suggested, even before I had completed it, that I approach
Professor Anthony Faulkes with a view to its being published by
the Viking Society. This volume is the result.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr Perkins for his original suggestion, to Professor Faulkes for his clear and sympathetic editing, which
sharpened my discipline and perception, and to Dr Alison Finlay
and Dr Rory McTurk who encouraged me to pursue the project.
During the writing of the thesis my husband was able to increase
his familiarity with and love for London, Stockholm and Visby,
and I shall always be grateful for his patience and encouragement,even when every available surface in the house seemed to be covered
with my drafts.
Finally, I would like to thank the staff in the libraries in London,
Stockholm and Visby who helped me to satisfy the requirements
for chapter and verse upon which Dr Perkins so rightly insisted.
C. I. P.

INTRODUCTION(i) Historical background
Gotland (Gottland prior to 1923) is the largest of Sweden’s Balticislands. It is a chalky plateau, 83 metres above sea level at its
highest, with an area of approximately 3,000 square kilometres.
There is evidence of habitation on the island from the Stone Age,and of an advanced Iron Age culture. In particular, the picturestone is an art-form well developed in Gotland from the ﬁfth
century. Originally independent, the island was at some uncertain
date incorporated into the Swedish kingdom. During the Middle
Ages Gotland’s main town, Visby, on the island’s west coast, became
an important trading town in the Hanseatic league, with a Gotlandic,
Swedish, Danish and German population. In 1361, however, theisland was taken over by the Danish crown, after a violent invasion
by Valdemar Atterdag, and remained in Danish hands until 1645.
Then, at the Peace of Brömsebro, which concluded the war of
Baltic supremacy between Denmark and Sweden, Gotland returned to
Swedish rule. The short legendary history of the island, called Gutasaga, was written in the thirteenth or perhaps the fourteenth century.
It is relevant, perhaps, to consider the events that were taking
place during the period of writing and publication of Guta saga. As
Olrik remarks (1921, 56–57), every re-telling of a story is affectedby the circumstances and attitude of the author. If we assume that
Guta saga was written between 1220 and 1330 the following mayhelp to highlight possible inﬂuences. In 1164 the Swedish archbishopric was founded in Uppsala. Sweden was from this timeofﬁcially a Christian country and the ecclesiastical administration
therefore in place for the incorporation of Gotland into a Swedish
see to become a possibility. During the reign of Sverker (theYounger) Karlsson (r. 1196–1208) the importance of Gotland to
Sweden in terms of both trade and defence seems to have increased, and in 1203 the name Wysbu ﬁrst appears, in an entry inthe chronicle of Henry of Livonia; cf. Heinrici Chronicon Livoniae,
1959, 24–26. In 1207 Andreas Suneson, archbishop of Lund, visited
Gotland and it is possibly as a result of this visit that the codiﬁcationof a law for Gotland was encouraged and the ecclesiastical arrangements formalised.
In 1208, at the Battle of Lena, Sverker was defeated and Erik
Knutsson (who had been driven into exile in 1205) became king.

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Guta saga

Sverker himself went into exile after the battle, and it is possiblethat it is this event that is referred to at the end of Guta saga; seebelow, pp. xlix–l. Sverker died two years later, and in 1216 Erikwas succeeded as king by Johan Sverkersson. During Johan’s reign,and that of Erik Eriksson who succeeded him in 1222, a number of
diplomas and other letters refer to Gotland and the Baltic. In 1217
Pope Honorius III conﬁrmed the tithe law in Gotland, which wasmore lenient than that for other parts of Sweden, causing tension
between the Gotlanders and successive bishops of Linköping, who
attempted to claim a portion of the tithe. The arrangement wasagain conﬁrmed in 1230 by Pope Gregory IX. In 1219 King Valdemarof Denmark and Andreas Suneson instigated a crusade against
Estonia, and the ledung (‘levy’) was called out to support this. The
name Visby appears again in 1225, in a letter from Bishop Bengt of
Linköping concerning the foundation of Mariakyrkan in Visby, andat around the same date, records concerning Riga mention ius
Gutorum as having applied since the town’s foundation, which would
seem to imply that the Gotlandic law had been codiﬁed by that
date; see below, pp. l–li. In 1248 Birger Magnusson was appointed
jarl, the last, in fact, to have the title. The jarl was the king’s
representative, particularly in Götaland, and was responsible, amongst
other duties, for calling out the levy. When Erik Eriksson died in
1249, Birger took over the government, and the following year
Valdemar Birgersson was crowned, with Birger jarl as regent during
his minority. Three years later, a new tithe arrangement was put inplace, with the receipts divided between church, priest and the poor.
By 1255 there seems to have been a change in the trading
situation in Gotland, and Visby in particular. There is evidence inEngland of German inﬁltration in Gotlandic trade and, when Magnus
Birgersson became king in 1275, tension was beginning to become
apparent. In October 1285 Magnus wrote to the Gotlanders settingout the new arrangements for an annual tax, the laiþingslami,knowledge of which does not seem to be incorporated in Gutasaga. The next major recorded contact between Gotland and theSwedish crown was in 1288 when Magnus intervened in the civil
war between Visby and the rest of Gotland, which resulted in Visby
receiving an independent law, but which also forced the inhabitants
to apologise for their insubordination.
Magnus died in 1290 and in 1310, to resolve civil conﬂict,
Sweden was divided between his three sons, with Gotland being

The history of the Gotlandersix

subject to Birger. He increased the tax payable on the island and in1313 attempted to annexe Gotland. He was defeated at the Battleof Röcklingebacke, in the parish of Lärbro. Despite this, Birger
ﬂed to Gotland in 1318, after Nyköpings gästabud (the Feast at
Nyköping). He was succeeded as king the following year by his
nephew Magnus Eriksson. In 1320 Magnus cancelled the increaseof tax in Gotland imposed by Birger, and two years later wrote to
conﬁrm Visby’s privileges. From that time on, however, the inﬂuenceof Gotland in the Baltic was in decline and, following the Black
Death in 1350, it fell to an invasion by Valdemar Atterdag in 1361,
a culmination of his seizure of Southern Swedish territory.
(ii) Title
There is no heading over the short text that forms the appendix tothe manuscript of Guta Lag, designated B 64 Holmiensis and heldin the Royal Library (Kungliga Biblioteket) in Stockholm; seefrontispiece. The title Guta saga was given to it by Carl Säve. He
mentions it ﬁrst in an article (1852, 132) in which he describes the
text as follows:
En verklig Gotlands-Saga eller liten Gutnisk Landnamabok i endast 6
kapitel, skrifven på samma Gutniska eller Forngotländska tunga som
Guta Lag, och derföre alltid tryckt tillhopa med denna. Likväl ärsagans språk ovedersägligen något yngre än lagens äldsta hufvuddel,
Kapp. 1–61. Hon kallas i Schlyters nyligen utkomna förträfﬂiga upplaga
af Gotlands-Lagen Historia Gotlandiæ, och ﬁnnes der sidd. 93–104.

Later, in his thesis (GU, 31), Säve uses the title Guta saga. He wasin this translating the title Gotlændinga saga, which had been
given to the text by Uno von Troil in his list of Icelandic andNorwegian sagas (1777, 147–169), which he acknowledges. C. J.
Schlyter (CIG, 93) had, as Säve says, given the passage the title
Historia Gotlandiae and this title is later used by Hugo Yrwing(1940, 21). The text is, however, neither a saga, despite Säve’s
assumption (GU, viii), nor a history in the accepted sense, incomparison for example to the histories of Viking-Age and early
medieval Norway. To be regarded as a ‘saga’, Guta saga would
need, one feels, to have a more structured narrative and some sortof dénouement and resolution, whereas it ends abruptly in legalistic
language and matter. On the other hand it is not, in reality, comparable to Landnámabók, although there are certain similarities toÍslendingabók; see below, p. xv. It is possible that some suchx

Guta saga

designation as Gutabok would have been preferable, but in thecurrent edition the accepted title Guta saga is retained. It is worth
noting, as does Gustavson (1940–1948, I, vii), that there is nothing
in exactly the same genre in any of the other Scandinavian languages;
in particular there is no parallel legendary history of Öland.
(iii) Preservation
The only surviving manuscript of the text in Gutnish is the one in
B 64. It is an octavo manuscript in the same hand as the preceding
law text and shows linguistic similarities, as Säve indicated, to thelater sections of Guta lag, which are not listed in the index at thefront of the law text. The manuscript as a whole is dated by
Schlyter (CIG, i) to the middle of the fourteenth century and later
scholars, including Wessén (LG, xxvi), are in agreement with this.
The text covers eight leaves of vellum from 43 recto to 50 verso of
the manuscript. In the blank portion of the ﬁnal page a sixteenthcentury hand has made historical notes. The writer, according to
Lundmark (1925, 170) and Wessén (LG, xxvi), was probably David
Bilefeld († 1596), the Danish headmaster, later suffragan bishop of
Gotland. As well as these notes, there are later additions of chapter
numbers and headings, and some marginal notes. The manuscriptof Guta lag containing this text is designated A by Schlyter (CIG, iv).
Guta saga is not present in manuscript B of Guta lag (AM 54 4to),copied out by David Bilefeld, nor is there any evidence that it was
attached to his original, dated by him to 1470 and now lost; cf.
GLGS, xvii; Ljunggren, 1959, 9.
A German translation of Guta lag, which is also preserved in theRoyal Library in Stockholm as B 65, contains a translation of Gutasaga. This latter, set in two columns, extends from leaf 28 verso to
32 verso, with additions stretching over to 33 recto, and like thetext in B 64, is without any heading. This manuscript is dated by
Wessén (LG, xxix–xxx) to around 1400. Although the translation(which Schlyter describes as being a mixture of Middle High andMiddle Low German) is on the whole apparently adequate, Schlyter
comments that such mistakes as can be noted in the easily comprehended passages preclude the use of the translation to elucidate themore obscure ones; cf. CIG, xiv–xv. The law section of B 65
contains two chapters on slaves not found in B 64, but is without
chapters 62, 63 and 65 of B 64. The ﬁnal chapters are also in adifferent sequence. Wessén (LG, xxxi) concludes that the missing

The history of the Gotlandersxi

chapters were not present in the Gutnish original from which theGerman was translated and this seems to point to its representing
an earlier version of Guta lag than that in B 64. It is worth notingin this connection that the chapters listed above as missing from
B 65 are those that in B 64 resemble in language the version of Gutasaga that appears in the latter.
In addition to these complete versions, there are three incomplete
Danish translations (not noted by Schlyter or Pipping), and apartial one in Old Swedish. The oldest of the Danish translations
is in a paper manuscript in the Ny kongelig Samling of the Royal
Library (Det Kongelige Bibliotek) in Copenhagen, 408 8vo. It
contains only Guta saga and was ﬁrst published by Suhm in acollection of these manuscripts, but in fact edited by Rasmus
Nyerup (1792–1795, 133–138), and later by Ljunggren (1959,
19–27). Lis Jacobsen (1911, 51) dates this manuscript on linguistic
grounds to the sixteenth century, rejecting Nyerup’s suggestion(Suhm, 1792–1795, 133) that the handwriting points to the ﬁfteenth
century; cf. Ljunggren, 1959, 18. The manuscript itself is described
as being in poor condition with the ﬁrst page worn through, but not
to the extent of obscuring the text. It consists of nine leaves, but
has earlier had a tenth. The lost leaf is the second, which would
have held the start of Guta saga. The content and scope are broadly
similar to that in B 64 but with such differences as point to the one
not being a translation of the other; cf. Jacobsen, 1911, 52. The
similarities, particularly in detail, indicate, however, that B 64 andthe original of which 408 is a translation had the same redaction as
their starting-point.
The second Danish translation, in the Gammel kongelig Samlingof the Royal Library in Copenhagen and designated 2414 4to, isdated, again on linguistic grounds, to the ﬁrst half of the seventeenth century; cf. Jacobsen, 1911, 53. This translation is bound at
the end of a manuscript of Niels Pedersen’s Cimbrorum et Gothorum
origines . . ., headed de Cimbris et Gothis Libri II. Two hands haveapparently taken part in the main work and a third has written out
Guta saga. Even the paper is different from that used in the mainpart of the book. The translation covers nine pages of the last eightleaves, 69 recto onwards. The remaining pages are blank and the endof the text of Guta saga is missing. The free nature of the translation makes it difﬁcult to judge the relationship between its original
and B 64, but it differs substantially from the translation in 408.

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Guta saga

Ljunggren (1959, 10) mentions the similarities that Jacobsen (1911,59) ﬁnds between 2414 and the German translation, B 65, which hesays represent an independent tradition from the other versions. He
suggests, however, that these two go back to a common original.
Thirdly, there are two small fragments appended to Syv (1663),
hereinafter designated S. Peder Syv (1631–1702), the priest andphilologist, mentions in his book versions of the text in Gutnish
and in German. The translation is described by Jacobsen (1911, 53)
as a good one and clearly independent of the other two. She
concludes from Syv’s explanation of his source that he had a copyof Niels Pedersen’s Cimbrorum et Gothorum origines . . ., his socalled Gullandskrønike, to which was appended a translation ofGuta saga in the same manner as in 2414, but representing a third
strain of translation. Syv certainly owned a copy of this work (24154to), but this manuscript does not contain Guta saga; see Gigas,
1903–1915, III, 26–27.
The Old Swedish translation of the second chapter of Guta saga
is to be found in D 2 Holmiensis in the Royal Library in Stockholm.
It is commonly called ‘Spegelbergs bok’ after Johan Spegelberg,
the well-known scribe of Bishop Hans Brask; see Ljunggren, 1959,
10. Schlyter was apparently unaware of this translation, as he does
not mention it in his account of the manuscripts, whereas heotherwise includes ‘Afskrifters Afskrifter’ in his list of versions;cf. Jacobsen, 1911, 51. Klemming (Svenska medeltidens rim-krönikor
III, 1867–1868, 243) seems to have been the ﬁrst to have taken
account of it and it has since been noted by Geete (1903, 112, no.
316). Cf. also Noreen, 1904, 14; GLGS, xx. Wessén (SL IV, 296)
describes it as a rewriting, but Ljunggren (1959, 11) considers it ismore properly a translation and dates this part of the manuscript to
between 1425 and 1470.
These four late medieval and reformation translations complete
the preserved manuscript tradition of Guta saga. It is missing, as
stated, from the paper manuscript written in 1587 by Bilefeld, heldin the Arnamagnean collection in Copenhagen. Bilefeld states thatthe manuscript he was copying dated from 1470, but there is apossibility that the original of this latter manuscript was older thanthat of B 64; cf. LG, xxviii. Following Jacobsen (1911, 66), it isconvenient to designate the original manuscript of the text *G. This
text she dates provisionally to circa 1250. Given the paucity of thematerial, it is to be expected that the stemmas constructed by

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The history of the Gotlanders

different scholars would diverge in detail, and the opinions held by
Jacobsen (1911, 66) and Ljunggren (1959, 98) are indicated below.
Jacobsen proposes that three traditions, which she calls x, y and z,
developed as follows. The ﬁrst gave rise directly to B 64 andindirectly to the Danish translation 408. The second tradition,
through a no longer extant German translation y1, gave rise directly
to the German translation B 65 and indirectly to the Danish translation 2414. Finally, z, after several copyings (shown on the stemma
as z1 to zn), gave rise to S. Jacobsen’s conclusions are based on thewording of individual passages and are fully tabulated (1911, 66–72).
Ljunggren (1959, 97) ﬁnds her reasoning relating to the status of
S as the end result of an independent strain unconvincing, andderives it as shown below directly from B 64. He is willing,
however, to concede her argument for the existence of x, while
preferring to regard B 64 as itself the original for x1. It seems
logical to agree with Jacobsen that B 64 lies less close to theoriginal *G than would be indicated by Ljunggren’s stemma (dashedlines), and to consider also that S is less likely to be derived directlyfrom B 64 than he infers. This may appear to be erring on the sideof caution, but the difference to which Jacobsen (1911, 67) refers
seems certainly to indicate that Syv was less than likely to be using
B 64 or a derivative as his model. She notes, for example, that S has
lidet til at see, which would suggest a Gutnish original with oliust,
where B 64 has eliust.
*Gc.1250
z

y
[x]
B 64
c.1350

y1
x1

○

○

z1

x2
c.1438

○

○

○

z2
zn

B 65
1401

y2

D2
c.1450408
c.1500–1525

S
c.16502414
c.1625

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Guta saga

The preceding stemma shows the suggestions of both Jacobsen and
Ljunggren. The unbroken lines represent derivations on which both
agree, the dotted lines in the z branch of the stemma indicate anumber of copyings and the dashed lines show derivations where
Ljunggren differs from Jacobsen, who does not include D 2.
(iv) Content
The text of Guta saga consists of just over 1,800 words but thecontent is remarkably wide-ranging. Although there are no original
chapter headings, and the ones added to the manuscript later number
only four, the text has been divided in most editions into six
sections. The ﬁrst of these opens with the discovery of Gotland by
the legendary Þieluar, his removal of the enchantment upon it by
the introduction of ﬁre and the settlement of the island by his son,Hafþi, and daughter-in-law, Huitastierna. These two have threesons, their birth having been predicted in a dream, and the island
is divided between the three of them and inhabited by their progeny.
The population increases to such an extent that a proportion ofthem is forced to emigrate and continue their ﬂight eastwards. They
ﬁnally reach Byzantium and by means of a verbal trick persuade
the emperor to allow them to stay. It is stated here as an aside that
there are still people in that region whose language contains
Scandinavian elements. The end of this section gives a number ofdetails relating to heathen practices.
The second section describes conﬂicts between the Gotlanders andother nations and the entering of the former into a treaty with theking of Sweden, facilitated by Avair Strabain. The terms of the treaty
involve an annual tax and, in return, toll concessions and protection.
The third, very short, section describes the visit of St Olaf andthe building of the ﬁrst chapel by Ormika of Hejnum, while thefourth section expands on the description of the conversion to
Christianity, led by Botair of Akebäck and his father-in-law, Likkair
Snielli, followed by the building of churches throughout Gotland.
The ﬁfth section describes the arrangements made regarding
visitations by the bishop of Linköping, and the ﬁnal section details
the obligations of providing ships and men for the king of Sweden
with a short postscript concerning what action should be taken in
the event of the Swedish king being deposed.
The narrative sections of the text are laconic and, as Rolf Pipping(1943, 67) comments, have something in common with the less

The history of the Gotlanders

xv

pretentious Icelandic sagas. The characters of the protagonists arepresented through their actions and words, rather than throughcomment, and the dramatic events are described in few words,
which nevertheless result in vivid tableaux. They remind one alsoof the early sections of Ari Þorgilsson’s Íslendingabók, as has
already been suggested, the opening words having a superﬁcial
similarity: Gutland hitti fyrst . . . and Ísland byggðisk fyrst . . . Bothtell of the ﬁrst settlers, the division of the respective islands and theearly political machinations, followed by missionary activity, which
was ﬁnally successful. It might even be argued that the descriptionof the settlement of Greenland in Íslendingabók is paralleled by theemigration episode in Guta saga. The chief differences between
the two are ﬁrst that the author of the Icelandic work is known, andsecondly that there is little in Íslendingabók that is obviously
legendary as opposed to historical, whereas the story of the discovery of Gotland is clearly ﬁctitious.
After the brief description of the conversion to Christianity and thenegotiations with the bishop of Linköping, the style of Guta sagachanges and the rights and duties of the bishop are set out in languagethat must be very close to that which appeared in the actual documents
laying down those rights and duties; cf. Notes to 10/22–12/20. The
levy obligations to the king of Sweden are couched in legal language
and must be more or less directly copied from the original statutes.
The style of Guta saga reﬂects the varied content. The four
earliest (narrative) sections are not homogeneous in their nature
either. The ﬁrst section is of a legendary character, covering theprehistory of Gotland and including folk-motifs as well as whatmust have been more speciﬁc oral tradition. The second section,
covering the negotiations with the king of Sweden, probably records
a historical event, although how much of the detail is factual must
be open to question, while the third and fourth sections, covering
the conversion, possibly have a historical framework, but do notprovide a very detailed account.
(v) Oral and written sources
In general, the oral sources behind Guta saga relate primarily tothe legendary and quasi-historical elements of the text, while written
sources may be found both for these and for the historical and legal
elements. The two types of source material will be considered
together within the framework of the text of Guta saga.

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Guta saga

Oral traditions sometimes have a tangible kernel to them, such as
an object or a place-name, or they may be centred around a verseor a folk-tale, using that term in its widest sense. Frequently,
however, the origin of an oral tradition is not identiﬁable, even in
the broadest terms. Whatever that origin might be the traditionneeds informants to pass it on. There is, admittedly, little mention
in Guta saga of possible informants, or sources, of oral tradition.
One of the people about whom traditions would be expected toexist, Likkair Snielli, is simply said to have ‘carried most authority
at the time’ and of another, Avair Strabain, it is stated that there arestories about his being ﬁelkunnugr, ‘skilled in many things’, butwith no further indication as to what these stories were. It is
obvious, though, from the strikingly dramatic presentation of theincidents, that at least some of the legends presented must have hadoral traditions as their basis; cf. Säve, 1978–1983, I, 6–9.
Written sources can be broadly divided into works of a similar
kind to the text under consideration (i. e. those containing similar
literary motifs, although not necessarily of the same scale) andthose of a different nature: legal texts, letters and other factual
material. The varying prose styles within Guta saga and the broad
spectrum of material that it covers indicate that there are several
disparate sources for its content. In considering the written sourcesbehind Guta saga, therefore, it is appropriate to deal separately
with the sources that relate to the clearly historical material andthose which might have provided inspiration for the legendary andmore problematic parts of the text. It is clear from the content ofGuta saga that the further on in the text one moves, the more thesources become formal in style, and the more likely they are to be
factual rather than ﬁctional. There have been suggestions, mostrecently by Mitchell (1984, 168–169), that Guta saga is a loose
compilation from other written sources, but it seems more reasonable to assume that it was composed as a whole, with a purpose.
Oral sources in general, as Olrik (1921, 88–89) has pointed out,
are most likely to have been changed by the author to suit his taste,current conditions and perhaps other sources, which he knew ofbut did not incorporate to any great degree. Any postulations about
these sources are bound to be merely informed guesses based on
the balance of probabilities. The use of literary parallels is similarly uncertain and it is clearly not possible to state categoricallythat an author used a particular written source, unless he indicatesthat this is the case.

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The history of the Gotlanders

The following elements in the text, which might have been basedon either oral or written sources, will be considered in the sequencein which they occur in Guta saga.
Chapter 1(A) The discovery of the island(B) Sinking islands(C) Hallowing with ﬁre(D) Mythical or mystical ancestors(E) The settlement of the island(F) Dreams about snakes(G) Predictive verse(H) The division of the island(I) Emigration as a remedy for overpopulation(J) Torsburgen and Fårö(K) Traces of emigrants abroad(L) The tricking of the king(M) Heathen beliefs and practices
Chapter 2(N) Gotland’s treaty with Sweden(O) The visit of St Olaf
Chapter 3(P) Church building(Q) The conversion of Gotland as a whole(R) Ecclesiastical arrangements
Chapter 4(S) Levy arrangements(T) The relationship with the king

Text reference

(2/1)
(2/2)
(2/3)
(2/5)
(2/6)
(2/7)
(2/12)(2/19)(2/23)(2/26, 4/1)
(4/4)
(4/8)
(4/17)(6/1)(8/1)(8/15, 10/9)(10/6)(10/14)(12/21)(14/22)A The discovery of Gotland
The story of the discovery of Gotland and the name Þieluar posethe ﬁrst problem: to determine who Þieluar might have been, andwhat historical or traditional connection, if any, he had with Gotland.
A variant of the name is known from a pair of runic inscriptions
found on stones in Öster Skam in Östergötland; cf. Note to 2/1.
These runestones presumably predate the original text of Gutasaga, although according to Brate (ÖR, 25–27) doubt has beenplaced on their antiquity, and it was suspected that they were thework of a seventeenth-century antiquarian, although Brate himself
considers the inscriptions as recorded to be genuine. P. A. Säve
writes (1862, 59) that he was unable to ﬁnd evidence of the stone
or stones and that no one in the parish could offer any information,

xviii

Guta sagaeven the local dean, who was of the opinion that they did not exist
and had never existed. There might seem to be no great similarity
between the Þieluar of Guta saga and Þjálﬁ, Thor’s servant in
Snorri Sturluson’s Edda (1982, 37, 40, 43, 177), although it has
been suggested by several scholars, including Läfﬂer (1908–1909,
Part 1, 170–171) and Gordon (1962, 255), and has been taken up
by Uwe Lemke (1986, 14), who sees Þieluar as the representativeof Thor, the thunder, lightning and life god. In that role, he would
be an appropriate agent to free the island of its enchantment. Olrik(1905, 136–138) wonders if there is not a mystical aspect to Þieluar/Þjálﬁ, despite the fact that he is usually in Thor’s shadow, but
points out that ﬁre is so commonly called upon to dispel spirits thatthe world of the gods need not be involved. Olrik notes also that thename is thought to be related to a presumed Icelandic *þjálf,‘work’, leading to speculation that he might be a work-god, but
dismisses much of this as mere conjecture. No such form occurs in
Old Icelandic, but it is worth noting that Þjálﬁ could be a weakform of Þieluar; cf. ÍO, s. v. þjálfa; de Vries, 1956–1957, II, 129.
The existence of oral traditions in connection with Þieluar isperhaps shown by the fact that a later Bronze Age grave (1000–300BC), near the east coast of Gotland and lying almost directly east of
Visby, in the parish of Boge, is called Tjelvars grav. This is not,however, the oldest grave in Gotland, which was inhabited prior to
the Bronze Age, and even if it were, the name could be secondary
to Guta saga, so it cannot be regarded as a source.
B Sinking islands
In relation to the legend of the island of Gotland sinking by day andrising up by night, there is geological evidence to support a numberof changes in sea level and these could well have been compressedin folk memory into a diurnal change, followed by the ﬁnal ﬁxing
of Gotland above sea level. Gotland was below sea level at the endof the last Ice Age, having been above it previously, and it appears
that the sea level then slowly fell, resulting in a series of steps inthe coastline; cf. Klintberg, 1909, 33, 35–36. What is certain,
geologically, is that the sea was once very much higher than it istoday and there could therefore have been a period during whichparts of the island at least were sometimes above sea level andsometimes below it. The various levels of sea-wall testify to thisand geologists point to the movements in the Baltic basin and theThe history of the Gotlanders

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sinking of the land in the Ice Age as a cause; cf. Lemke, 1970, 4.
Gotland itself is relatively ﬂat, so if the sea level were near to the
top of the present cliffs, it might well seem as if the island weredisappearing and re-appearing in a mysterious manner, especiallyin bad weather. That being the case, it is not surprising that somefolk memory remained of this period and that it was included in alegendary history of the island.
There are, however, legends from Iceland and other parts ofScandinavia, Ireland, Finland and England, which can be cited as
related to the motif of a ﬂoating island. Particularly fertile islands
were frequently the subject of legends concerning their magicalorigins; cf. Gordon, 1962, 255–256. Several islands are deemed tohave been disenchanted by ﬁre or steel. Svínoy, the most easterlyof the Faeroe Islands, is one of a number mentioned by Strömbäck(1970, 146–148) in this connection. Svínoy is described by Lucas
Debes (1673, 21–22) as a ﬂydøe bewitched by the devil, which had
to be ‘ﬁxed’ with steel. A similar tale from 1676 is told of themythical island Utröst, west of Lofoten in Nordland, and from latertimes of Sandﬂesa (west of Træna), Utvega (to the west of Vega),
Hillerei-øi, Ytter-Sklinna (in Nord-Trøndelag), and other islands in
Norway; cf. Storm, 1895, 208; Nansen 1911, 286. Steel would haverendered them visible and thus disenchanted, but they were too far
out to sea to have been reached by a domestic animal needed tocarry it, so they remained submerged. The ‘lucky’ island O’Brasilor Hy Breasail, off the west coast of Ireland, was said only to appear
every seven years and would stay in sight if someone could throwﬁre on it; cf. Nansen 1911, 287. Giraldus Cambrensis (1867, Part 2,
94–95) writes in the twelfth century of an island off the coast of
Ireland, which disappeared as a group of young men attempted todisembark, but was ‘ﬁxed’ by an arrow of red-hot iron being
thrown on it as they approached. Another island off the west coastof Ireland, Inishboﬁn, ‘white cow island’, was ‘ﬁxed’ when two
sailors landed on it and lit a ﬁre; cf. Palmenfelt, 1979, 128. Williamof Malmesbury (1981, 44–47, 52–53) tells the story of Glasteing
being led by his sow to the island of Avalon at Glastonbury andthere are tales of islands, including Svínoy, being disenchanted bytying steel to a sow that was in the habit of visiting the island.
Whether any of these tales could have been known to the author of
Guta saga is difﬁcult to assess, although such stories were clearlycommon, at least throughout Europe. Spegel (1901, 22) lists several

xx

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more of them in his account of the history and geography of
Gotland. First, the island of Delos in the Aegean, which was saidby the Greek poet Callimachus, in his Hymn to Delos (c.275–262
BC), to have sailed to and fro over the sea, being sometimes visible
and sometimes not; see Mineur, 1984, 75–95. In legend, the mysterious Delos was said to have been called from the bottom of thesea by Poseidon and eventually chained to the sea-bed by Zeus.
The island was the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis and sacred to
the former. Secondly, Spegel cites the island of San Borondon, of
which the sixteenth-century Dutchman, van Linschoten, reportsthat the Spaniards thought it lay about 100 miles west of the
Canaries; see Linschoten, 1598, 177. They could see the island, butnever ﬁnd it, and assumed it was either enchanted, or small andcovered with clouds. Thirdly, Chemmis, an island on a lake at themouth of the Nile, which Herodotus (Book 2, §156) was told
ﬂoated while it was being used as a hiding-place for Apollo. Cf.
also Nansen, 1911, 283–285 and references.
C Hallowing with ﬁre
The motif of hallowing or removing a spell with ﬁre is foundwidely in Scandinavia and there is also evidence for its actual
occurrence. Examples are found in Danish, Icelandic and Irish
literature, and have been discussed in detail by Strömbäck (1970,
142–159). He supports the theory that as well as, or as an alternative
to, any legal implications, the ringing of land with ﬁre in some way
placated the land spirits who had bewitched it. To reinforce this heinterprets eluist as a form of eluiskt meaning ‘bewitched’, andsuggests that the account in Guta saga represents merely a morepointed version of the belief lying behind land-claiming customs,
similar to those mentioned concerning Jo≈rundr goði in Landnámabók(ÍF I, 350, 351) and Þórólfr in Eyrbyggja saga (ch. 4; ÍF IV, 8) as
well as in Vatnsdœla saga (ch. 10; ÍF VIII, 28) and Hœnsa-Þóris
saga (ch. 9; ÍF III, 25). These are, however, simply parallels and it
is probable that there was a similar oral tradition associated with
Gotland itself. The idea lying behind the ﬁre legend may be that theisland could only be inhabited once it was dry enough to sustain
ﬁre, that is, when the water level was low enough.

The history of the Gotlanders

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D Mythical or mystical ancestors
Having removed the spell from the island, Þieluar disappears fromthe scene and is not mentioned as a permanent settler. This puts
him in the role of ‘mystical ancestor’, on a parallel with Tuisto,
referred to by Tacitus (1914, 32), and the Gothic Gaut/Gapt, in
Jordanes (1997, 70), discussed, along with other examples, by
Schütte (1907, 135–136). There are many parallels for such an ancestor and it is not possible to determine whether one of the accounts
extant at the time was the inspiration for the tale incorporated by
the writer of Guta saga, or whether a separate oral tradition existed.
E The settlement of the island
There follows the description of a further two generations of mythicalancestors from whom the inhabitants of Gotland are deemed tohave descended. Hafþi, the son of Þieluar, marries Huitastierna(‘white star’) and they have three sons who are all given names
starting with ‘G’. Legendary genealogies consisting of sets ofalliterating names are common in the early histories of several
peoples. According to Tacitus (1914, 32), the Germans worshipped
an earth-born god, Tuisto, who had a son Mannus, himself thefather of three sons, the founders of the three races of Ingaevones,(H)erminones and Istaevones, who were celebrated in songs. Thesesons were named Inguo, Ermenus and Istio in sixth-century sources;
cf. Tacitus, 1914, 136. Similarly, the Gothic tribes recognised oneancestor by the name of Gapt (or Gaut), who had a son named
Hulmul (Humli or Humal), called the father of the Danes, himself
the father of Augis (Agis or Avigis), the father of Amal, the fatherof Hisarna, the father of Ostrogotha, the father of Hunuil, thefather of Athal and so on; see Jordanes, 1997, 70; Wolfram, 1988,
31. In medieval Scandinavian literature, several mythical genealogies
are mentioned, including those in Snorri’s Gylfaginning and Ynglingasaga. In Gylfaginning (Snorri Sturluson, 1982, 11) Snorri writes ofAuðhumla, the giant cow, which licks Búri out of a block of salt.
This Búri marries Bestla and has a son Borr, in turn the father ofÓðinn, Vili and Vé. The earliest extant version of a genealogy of
the Norse people is probably represented by Upphaf allra frásagna(ÍF XXXV, 39–40), which is thought to be the beginning of a lost
Skjo≈ldunga saga. In it, Fróði, the great-grandson of Óðinn, is described as a bringer of peace and prosperity and a contemporary ofxxii

Guta saga

Christ; cf. Faulkes, 1978–1979, 94–95, 107–108. In Ynglinga sagach. 10–13 (ÍF XXVI, 23–29) Snorri gives the genealogy of Yngvifreyr’s line and in ch. 17 (ÍF XXVI, 34) that of Rígr father to Danpr,
grandfather to Drótt and great-grandfather to Dyggvi. Again, in
Landnámabók (ÍF I, 40) the three sons of Atli are Hásteinn, Hersteinn
and Hólmsteinn, although these could be historical. Keil (1931,
60–70) suggests that the choice of names in the Icelandic sagas
was also partly inﬂuenced by alliteration and other similar factors.
Considering the speciﬁc names in Guta saga, the name Hafþi
might possibly be linked with the parish name Havdhem on southern
Gotland as Wessén (SL IV, 302) implies. It is more than likely,
however, that the parish name preceded the writing of that portionof Guta saga, and that the name Hafþi is secondary to that. It isnecessary to accept the possibility that personal names appearing
in legends could have been invented as a result of the existence of
place-names with an apparent genitive form and/or with a second
element that invited such an assumption. Another example of thispossibility is Lickershamn, discussed below, p. xliv. Olsson (1984,
26) interprets Havdhem as relating either to the Gotlandic haued,‘head’, or to havde, ‘raised grass bank at haymaking’. Schütte(1907, 136), however, relates the name Hafþi itself to ‘head’,suggesting he was the ‘head-man’, with the mystical wife, Huitastierna.
The place-name Havdhem, although it could have suggested thename Hafþi, is not mentioned in Guta saga. The name Huitastierna,apart from alliterating with Hafþi, leads Läfﬂer (1908–1909, Part 1,
171–172) to note that it reminds one of the ‘cow-name’, and to
consider that the two might originate in an alternative creation myth,
representing animal deities; cf. above, p. xix, in relation to Inishboﬁn.
F Dreams about snakes
The dream that Huitastierna has on her wedding night, of the threesnakes issuing from her womb or breast, has folklore parallels. The
motif of pregnant women dreaming of events connected with thebirth of their children is very commonplace. There is, for example,
a tale concerning William the Conqueror’s mother who is said tohave dreamed that a great tree grew from her womb. Equally,
dreams concerning snakes are not unusual and the combination of
the two motifs (with the snakes proceeding from some part of awoman’s anatomy) is also encountered. Henning Feilberg (1886–
1914, IV, 316, s. v. orm) mentions a motif concerning a snake

The history of the Gotlanders

xxiii

growing out of a young girl’s back and coiling itself around her
neck. Snakes also ﬁgure largely in Celtic myth in various guises:
as protectors, as fertility symbols and in connection with the underworld and death.
The snake motif is common on Gotlandic picture-stones and one
in particular, from Smiss in Gotland, is of interest; see Note to 2/8.
It is therefore possible that a literary or oral motif concerning apregnant woman’s dream has been combined with snake iconography to give this version of the tradition. What the true source isfor the dream-sequence it is probably not possible to know: it could
have been a folk-tale applied in a particular case or it could havebeen a speciﬁc story associated with the island’s settlement, perhaps linked to some native or foreign mythological element. It
could even have been an invented story based on the seeds of an
idea sown by some artefact similar to the disc found in a woman’s
grave at Ihre, Gotland; cf. Note to 2/8.
G Predictive verse
Huitastierna tells her husband the dream and he interprets it, bymeans of a verse. The verse is delivered in two half-strophes, eachof three lines. The ﬁrst half-strophe is a conﬁrmation of the powerof fate, a reassurance and a statement of belief in the future. The
verse is in all probability older than Guta saga itself, i. e. not thework of the author of Guta saga, and thus possibly the kernel of anoral tale. In the second half-strophe, Hafþi gives his offspringnames ‘unborn as they are’: Guti, Graipr and Gunﬁaun, and indicates that they will be born in that order, with the ﬁrst taking thelead in ruling Gotland. The place-names Gute (in the parish ofBäl), Gothem, Gothemhammar, Gothemån, as well as Gotland
itself, would be apparently explained by this tale; cf. Note to 2/1.
There are no major place-names that obviously relate to the namesof the two other sons, and indeed it has been maintained by Wessén(SL IV, 302) amongst others that the name Gunﬁaun is unknown
outside Guta saga, although the element Gun- occurs in many
Scandinavian names. Schütte (1907, 194) suggests that it may be
a name plucked out of the air to complete the expected trinity ofnames, and that the whole episode expresses a parochial view of
events. The name Graipr occurs, but only rarely, in Old Norse
literature. In the parish of Garde, however, there are remains said
to be of ‘Graipr’s house’ and ‘Graipr’s grave-mound’ (rör). Therexxiv

Guta saga

is also a ruin in the parish of Ardre with the name ‘Gunnﬁaun’schapel’, which is probably from the fourteenth century and therefore, like the other remains, very possibly secondary to the legend,
if not to Guta saga itself; cf. SL IV, 302–303. As Schütte (1907,
194) also points out, the three alliterating names must in any event
be regarded as a pure ﬁction, on the pattern of the three sons ofBorr, the three sons of Mannus and other examples. In Guta saga,
the names could be being used merely as an explanation for thedivision of the island into thirds. In fact what immediately follows
is a contradiction of the verse just quoted, a not uncommon phenomenon in Old Norse literature when an older verse is incorporated into a prose work by a later author. In the verse, Guti ispresented as the ﬁrst and most important son, who will own all
Gotland, whereas the prose following cites Graipr as the eldest
son, with Guti taking the central position. The fact that the middle
third of Gotland contains Roma, later the site of gutnalþing, theassembly for the whole island, could have inﬂuenced this versionof events, and show that it might represent a later tradition in which
Guti was associated with the middle third; cf. Notes to 2/19; 2/27;
6/21–22. In this case, as Wessén suggests (SL IV, 302–303), theonly ‘error’ in the prose text of Guta saga is in the naming ofGraipr as the oldest son.
The strophe with which Hafþi interprets his wife’s dream maywell be part of a longer poem and the alliteration in the prose
surrounding the verse (e. g. sum hit Hafþi, sum þaun saman suafu,
droymdi henni draumbr, slungnir saman, skiptu siþan Gutlandi,lutaþu þair bort af landi) suggests that the material in it appearedin the lost verse; cf. Notes to 2/12–14, 16–18. Lindquist (1941, 12,
39, 51) has discussed in detail the lists of bishops and lawmen thatappear as supplements to Västgötalagen and argues convincingly,
by only slightly rewording the prose, that they are the remnants of
now lost verses. It is possible that a similar literary source lies
behind at least this early part of Guta saga. If there were two
versions extant, differing slightly in the tradition they represented,
this would explain the apparent contradiction in the text.
H The division of the island
One possible explanation for the discrepancy between the verse
and the prose describing the division of the island has been given
above. Läfﬂer (1908–1909, Part 1, 172–177), on the other hand,The history of the Gotlanders

xxv

argues that the verse carries a separate tradition from that behindthe prose, and that it has been included here in order to follow
Saxo’s example of larding his texts with verse. Authors such as
Strelow (whose chronicle of Gotland, Cronica Guthilandorum,
was designed to show that the island had been settled by, andalways subject to, the Danes, in particular the Jutar) have evenmore imaginative ideas, based on surmise from place-names; seeStrelow, 1633, 20–21. Strelow, in fact, names the two younger sonsas Grippa and Gumphinus. There may have been several versionsof an oral genealogy and associated stories of the division of theisland, but the straightforward explanation, given above, is preferable to a more complicated one. The connection between the threesons of Hafþi and the three administrative districts had certainly
been made by the time the verse source was composed.
The division of the island of Gotland into three is ﬁrst recorded
in 1213 (DS I, 178, no. 152) in a letter from the Pope to the deansof the northern and southern thirds (‘prepositis de Northlanda et deSutherlanda’) and to the abbot of Gotland (‘abbati de Gothlanda’),who would have been in spiritual charge of the middle third; see
Yrwing, 1978, 81. A recent study by Hyenstrand (1989) questions
the age of the þriþiung division, however, and argues that theoriginal division of Gotland was not into thirds. He suggests thatthe original division was into 12 hundari and that this was older
than that into þriþiungar, although it is only mentioned in Guta lagand not elsewhere; cf. GLGS, 46. He notes that the number 12
appears frequently in Guta saga, and suggests that the originaladministrative division of the island was into 12 hundari, eachdivided into eight, which later gave rise to the division of theisland into sixths, settingar (Gutnish pl. siettungar), and thirds; seeHyenstrand, 1989, 108, 136 and cf. Note to 2/19. Both hundaris þingand siettungs þing are referred to in Guta lag.
The motif of the division of an island, in this case Ireland, occurs
in Giraldus Cambrensis (1867, Part 3, 143–147), where successionsof brothers, some with alliterating names, divide up the land between them, before one becomes king of the whole of Ireland.
I Emigration as a remedy for over-population
The enforced emigration resulting from the overpopulation of Gotland
may have been a historical reality and possibly the subject of oral
tradition, as is discussed below. On the other hand there are soxxvi

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many instances of similar events in the history of various peoples
that the possibility that the author was adapting a literary motif
must also be considered. Weibull thinks that this whole episode isa formula tale, ‘en lärd transponering på ett nytt folk av en urgammal
utvandringsberättelse’; see Weibull, 1963, 27, 34–35. He considers
it to be derived ultimately from authors such as Herodotus (Book 1,§94), in which the author writes of the King of Lydia dividing thepeople into two groups, determining by lot which group should
emigrate and which stay at home. Weibull argues that, as the tale
appears so frequently in other sources, it cannot be true in theparticular case of Gotland. A similar story, indeed, occurs in Book
8 of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum (written around 1200), with the added
twist that the original suggestion was to kill the old and the very
young and to send away those below arms-bearing age; cf. Saxo
Grammaticus, 1931–1957, I, 237–238. By general agreement thisplan is rejected and there is a ballot, after which it is the stronger
members of the community who must stand in for the weakermembers in exile. They set off from Denmark, stopping in Blekinge
and, coincidentally, anchor off Gotland on their way eastwards.
They are instructed by divine intervention to change their name to
Langobardi and eventually reach Italy, where they impose theirname upon the existing inhabitants. Saxo refers directly to Paulus
Diaconus’s history of the Langobardi (written at the end of theeighth century), where there is a similar account, including mentionof Nigilanda or Ingolanda (or ‘Golanda’, derived from Golhaida)as one of the places visited on the way to Italy; cf. Paulus Diaconus,
1878, 54. There is another version of the motif, but this time relating
to the young men of Dacia under Rollo, in Dudo of St Quentin’s
History of the Normans, written about 1014 (Part 2, §1–2, 5).
There are certainly considerable similarities between these stories,of which the one in Guta saga was most probably the latest in
written form, but this does not necessarily mean that its writerconsciously borrowed from those cited, or from any similar source.
If, on the other hand, the possibility of the episode recording
details of an actual exodus is accepted, the question of when that
exodus occurred has to be considered. One wonders if over-population
might not, in some areas, have been a cause of Viking activity,
although archaeological studies have led scholars to date the exodus
from Gotland, certainly, several centuries earlier than the Viking
Age. The archaeological evidence points to a sharp reduction in

The history of the Gotlanders

xxvii

population between circa 475 and 550, as indicated by the paucityof grave ﬁnds and by the number of abandoned settlements; cf.
Nerman, 1963, 19. At the same time, the instances of imported
goods from Gotland increased in the countries around the eastern
Baltic; cf. KL, s. v. Vikingetog, cols 49–51.
If the exodus did occur, the story in Guta saga probably relates
to folk-tales generated from this period. It is possible that someof the banished Gotlanders or their descendents came back years
later with exotic goods and tales of the East, but of this there is no
remaining direct evidence. From ﬁnds in Gotland, it appears thatduring the ninth and tenth centuries the coins imported were principally from the Caliphate, and there are very few from Byzantium
itself. Later, coins seem to have come chieﬂy from western Europe.
If there was any group returning from exile, it does not appear tohave been a large one. Hadorph (1687, viii) considers the emigration
episode to be important in relation to the start of the great Scandinavian
expeditions, but this is not supported by the available evidence.
Nils Tiberg (1946, 44) suggests it would have been natural forboth the author of Guta saga and the composer of the material heused to have had patterns in mind. Having received an oral tale that
he wanted to record, the author might expand it to some extent on
the basis of similar written material. The opposing argument infavour of purely literary sources has been discussed, but it seems
probable that behind the tale presented here there is some genuine
oral material that relates speciﬁcally to Gotland. One point worth
noting in the story as told by Paulus Diaconus is that he writes, ofthe island of Scandinavia (variously Scadinavia and Scadanavia),that it is covered by the waves that run along its ﬂat shores; seePaulus Diaconus 1878, 48–49, 52, 54; Goffart, 1988, 385. This, orsome similar tale, is another possible source of inspiration for the
discovery legend. Cf. also Olaus Magnus, 1909–1951, I, Book IV,
ch. 6.
J Torsburgen and FåröAccording to the text, the people who were balloted away declinedin the end to depart and installed themselves in Torsburgen, calledÞorsborg in Guta saga. This immense prehistoric fortiﬁcation, thelargest of Sweden’s hill-forts, utilises one of the few high places on
the island, so that man-made fortiﬁcation was only required along
half its perimeter. Considerable archeological research has beenxxviii

Guta sagadone into the dating and use of Torsburgen, and it is certainly
possible that it was used in the way suggested in Guta saga. It is
impressive in scale and could have supported several thousandpeople. Engström (1984, abstract on title verso, 123, 124–126; GV,76) has estimated that about 100–200 men could complete each
two-kilometre length of wall in approximately two months. The
date of construction has been disputed, but as a result of radiocarbon dating and other techniques, Engström has dated the twophases of the fort to the periods between AD 300 and AD 400, theend of the Roman Iron Age, and between AD 800 and AD 1100, theend of the Viking Age. These were periods of vigorous Scandinavian
expansion, combined with social and climatic change, which might
have been the cause of unrest. The position of Torsburgen, near tothe coast and to administrative centres, would lend itself to use in
the defence of the island, as well as in any internal conﬂicts. The
suggestion (Engström, 1979, 127–128) is that Torsburgen wasconstructed as a defensive fort from which the islanders sortied tofall upon invaders. It is possible that this successful strategy lies
behind the later episode concerning the ‘many kings’ who attacked
Gotland, but the author does not mention Torsburgen speciﬁcallyin connection with these attacks. Engström rejects the suggestionthat Torsburgen was a general place of refuge, since it lay too near
the coast from which danger might come, but does not dismiss theidea that it might have been built by a group of Gotlanders threatened with expulsion. The ﬁndings are, in general, consistent withthe emigration story as recorded in Guta saga, which gives theclear impression that Torsburgen was established well before theemigrants ﬂed there, and was not built by them. There is also
evidence that at least one of the walls has been augmented after its
initial construction. However defensible their position was, theemigrants were not permitted to stay at Torsburgen and decamped
to the island of Fårö, where they again failed to set up a permanent
residence; cf. Note to 4/1.
One might expect an ediﬁce of the size and prominence ofTorsburgen to attract oral traditions, but it has a relatively low-key
role in the story as told in Guta saga. In the sixteenth- andseventeenth-century chronicles of Gotland the forced emigrants
are led by one Tore, and Torsburgen is said in one tradition to havebeen named after him; cf. Strelow, 1633, 32. It seems more likely,
however, that the name relates to a cult place dedicated to Thor andThe history of the Gotlanders

xxix

that later authors have combined the place-name and the emigration story and invented a name for the leader of the emigrants.
There are legends linking Torsburgen to Thor, describing how he
could look out from its highest point over the sea, and of the god
avenging himself on the farmer who dared to try to build on it; cf.
Nihlén, 1975, 82–85.
K Traces of emigrants abroad
When the author describes the temporary settlement on Dagö
(Estonian Hiiumaa), he mentions a fortiﬁcation, which ‘enn synis’.
It is possible that the author himself visited Dagö, but if not, hisknowledge of the fortiﬁcation must either have come from an oral
tradition or from a written account. According to information fromthe State Historical Museum in Tallinn (private communication),
however, no such construction is now evident. The fortress, although it might still have been extant at the time of writing, andmay have attracted oral tradition, seems not to have survived.
If it is accepted that there was a forced emigration from Gotland
in the ﬁfth century, or at some other time, it is perhaps natural that
it would have been eastwards, and there is no doubt that parts ofEstonia have been settled by Swedish speakers at various times.
The two large islands off the coast of Estonia, Dagö and Ösel(Estonian Saaremaa), lie north-east of Fårö, in the mouth of the
Gulf of Riga, and this may have been a more likely direction to takethan to the nearer coast of Latvia. One might also speculate upon
the reason that the emigrants could not stay there. Apparently their
numbers must have been so great that the area where they landed
was not able to support them and some, but not all, continued
eastwards. The island of Dagö is not large, smaller in area than
Gotland, and much of the centre is low-lying. It is possible toimagine that it would not have supported a large inﬂux of people.
The author’s sketch of the onward journey to Greece follows theroute customary for the time; see Note to 4/6.
L The tricking of the kingThis passage distinguishes the emigration episode as told in Gutasaga from the more generalised accounts in the written sources
discussed above, pp. xxv–xxvii, and contains such a remarkable
number of alliterative phrases (so ﬁerri foru þair, baddus þairbyggias, ny ok niþar, maira þan ann manaþr, þissun þaira viþratta

xxx

Guta saga

and so on) that it seems probable that some lost poetry lies behindthe story. If so, it is likely to have been of the orally-transmitted
variety. One would expect to ﬁnd parallels to the episode of theword-play used to trick the Byzantine emperor in ballads or folktales, the purpose of them being to show the superiority of one
group of people over another. The emigrants from Gotland are inthis case seen to outwit the monarch in one of the centres of learningof the then known world. The fact that the empress is involved in
the dispute and successfully intercedes on behalf of the immigrants
perhaps reﬂects a Scandinavian social pattern, in which women
were more the equals of men than in other parts of Europe. Examples of inﬂuential women may be found in Landnámabók and inseveral of the Icelandic sagas, for example Laxdœla saga. No close
parallels to this story have come to light, but there are similar tales
extant of ordinary people tricking monarchs (e. g. the ballad ofKing John and the Abbot of Canterbury (Child no. 45 B) where thedisguised shepherd says, in reply to the king’s ‘Tell me truly what
I do think’, ‘You think I’m the Abbot of Canterbury’). There arealso a number of land-claiming tricks, for example ones in which
permission to claim only as much land as could be covered by ahide is circumvented by cutting the hide into a thin strip and usingthat to encircle the land claimed. One version of the story relates
that Birger Magnusson, who had been beaten by the Gotlandic
farmers at Röcklingebacke in 1313, was taken to Visby. There heasked for as large an amount of land as a calf-skin would cover.
When permission was granted, he had the calf-skin cut into strips
and with these surrounded a considerable area, on which he had an
impressive royal residence built. This is said to be the origin of
Kalvskinnshuset in Visby, but this is probably more likely to havebeen built as a symbol of Swedish power by Magnus Ladulås, who
was in a much stronger position than Birger. No king has ever lived
there and there are several more likely explanations for the name;
cf. Pernler, 1982. The motif itself probably goes back to ancientmethods of measuring land, perhaps with a ceremonial aspect; cf.
Söderberg, 1959, 48–49. Another example of the trick is related by
Saxo, in relation to Ívarr, the son of Ragnar loðbrók, and King Ellaof the Danelaw. Ívarr cut a horse-hide or ox-hide into narrow strips
and so was able to claim the land on which London was founded;
cf. Saxo Grammaticus, 1931–1957, I, 263; Ragnars saga loðbrókar,1954, ch. 16–17.

The history of the Gotlanders

xxxi

A further clue to the origin of the particular tale in Guta saga
might lie in its ﬁnal sentence: the people there still have ‘some of
our language’. To which people does this statement refer? Not the
Greeks, certainly, but perhaps the Goths or Getae, and this provides
another perspective on the emigration story. Weibull (1963, 33),
suggests that the reason for the choice of destination by the authorof Guta saga is that the Getae, who lived on the borders of the Byzantine empire, Grekland in Scandinavian sources, were linked to theGoths and thus, by implication, to Gotland. It was, in other words,
an attempt at a folk-etymology of the name of Gotland. According
to one of what Gust Johansson (1968, 4) calls the ‘norröna trosartiklarna’, the Swedes of the Viking Age were directly descended
from those peoples who moved into the area as the ice drew back.
Johansson challenges this and favours the idea of the later invasion
by the Goths via Finland. This would appear to turn the whole of
the Gotlandic emigration story on its head, as it is at about the timeof the supposed exodus that Johansson assumes that the Goths,
beaten westwards by the Huns, moved into Sweden. The claim thatsome people of eastern Europe ‘still have some of our language’would then refer to the source of the language in Gotland. It has
been remarked that there are similarities between Gutnish andGothic; cf. Bugge, 1907. It is unlikely, however, that the author
himself would have been able to make the comparison, so consideration must be given to what justiﬁcation the author can have forthe statement. It could be merely an invention to complete thenarrative, or some report might have come back with later travellers
to Constantinople or Jerusalem of a people they had met in the east,
who spoke a language reminiscent of their own, namely Gothic.
This in turn could have led to the invention of the emigration story,
based on the tradition current amongst the Black Sea Goths of their
origins on the island of Scandza, as recorded by Jordanes (1997,
33, 37, 81); cf. Tacitus, 1914, 195; GU, x–xi; Wolfram, 1988, 36
and references. Alternatively, the incident could merely be an
adaptation of a later movement eastwards with a resultant integrationof culture and language. Wessén, however, thinks it more likelythat there already existed an emigration tradition, and that this was
combined with a tradition amongst the Black Sea Goths, relating totheir origins, either by the author of Guta saga or earlier. Until theend of the eighteenth century, there were the remnants of an East
Gothic community on the Crimean peninsula; see SL IV, 300.

xxxii

Guta saga

M Heathen beliefs and practices
The heathen beliefs and practices described parallel to a degree
those proscribed in Guta lag (GLGS, 7). The source of the author’s
information could have been tradition, but there are a number ofwritten accounts which, while they would not have been the speciﬁcones used by the author, might suggest that his information camefrom written material. Belief in sacred groves (hult) is recorded by
Tacitus (1914, 51, 190) and in Adam of Bremen’s description of
the temple at Uppsala (1961, 471–477) amongst others, and is sowell documented that no special source need be sought for thispiece of information. A respect for the howes (haugar) of ancestors
is also a commonplace and the numerous stories in Norse literatureof magical events associated with burial mounds are ample evidence of a cult related to them. The meaning of stafgarþar is
discussed in the Note to 4/18.
One of the most dramatic of the Gotlandic picture-stones (Hammars
I, preserved in the Bunge museum near Fårösund in the north of
Gotland, but originally from Hammars in Lärbro parish in northeast Gotland) shows what appear to be preparations for a humansacriﬁce, with a ﬁgure lying across what seems to be an altar.
Gustaf Trotzig (GV, 370–371) writes of the ﬁgure, who is apparently being threatened by a spear, that he is particularly badly
placed (‘ligger illa till’). It might be signiﬁcant that the potential
victim is considerably smaller than the other ﬁgures depicted; see
Lindqvist, 1941–1942, I, ﬁg. 81; II, 86–87. Beyond him an armed
man seems about to be hanged, once the branch to which he is tiedis released, although Trotzig asks why, in that case, he is armed.
Adam of Bremen gives an account of human as well as animal
sacriﬁce at Uppsala, so one could accept that this picture-stone
carries evidence of heathen practice as well as belief. On a stone
from Bote, in Garde parish in central Gotland, there is a processionof men who appear to have ropes around their necks and could be
about to be sacriﬁced. This particular scene is, however, open toother interpretations. According to Guta saga human sacriﬁces
were offered for the whole of the island, whereas the thirds had
lesser sacriﬁces with animals, and there were also sacriﬁces on asmaller scale more locally, possibly centred round the home of aninﬂuential farmer, which later became the centre of a parish; cf.
Schück, 1945, 182. This structured organisation could well be alater imposition of order upon what was a much more haphazard

The history of the Gotlanders

xxxiiiarrangement, but there is no evidence for this either way. Steffen(1945, 232–239) argues that the treding was a medieval divisionand not a prehistoric one, with the original division of the island
being into two, but Schück (1945, 179–180) disagrees. Hyenstrand’s
study of the subject is referred to above, p. xxv.
Ibn Fadlan describes in detail the sacriﬁce of a servant girl at thecremation of her Rus master, and the Russian Primary Chronicle
has a reference speciﬁcally to the sacriﬁce of their sons and daughtersby the people of Kiev, to idols set up by Vladimir, Jaroslav’s father;see Birkeland, 1954, 17–24; RPC, 93–94. The victims of humansacriﬁce were often slaves, criminals or prisoners of war, and themeans of death was frequently hanging as described by Ibn Rustah
and Adam of Bremen; see Birkeland, 1954, 16–17; Adam of Bremen,
1961, 471–473. The king, who represented a god, was sometimes
sacriﬁced in time of particular hardship, for example if the harvest
failed, and Håkon jarl offered his son Erling during the Battle of
Hjørungavåg in 986.
The subject of the extent and signiﬁcance of human sacriﬁce isdiscussed by, amongst others, Mogk and Ström. Mogk (1909, 643)
summarises his opinion as that the Germanic sacriﬁce was not an
act of punishment and that a cult act was involved, whereas Ström(1942, 277–278) does not regard the death penalty as sacred, but
thinks that superstitions related to the act of killing led to rituals,
which gave a quasi-religious appearance to the deaths, making
them appear to have been self-inﬂicted. This does not, however,explain the sacriﬁce of the king by the Swedes in time of need; cf.
Gordon, 1962, 256–257. Whichever is the case, the author of Gutasaga must have been aware of heathen traditions, since laws forbidding them were incorporated into Guta lag.
N Gotland’s treaty with Sweden
The successful negotiations by Avair Strabain with the king of
Sweden and the resulting treaty do not appear in any other known
source, but in King Alfred’s ninth-century translation of Orosius’
History of the World there is a description by a traveller named
Wulfstan of a voyage across the Baltic from Hedeby to Truso.
Wulfstan records that Gotland belongs (hyrað) to Sweden; see
Orosius, 16, line 28. This must be treated with caution, since healso states that Blekinge did (Orosius, 16, line 27), and certainly by
the eleventh century the latter belonged to Denmark. On the otherxxxiv

Guta saga

hand, Rydberg (STFM I, 40) uses Snorri’s narrative in Heimskringla
to argue that Gotland was independent of Sweden at the time of
Olaf Skötkonung and Olaf Tryggvason, that is in the tenth century.
Gotland was said by Snorri in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar (ÍF XXVI,
254–255) to have been the subject of a Norwegian attack (unlikely
if Gotland belonged to Sweden, as the two kings were allies) and
Rydberg’s argument, based on this account and another in the samesaga (ÍF XXVI, 337), places the treaty after the time of Olaf
Tryggvason. From the dating of a runic inscription on the Torsätra
stone in Uppland (U 614), it appears that some sort of tribute wasbeing paid to Sweden in the second half of the eleventh century.
The inscription records that Skuli and Folki had the stone raised inmemory of their brother Husbiorn, who fell sick abroad (usiok uti‘vas siukR uti’) when they were taking tribute in Gotland. It is dated
to the 1060s or 1070s on account of its attribution to the runemaster Vitsäte, who appears to have been active about this time; see
Jansson, 1987, 88. Codex Laur. Ashburnham, the so-called Florensdokument, dated to circa 1120, mentions Guthlandia as one of the‘insulae’ (literally ‘islands’, though the list includes non-insular
districts) of Sweden, but as it contains a number of very obvious
errors, its testimony on this point must be questionable; cf. Delisle,
1886, 75; DS, Appendix 1, 3, no. 4; Tunberg, 1913, 28; GV, 449–451.1
Whenever the treaty was negotiated, it seems possible that theauthor of Guta saga had access to some written information about
the arrangements as they stood in his time and that there was thensome annual tax being paid to the Swedish crown. In 1285, King
Magnus Birgersson Ladulås issued an edict that each year the
Gotlanders should pay a levy tax in addition to the tribute, whether
or not a muster of ships were commanded. This seems not to havebeen the case as described in Guta saga, where a levy tax is only
1 Various alternative theories have been advanced about the dating of theincorporation of Gotland into Sweden. Nerman (1923, 67; 1932, 163–167;
1963, 25) argues from archaeological evidence of periods of disturbanceon Gotland and from ﬁnds at Grobin, Latvia, where Swedish and Gotlandic
artefacts from similar periods were found side by side, for an early dating,around 550. Wessén, however, rejects this in favour of a date not long
before St Olaf’s visit in 1029; cf. SL IV, 306. Lindqvist (1932, 78) suggeststhat the ninth century is a more likely period for the incorporation to haveoccurred, since this was a time of Swedish expansion, and would haveoffered advantages to Gotland of trade with the East.

The history of the Gotlanders

xxxv

demanded if the Gotlanders for some reason fail to provide theships for the levy, so the annual tax would have been separate.
These taxes would have been in silver, a material not available inthe migration period; see Nerman, 1932, 167. If, as has beensuggested by Sjöholm (1976, 108), Guta saga was written as alegendary history with the purpose of arguing the case for Gotland’sautonomy, it would be necessary to demonstrate that the agreement
had been ﬁrst entered into freely and not under duress, as a symbiotic relationship that did not involve Gotland relinquishing its
sovereignty. Written sources for an early agreement seem unlikely
and the possibility of oral sources is further discussed below. The
treaty terms themselves probably relate more closely to those of
the author’s day than to those of 200 years or more previously andthe change from the preterite to the present tense in the text might
support this argument.
If the interpretation put by Wessén on the expression ﬁelkunnugr
is to be accepted, and Avair Strabain was skilled in ‘magical’ arts,
this would, according to Wessén, place the treaty in the heathen
period; see SL IV, 306 and Note to 6/9–11. Any details about it
must therefore have come from oral rather than written tradition,
possibly a narrative verse. There is no hint as to where the author
found his story, and no other record of an Avair, but it is possible,
one might suggest, that he had heard poetry concerning a muchrespected heathen who might have acted as intermediary in such anegotiation. Schütte (1907, 83) compares Avair Strabain in Gutasaga to a character in a tale told about Charlemagne who succeeded in getting a law agreed upon where others had failed. He
suggests that this could have been a model for the episode in Gutasaga. The man in this story later disappears without trace, as
mysteriously as he appeared, but the information about Avair seems
to be more circumstantial. He is given a home parish, a wife anda son, and extracts a promise of compensation should his mission
miscarry. As Wessén remarks, the alliterative phrase faigastan ok
fallastan (‘doomed and ill-fated’) suggests an oral tale behind the
speech Avair delivers, if not behind the whole story; see SL IV,
306. The use of such phrases is not, of course, conﬁned to poetry
and there would be no reason for particularly assuming that a lostverse lay behind this episode, were it not for the proliferation ofalliterative phrases throughout the passage, for example: siþan
sentu gutar sendimen, ﬁkk friþ gart, gierþi fyrsti friþ. The use of

xxxvi

Guta saga

parallelism is a further indication of possible poetic origin for thispart of the narrative. Similarly, the details of the actual treaty
contain evidence of an oral source. Phrases such as frir ok frelsir,
hegnan ok hielp and steþi til sykia may well have had their origin
in verse, although they may have been in written form when usedby the author of Guta saga, possibly as a set of legal formulae.
It is dangerous to rely on place-names to support oral traditions
and there seems little doubt that names such as Ava, Avagrunn and
Avanäs lack any connection with Avair, particularly as they are allon Fårö, and as the names are repeated on the Swedish mainland.
A village named Awirstadha in the parish of Askeby, Östergötland,
was mentioned in a manuscript from 1376 (designated 9/10 in
Linköpings stifts- och landsbibliotek, but probably destroyed in a
recent ﬁre); see Sveriges medeltida personnamn, 1974– , s. v. Aver.
Hilfeling (1994–1995, I, 184) records the existence of a Strabeins
grav in Alva parish and provides a sketch of it, but the designationof this kämpargrav to Avair is, as he says, not historical. Even if itis accepted that Avair was a historical ﬁgure, which is by no means
certain, ﬁrm evidence is still lacking for the dating of the treaty.
One also wonders if, in the ﬁgure of Ívarr beinlauss of West Norse
tradition, there is any sort of parallel to Avair Strabain. Cf. also
Note to 6/4.
O The Visit of St Olaf
1 BACKGROUND TO THE VISIT

The history of the conversion of Gotland has been extensively
studied and there are several theories concerning its approximate
date.2 One of the central episodes in Guta saga is that concerning
2 Both Ochsner (1973) and Pernler (1977) have produced detailed analyses of the evidence surrounding the conversion of Gotland to Christianity.
While they both consider the role played by St Olaf to be exaggerated,
Pernler rejects all suggestion of a full conversion to Christianity before theeleventh century. The fact that Guta saga gives an inconsistent accountand chronology, however, seems to support such a possibility. First Olaf
arrives and converts Ormika, then Botair, in a seemingly totally heathen
community, builds two churches, which are followed by others when
Gotland becomes generally Christian. Finally, after a delay, Gotland isincorporated into the see of Linköping. Ochsner (1973, 22) points tograves without grave goods dating from the eighth century as an indicationof the possible commencement of conversion and this view is also put

The history of the Gotlanders

xxxviiSt Olaf’s visit. The story, as it is told, contradicts the explicit
statement in Heimskringla, Óláfs saga helga (ÍF XXVII, 328), that
Olaf travelled um sumarit ok létti eigi, fyrr en hann kom austr íGarðaríki á fund Jarizleifs konungs ok þeira Ingigerðar dróttningar,
although Bruno Lesch (1916, 84–85) argues that Olaf did stop in
Gotland on that journey and that his stay was simply unknown to
Snorri. Guta saga does not, understandably, mention the visit in
1007, during which the twelve-year-old Olaf intimidated the Gotlanders
into paying protection money and subsequently stayed the winter;see Óláfs saga helga (ÍF XXVII, 9). On that occasion he proceeded
eastwards on a raid on Eysýsla (Ösel), the Estonian Saaremaa. It
has been suggested that the visit described in Guta saga is actually
the one mentioned in Óláfs saga helga (ÍF XXVII, 343), when Olafis said to have visited Gotland on his way home from Russia in thespring of 1030, a view supported by Finnur Jónsson (1924, 83) as
the correct one. It does not seem very likely, however, that Olaf
would make a prolonged break in his journey at that time. Other
sources do not mention Gotland at all in this connection (e. g.
Fagrskinna, ÍF XXIX, 198–199), and in those that do, Olaf only
seems to have stopped for news of Earl Hákon’s ﬂight and to await
a favourable wind. Clearly not all the accounts of the journey to
Russia can be correct and it is probably impossible to discoverwhich, if any them, is the true one. It is, however, very likely that
St Olaf visited Gotland while he was king, since a coin with his
image on it was found at Klintehamn, Klinte parish, on the west
coast of Gotland, and that this visit would have given rise to

forward by Nerman (1941a, 39–40), who argues from artefacts that havebeen found that there was a conversion, albeit not a complete one, in theeighth or ninth century, as a result of a missionary effort from Western
Europe, followed by a reversion, such as occurred at Birka, in the tenth,and a re-introduction of Christianity in the eleventh century; cf. Stenberger,
1945, 97. Holmqvist (1975, 35–39) has also noted possible Christianmotifs in early artefacts; cf. Note to 2/8. It is remarkable that neither
Rimbert’s biography of Ansgar nor Adam of Bremen’s writings mention
Gotland, which could mean that the Hamburg–Bremen mission did nottake any substantial part in the conversion of Gotland; cf. Holmqvist,
1975, 39, 51, 55; Pernler, 1977, 43–44. Pernler, throughout, argues for a
gradual conversion, culminating in the incorporation of Gotland into thesee of Linköping, rather than a concerted mission; see Notes to 8/1–10,
8/7–8, 8/14, 8/28–29, 10/21.

xxxviii

Guta saga

traditions; cf. Dolley, 1978. The missionary visit to Gotland, if it
occurred, can be placed between 1007 or 1008, when Olaf madehis earlier visit, and 1030. Given the discrepancy between theaccounts in Heimskringla and Guta saga, it seems unlikely that
Snorri was the author’s source for this episode and there is internal
evidence that some sort of oral tale was the primary inspiration;
see pp. xl–xli. Cf. also SL IV, 306–311 and references; Note to 8/4.
Akergarn, in Hellvi parish, where Olaf is said to have landed, isnow called S:t Olofsholm. Although the account in Guta saga may
have originated in an early oral tradition, other traditions exist,
which make it difﬁcult to identify those which were current at thetime Guta saga was written. For example, there is a tradition from
S:t Olofsholm, recorded by Säve (1873–1874, 249), of Olaf either
washing his hands or baptising the ﬁrst Gotlanders he came acrossin a natural hollow in a rock. This hollow is still visible and iscalled variously Sankt Oles tvättfat and Sankt Oläs vaskefat; see
Gotländska sägner 1959–1961, II, 391; Palmenfelt, 1979, 116–
118; Sveriges Kyrkor: Got(t)land, 1914–1975, II, 129. Tradition
further holds that there is always water in the hollow, but such tales
are common in relation to famous historical ﬁgures.
Strelow (1633, 129–132) includes a number of elements in his
account of St Olaf’s visit that in all probability had their origins
later than Guta saga. He mentions (1633, 132) the apparent existence at Kyrkebys, in the parish of Hejnum, of a large, two-storey,stone house, called Sankt Oles hus, in which Olaf’s bed, chair andhand basin (Haandfad ), set in the wall, could be seen. According
to Wallin (1747–1776, I, 1035) these were still visible in theeighteenth century, although Säve (1873–1874, 249–250) admits
that by the nineteenth century the original building was no longer
there, the stone having been used for out-buildings. Wallin alsosays in the same context that for a long time one of Olaf’s silver
bowls, his battle-axe and three large keys could be found, but thiscontention is in all probability secondary to Guta saga. Of thewall-set hand basin mentioned by Wallin, Säve (1873–1874, 250)
says that what was intended was probably a vessel for holy water
but that the object that was referred to in his time was a large
limestone block with a round hollow in it, which was much more
likely to have been an ancient millstone.
On the west coast of Fårö, south of Lauter, there is also a S:tOlavs kyrka and there was a tradition amongst the local population,

The history of the Gotlanders

xxxix

recorded by Säve (1873–1874, 252), that Olaf landed near there, atGamlehamn (Gambla hamn). This is now shut off from the sea by
a natural wall of stones, boulders and gravel. The stone includesgråsten, which is not otherwise found in the area, and which Olafis said to have brought with him. Some 70 metres south of theharbour, Säve continues, there was a nearly circular ﬂattened low
dry-stone wall surrounding Sant Äulos körka, or a remnant of it.
The church-shaped wall was still visible with what could have been
the altar end pointing more or less eastwards and human remains
in the north of the enclosure. Fifty metres to the east and up a slope
was, according to Säve, Sant Äulos kälda, which is also said neverto dry up, and which was traditionally said to have been used to baptise
the ﬁrst heathens Olaf encountered. Nearby on the beach are twoabandoned springs, Sant Äulos brunnar. They are about two metresapart and the saint is said to have been able to lie with a hand ineach, which feat put an end to a severe drought; see Säve, 1873–1874,
253, after Wallin. A further addition to this folklore is the mentionof a hollow in the chalk cliff a little to the north of this area, about
1.8 × 0.9 metres, called Sant Äulos säng. Säve saw all thesefeatures and discussed them with the local people. They are considered by Fritzell (1972, 40) to be related to a heathen cult associatedwith a local spring, which has a depression resembling a bed or a bath.
There is no mention in Guta saga of any of these traditions, andit seems probable that they are later inventions to give, in W. S.
Gilbert’s words, ‘artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald andunconvincing narrative’. The wealth of tradition on Fårö, as recorded by Säve, and the fact that the more natural landing-site for
Olaf would be on the west coast if he were coming from Norway
as Guta saga states, could mean, however, that he did at some timeland in Gotland and effect a number of conversions.
Strelow (1633, 131) carries an altogether more violent version of
the conversion and gives an account of a battle at a place he calls
Lackerhede (Laikarehaid in the parish of Lärbro, about 10 kilometres north-west of S:t Olofsholm), which resulted in the acceptance of Christianity by the Gotlanders. This account has been
generally rejected by scholars, and was certainly not a tradition
that the author of Guta saga used, although Säve (1873–1874, 248)
suggests that Olaf might have applied some force to convert asmall number of the islanders on his way eastwards. The legend could,
as Pernler (1977, 14–15) suggests, have arisen through confusion

xl

Guta sagawith the battle between the Gotlanders and Birger Magnusson at
Röcklingebacke, both sites being just east of Lärbro parish church.
Many of the details mentioned, such as the existence of the ironring to which Olaf was said to have tied up his ship, are clearly notfactual; cf. Strelow, 1633, 130.
The greatest mystery surrounding the missionary visit relates tothe fact that nowhere in the mainstream of the Olaf legend is theconversion of so important a trading state as Gotland mentioned,
either in Snorri or elsewhere. This seems strange, if Olaf did in fact
convert Gotland, and points to the episode in Guta saga being the
product of local tradition, centred around a number of place-names
and other features, as well as the likelihood that Olaf did actually
visit Gotland at least once, if not twice, and that he was taken as
Gotland’s patron saint. The importance of St Olaf to the medieval
Gotlanders is emphasised by their dedicating their church in Novgorod
to his name. There is also a suggestion that the church laws in Gutalag resemble those of Norway and that they could have been formulated
under the direct or indirect inﬂuence of St Olaf; cf. SL IV, 310.
2 ORMIKA’S GIFTSThe motif of important leaders who start as adversaries exchanging
gifts when their relationship changes is a common one, but it isworth noting the iconographical connection between the braiþyx
and bulli and St Olaf, and the fact that the author of Guta saga
must have seen images of the saint with just those objects. The
description of the exchange of gifts between Olaf and Ormika of
Hejnum raises the possibility of one or a pair of drinking vessels
and/or a battle-axe being extant at some time, which the author was
led to believe had some connection with this incident. Perhaps he,or someone known to him, had seen a bowl of the type called abulli, which was said to have been a gift from St Olaf to a Gotlander
on the occasion of his acceptance of Christianity. One of St Olaf’s
attributes, which he is depicted as carrying in some images, is a
ciborium (the lidded bowl in which the communion host is carried). Nils Tiberg (1946, 23) interprets the bulli as just such acovered vessel, and Per Gjærder (KL, s. v. Drikkekar) states that thebolli type of drinking-bowl not only had a pronounced foot but was
sometimes furnished with a lid. Such a vessel could have been in
the possession of the chapel at Akergarn and have been associatedwith St Olaf’s visit. The braiþyx is the other attribute of St Olaf andThe history of the Gotlanders

xli

it would be even more natural that a connection should be madebetween St Olaf and such a weapon. Perhaps one was kept in the
church at Akergarn at the time the author wrote the text, and helinked the building to an earlier chapel on the site, one said to havebeen built by Ormika. There might also have been a tradition thata man named Ormika travelled the 20 kilometres from his homesouth of Tingstäde träsk to meet St Olaf, some considerable timeafter he had landed, at the request of the people of his district. The
fusing of the two traditions then produced the version of events thatsurvives. The interpretation of the name Ormika as a feminine
form, which led Strelow (1633, 132) to represent the character as
female, is almost certainly incorrect. It is possible that the Gotlandic
pronunciation of the feminine personal pronoun, which is more
like that of the masculine than on the Swedish mainland, combinedwith the -a ending, led to confusion, particularly if the story had
been transmitted orally.
In the light of Heimskringla, however, another interpretation canbe put on the Ormika episode: the mention of the giving by Ormika
of 12 wethers ‘and other costly items’ to Olaf could possibly be
regarded as the payment of some sort of tribute, as described bySnorri. It might be that the tradition that protection money waspaid to Olaf at one time or another was combined with a tradition
that he occasionally offered gifts in return, perhaps merely as apledge of good faith. A gift of sheep would no doubt be a natural
one from a Gotlander, but equally sheep have been a substitute formoney in many societies, ancient coins being marked with theimage of a sheep. Fritzell (1972, 30) points out that the number 12
is associated with taxes extracted by the Danes in the Viking
period. It may also be linked to the 12 hundari proposed byHyenstrand (1989, 119). The name Ormika occurs in an inscription
found at Timans in the parish of Roma; see Note to 8/3.
3 THE ORATORY AT AKERGARN

According to Guta saga Ormika gierþi sir bynahus i sama staþ,sum nu standr Akrgarna kirkia. A chapel was certainly in existence
at Akergarn by the thirteenth century, since it is mentioned inseveral letters from bishops of Linköping; see Note to 8/9. It was
in ruins by the seventeenth century but had by that time become thecentre for a number of traditions about St Olaf to be found incontemporary folklore, and in Strelow’s description of the conversion

xlii

Guta saga

of Gotland; see SL IV, 308, 311; Sveriges Kyrkor: Got(t)land,
1914–1975, II, 128–130.
P Church building
1 BOTAIR AND LIKKAIR

There is in Guta saga what might be considered to be an alternative
account of the conversion, not involving St Olaf and Ormika, but
Botair and his father-in-law, Likkair. In this version, Gotlandic
merchants come into contact with the Christian religion as a resultof their trading voyages, and some are converted. This intercourse
has been dated to the tenth century, that is before St Olaf’s ﬁrst
visit to Gotland; cf. SL IV, 312. Priests are brought back to Gotland
to serve these converts and Botair of Akebäck is said to have had
the ﬁrst church built, at Kulstäde. According to tradition, thefoundations of the church can still be discerned, lying SW–NE andwith dimensions of 30 metres by 12 metres; see Pernler, 1977, 20
and references. This identiﬁcation was called into question as earlyas 1801 by C. G. G. Hilfeling (1994–1995, II, 145–146) who
considers the remains to be comparable to that of a so-calledkämpargrav, and this opinion is to a certain extent supported by
Fritzell (1974, 14–16), on account of the generous dimensions andthe existence of a door in the west gable. Fritzell maintains that
Kulstäde was the site of the church mentioned in Guta saga, butthat it was also a cult site prior to this. Pernler, however (1977, 20),
and with some justiﬁcation, is wary of making such an assumption,
when there is no evidence of the actual date of the event described.
Together with Gustavson (1938, 20), he suggests that the churchbuilding story could have its basis in a place-name saga. If thiswere the case, it is possible that the saga formed the basis of theaccount in Guta saga.
Botair builds another church near Vi, just when his heathencountrymen are having a sacriﬁce there. Gustavson (1938, 36) cites
Lithberg as saying that no place of sacriﬁce existed near Visby andthat the passage in Guta saga is based on folk-etymology. Although Hellquist, despite his earlier doubts (1918, 69 note), notedby Knudsen (1933, 34), accepts the traditional view and dismisses
other interpretations, it may still be disputed whether the name
Visby was connected with the existence of a pagan holy site or vi
in the area. It is possible that the author of Guta saga had heard a
tradition about the building of the ﬁrst church that was allowed toThe history of the Gotlanders

xliii

stand in Gotland and placed it, not unnaturally, in the neighbourhood of Visby; see Hellquist, 1980, s. v. Vi; 1929–1932, 673. This
argument seems defensible, despite Olsson’s assertion (1984, 20)that it ‘förefaller inte särskilt troligt, att författaren skulle ha diktat
ihop dessa uppgifter, inspirerad av namnet Visby’. The idea that theﬁrst Christian church that was allowed to stand should have been
built on the site of a pagan holy place has not been universally
accepted and, in his study of stafgarþr place-names, Olsson (1976,
115, note 58; 121) speciﬁcally rejects the link between cult places
and the later building of churches. In an earlier thesis (1966, 131–
133, 237–238, 275) based largely on sites in Denmark, Olaf Olsencame to the conclusion that great care must be taken in assuming
a continuity in the use of sites for burial from the Bronze Agethrough the Viking Age, particularly when based on place-names,
but that in certain cases, the church at Gamla Uppsala for example,
there might have been a transition from immediately pre-Christian
to Christian use; cf. Foote and Wilson, 1979, 417–418; Lindqvist,
1967, 236. There are, however, several examples of churches being
built on the sites of Stone-Age and Bronze-Age barrows. Thesebarrows might have been used by Viking-Age pagans as cult sites(rather in the way that stafgarþar were possibly used), but whenchurches were built there, it could have been the fact that they weresituated on high ground that led to the choice of site, rather thanany other reason; cf. Olsen, 1966, 274–275. Considerable rebuilding has taken place on the site of the churches of S:t Hans and
S:t Per in Visby and it is possible that some remains (graves,for example) carried a tradition of there having been an older
church there; see Notes to 8/27 and 8/28. Any wooden church
would of course long since have disappeared and Wessén (SL IV,
312) suggests that it would probably have dated from a period prior
to the foundation of Visby itself. Cf. also Notes to 8/18 and
8/25–26.
The story in Guta saga of Likkair, and his success in saving both
his son-in-law and his church, contains certain inconsistencies.
The reason he gives to the heathens that they should not burn thisediﬁce is that it is in Vi, presumably a heathen holy place. This
would not seem to be a very plausible reason to give, and to beeven less likely for the heathens to accept; cf. Note to 8/18. The
fact that the church is said to be dedicated to All Saints, whereas
the church present in the author’s day, of which part of a wall isxliv

Guta saga

still visible as a ruin, incorporated into S:t Hans’s ruin, was called
S:t Pers also suggests that there may have been a half-understoodtradition, perhaps not related to Visby at all. It is possible, however, that the place-name Kulasteþar gave rise to oral tradition
about the building of a church there, which was reduced to charcoal, and that Stainkirchia relates to a later stone church of a morepermanent nature. Botair’s second church was also obviously wooden,
since it was threatened with the same fate as the ﬁrst. Likkair
seems to have been a local hero, and there are other tales about
him; see Notes to 8/22 and 8/23. Conversion stories tend naturally
to be told about people who are presented as having the respect ofboth the converted and heathen communities. Another example ofthis is Þorgeirr Ljósvetningagoði in Njáls saga (ch. 105; ÍF XII,
270–272). Likkair’s soubriquet, snielli, is reminiscent of thosegiven to wise counsellors in the Icelandic sagas and he may havebeen the equivalent of a goði, since he is said to have had ‘most
authority’ at that time.
There appear to be no place-names that might have suggested thename Botair to the author and although the farm name Lickedarvefrom Fleringe parish in the north-east of Gotland could be connected with someone called Likkair, he might not be the character
referred to in the story; cf. Olsson, 1984, 41, 131 and Note to 8/22.
In the churchyard of Stenkyrka church, however, there is an impressive slab which is known as Liknatius gravsten; see Hyenstrand,
1989, 129. It might indicate a medieval tradition connecting Likkair
to Stenkyrka. There is at least one other tale, certainly secondary
to Guta saga, told about Likkair Snielli, and several place-names(e. g. Lickershamn, a harbour in the parish of Stenkyrka on thenorth west coast of Gotland) are said to be associated with him.
The folk-tale, recorded by Johan Nihlén in 1929, concerns Likkair’s
daughter and the foreign captive, son of his defeated opponent,
whom he brought home as a slave. The daughter falls in love withthe foreigner and Likkair is violently opposed to the relationship,
not least because the young man is a Christian, and he has alreadylost one of his daughters (Botair’s wife) to the new faith. He has his
daughter lifted up to the top of a high cliff and the prisoner is toldthat if he can climb up and retrieve her, he will be given her hand,
otherwise he will be killed. The young man manages the climb, but
as he comes down with the girl in his arms, Likkair shoots him withan arrow and they both fall into the sea. At Lickershamn there is

The history of the Gotlanders

xlv

a cliff called Jungfrun which is said to be the one from which thelovers fell; see Nihlén, 1975, 102–104. Wallin records a different
tale in connection with this rock, however, relating it to a powerful
and rich maiden called Lickers smällä, said to have built the church
at Stenkyrka; see Gotländska sägner, 1959–1961, II, 386. Lickershamn
is about ﬁve kilometres north-west of Stenkyrka itself but, although it is tempting to regard this as suggestive of a connection
between Stenkyrka and Likkair, it is probable that the name of thecoastal settlement is secondary to the tradition and of a considerably later origin than the parish name.
2 OTHER CHURCHES

Church building is one of the categories of tale that Schütte (1907,87) mentions as occurring in ancient law texts, forming part of thelegendary history that is often present as an introduction. In Gutasaga churches are assigned to the three divisions of the country,
followed by others ‘for greater convenience’. The three division
churches were clearly meant to replace the three centres of sacriﬁce and in fact were not the ﬁrst three churches built. (The one
built by Botair in Vi was the ﬁrst to be allowed to stand, we are
told.) There could well have been some oral tradition behind this
episode, linked to the division of the island, and it is hard to believethat everything would have happened so tidily in reality. As nobishops have been mentioned at this stage, it is difﬁcult to understand who could have consecrated these churches, and it seems
more likely that they started off as personal devotional chapels,
commissioned by wealthy converts such as Likkair. There are noauthenticated remains of churches from the eleventh century, butthere were certainly some extant in the thirteenth century when
Guta saga was written. The tradition of rich islanders building
churches, and the relatively high number of those churches (97)highlights the wealth of medieval Gotland; cf. SL IV, 313.
Church-building stories form an important part of early Christian literature and there is often a failed attempt (sometimes morethan one) to build a church followed by a successful enterprise ata different site; cf. KL, s. v. Kyrkobyggnassägner and references.
The combination of these motifs with a possible oral tradition, andthe placing of the three treding churches, has been built by theauthor into a circumstantial narrative, which to some extent conﬂicts
with the Olaf episode in accounting for the conversion of Gotland.

xlvi

Guta saga

So far the possible sources discussed have been in the nature oforal traditions or literary parallels as models. The remainder ofGuta saga is of a more historical character and the suggested
sources for these sections tend to be in the form of legal or ecclesiastical records, even if in oral form.
Q Conversion of Gotland as a whole
Within the description of the early church-building activity is a
short statement concerning the acceptance of Christianity by the
Gotlanders in general. It is reminiscent of the passage describing
the subjugation to the Swedish throne. The one states that gingu
gutar sielfs viliandi undir suia kunung, the other that the Gotlanders
toku þa almennilika viþr kristindomi miþ sielfs vilia sinum utanþuang. The similarity leads one to presume that a written or oralmodel lies behind both, particularly as the statements differ in style
from the surrounding narrative. The models do not, however, appear
to have survived.
R Ecclesiastical arrangements
1 TRAVELLING BISHOPS

The formula for the acceptance of Christianity mentioned above
appears to come out of sequence in the text since the next episode,that of the travelling bishops, apparently takes place before thegeneral conversion. If, as has been suggested, the author was acleric, he might have felt it necessary to legitimise Gotland’s earlychurches by inserting a tradition, of which he had few details, toexplain the consecration issue. Gotland was a stepping-stone on
the eastwards route as described in the Notes to 4/6, 8/10 and 10/16
and it would be more than likely that travelling bishops stopped
there. If so, they might have been unorthodox, of the type mentioned in Hungrvaka (1938, 77). Wessén (SL IV, 318) suggests thatthe importance of Gotland as a staging post might have emerged at
the same time as its trading importance, in the twelfth century. The
consecration of priests is not mentioned, but there would be little
point in having hallowed churches and churchyards if there were
no priests to say holy ofﬁce in the churches or bury the dead in the
churchyards. The priests whom the Gotlanders brought back withthem from their travels would hardly be sufﬁcient to satisfy agrowing Christian community, however. The obvious explanations

The history of the Gotlanders

xlvii

for the omission are, either that the author did not know and had
no available source to help him, or did not think it of importance.
The possibility of there having been a resident bishop on Gotland in
the Middle Ages is discussed by Pernler (1977, 46–56), but he reaches
the conclusion that there is no evidence to support such an idea.
2 ARRANGEMENTS WITH THE SEE OF LINKÖPING

The formal arrangements made with the see of Linköping read likea more or less direct copy of an agreement drawn up at the time.
There is a considerable amount of contemporary corroboration for
the arrangements, including a letter dated around 1221 from Archbishop Andreas Suneson of Lund and Bishops Karl and Bengt of
Linköping; cf. DS I, 690, no. 832; SL IV, 313–314. The letter
enables one to interpret more accurately the Gutnish text. Again,
the author of Guta saga lays emphasis on the voluntary nature of
the arrangement, a stress probably intended to demonstrate Gotland’s
effective independence from the Swedish crown. The fact that theﬁnancial arrangements between the Gotlanders and the bishop of
Linköping were relatively lenient to the former, in comparison to
those with other communities in the same see, seems to support theauthor’s claim; cf. Schück, 1945, 184. The actual dating of theincorporation of Gotland into the see of Linköping is less certain,
but could not be much earlier than the middle of the twelfth
century. The manuscript Codex Laur. Ashburnham (c.1120) names
both Gotland and ‘Liunga. Kaupinga’, but there is some doubt as
to whether the latter refers to Linköping at all; cf. Delisle, 1886,
75; DS, Appendix 1, 3, no. 4; Envall, 1950, 81–93; 1956, 372–385;
Gallén, 1958, 6, 13–15. It seems probable that Gotland was incorporated into the see in the second half of the twelfth century,
during the time of Bishop Gisle, but there is no direct evidence ofthe date, or of the relationship between this event and the absorption of Gotland into the Swedish kingdom; cf. Pernler, 1977, 65.
Bishop Gisle, in collaboration with King Sverker the Elder and his
wife, introduced the Cistercian order into Sweden. The Cistercianmonastery of the Beata Maria de Gutnalia at Roma was instituted,
although by whom is not known, on September 9th, 1164 as adaughter house to Nydala in Småland; cf. Pernler, 1977, 57, 61–62;
SL IV, 306 and references; Note to 6/21–22. It seems possible that
Gisle was behind the foundation, and that Gotland had by that time
been included into the see of Linköping. It is not certain that Gisle

xlviii

Guta saga

was the ﬁrst bishop of the see, but there is no other contraryevidence than a list of bishops, dating from the end of the fourteenth century and held in Uppsala University library. This list
mentions two earlier bishops (Herbertus and Rykardus) but nothing further is known of them; see Schück, 1959, 47–49; Pernler,
1977, 58; SRS III, 102–103, no. 5; 324, no. 15.
S Levy arrangements
The establishment of an obligation to supply troops and ships to
the Swedish crown and the levy terms associated with this obligation have been dated by Rydberg (STFM I, 71) to around 1150, butplaced rather later by Yrwing (1940, 58–59). Once again, contemporary letters corroborate to a large degree the content of Gutasaga in respect of this material. Despite several protestations within
Guta saga of the independence of Gotland from foreign domination, the other statutes mentioned at the end of the text suggest that
this independence was being slowly eroded, and that Gotland was
gradually becoming a province of Sweden. The ledung was mainly
called out for crusades against the Baltic countries, and there areseveral contemporary sources recording these expeditions and thereaction of the Gotlanders to the summons; see Notes to 12/23.
Wessén points out (SL IV, 319) that Magnus Ladulås in 1285
established a different arrangement, according to which a tax waspayable annually, rather than merely as a ﬁne for failing to supply
the stipulated ships when they were summoned; cf. DS I, 671–672,
no. 815; STFM I, 290–291, no. 141. Wessén and other scholars use
the fact that the author of Guta saga does not seem aware of thischange to postulate that he must have been writing before 1285;
see below, pp. l–lii.
T Relationship with the KingThe ﬁnal sentences of the text, concerning the Gotlanders’ obligations in the event of a coup d’état, and the necessity for all communication on the king’s business to be sealed, have a disconnectedcharacter. They are most probably quotations from edicts issued in
response to contemporary events and the sentence regarding theretention of tax provides a possible terminus post quem for the text
as a whole, when considered in relation to events in Sweden, andgive some hint as to the intention of the author, both of whichaspects are discussed below, pp. l–liii.

The history of the Gotlandersxlix(vi) Date and place of composition
When attempting the dating of a written work there are several
factors to be considered. The following might give a terminus ante
quem: the date of the oldest preserved manuscript; mention of thework in question in another work, if the second work can be dated
more accurately; negative evidence in the form of a lack of knowledge of certain facts or events exhibited in the work. The following
might be used to give a terminus post quem: direct or indirectreference within the work itself to events that can be dated; quotations from other works for which a date of composition is knownwith some certainty; external events that may have triggered thewriting of the work and could provide a likely date range. Finally,
the palaeographic and linguistic evidence of the text in the manuscript could point to a date range by comparison with works of aknown date, although this must be treated with caution.
Scholars in general agree with Schlyter (CIG, i) when he dates
the manuscript B 64 to the early to middle of the fourteenth century,and this can therefore be taken as a starting-point for a terminus
ante quem for Guta saga. The mention of St Olaf dates Guta saga
to at least as late as 1030 and the account of the church-building
and the arrangements concerning the bishop of Linköping advancethat by a further century or so, since the ﬁrst recorded bishop was
Gisle, who took ofﬁce in 1139. This gives a terminus post quem ofcirca 1140 for the saga’s composition.
The ﬁrst serious attempt at dating Guta saga was made by
Schlyter (CIG, ix). He argues on the basis of the short passage
concerning the action to be taken regarding the taxes in the eventof a king being driven out of Sweden, that it be withheld for three
years, but then paid in full, maintaining that this refers to Birger
Magnusson who ﬂed to Gotland in 1318; see above, p. ix.
Säve questions this theory on the basis that the passage in question has the appearance of being a later addition. He does not,however, offer an alternative dating, although he dates Guta lag to
the late twelfth or early thirteenth century (GU, ix–x).
Läfﬂer (1908–1909, Part 1, 161) does not think that the passage
is a later addition. He notes that Schlyter’s opinion has been
supported (1908–1909, Part 1, 137–138), but argues that, since
Birger was still within his own realm, and in all probability received funds for his military expeditions, the withholding of tax
could not apply to that incident, particularly in view of the letter

lGuta sagafrom King Magnus in 1320 cancelling the increase in taxation; cf.
DS III, 473–475, no. 2255. Läfﬂer (1908–1909, Part 1, 145) discusses the possibility that the reference to a deposed and exiled
king refers to Sverker Karlsson, who was defeated at the Battle ofLena in 1208, the year after Archbishop Andreas Suneson visited
Gotland, and was succeeded by Erik Knutsson. He concludes that
this is the most probable explanation, since three years passed
between the Battle of Lena and Sverker’s death. In connection withthe fact that Guta saga refers speciﬁcally to a crowned king,whereas there is no documentary evidence of Sverker’s having
been crowned, he suggests that the crowning could be inferredfrom papal letters (1908–1909, Part 1, 149; Part 2, 125).
Läfﬂer sets the terminus ante quem as 1226, the date of a letterfrom the papal legate, William of Modena, in which he conﬁrms
visitation arrangements between Gotland and the bishop of Linköping (1908–1909, Part 1, 162). He does not think that the relevant passage in Guta saga can be a translation of the letter from
Archbishop Suneson (dated 1220–1223), as Schlyter (CIG, vi, note28) maintains, since it contains details not to be found there.
Läfﬂer (1908–1909, Part 1, 165–167) also rejects the idea that theLatin text could be a translation of the Gutnish. As further support
for his dating, Läfﬂer (1908–1909, Part 1, 142) points out that the
new levy agreement between Magnus Birgersson and the Gotlanders,drawn up in 1285, is not mentioned. He concludes (1908–1909,
Part 1, 167; Part 2, 123) that Guta saga was composed on Archbishop Suneson’s suggestion, shortly after 1220.
The omission of any mention of the new levy arrangements is
also noted by Pipping (GLGS, ii–iii), Jacobsen (GGD, 123), andYrwing (1940, 51–52), although the last does not think that thedate Läfﬂer proposes as a terminus ante quem is any more than apossibility. Both Wessén (KL, s. v. Gutasagan) and Yrwing (1978,19) repeat these views a number of years later and other authors,for example Schück (1959, 265), have supported their conclusions.
Although Rolf Pipping (1943, 67) proposes a date of compositionof circa 1318, he concedes that the traditions Guta saga contains
are older.
Since the two manuscripts of Guta lag (in Gutnish and Low
German), to which the complete texts of Guta saga are appended,
give us, according to Wessén (LG, xxxii), two traditions independent of each other, it may be assumed that there are at least threeThe history of the Gotlandersli

independent traditions of Guta saga, since one more is represented
by the range of partial texts; see above, pp. xii–xiii. The existenceof this last tradition would indicate that the work had a separate
history from Guta lag. But is Guta saga a ‘natural complement to
the law’ and thus written down not long after the former, as Wessén(LG, xxxiv) claims? Wessén states that the text must be later than
Guta lag, but offers no evidence for this assertion. He also deems
that it must be earlier than 1285, since the author seems unawareof the changes to the levy laws made by Magnus Birgersson (SL IV,
297), but places it after certain letters by Archbishop Andreas
Suneson (SL IV, 313–315), concluding that it was probably written
around 1220, on Suneson’s inspiration. He bases this on the arguments put forward by Läfﬂer noted above, and proceeds to use thisto date Guta lag, which he also places around 1220 (SL IV, lxxii),
although he quotes from letters by Archbishop Suneson that indicate that the law was not written down before about 1220, but was
codiﬁed subsequently, as a result of his own encouragement andadmonition. A study by Skov (1946, 114–116), comes to the conclusion that Suneson was instrumental in the codiﬁcation of thelaw of Gotland and that it occurred at some time after 1220 but
before 1223 when the archbishop resigned his position.
More recently, Elsa Sjöholm (1976, 94) has put forward alternative arguments for a considerably later dating. She dismisses theearlier dating adhered to by Wessén and others as a regression, andcontinues by maintaining that Andreas Suneson was probably not
involved in the codiﬁcation of Guta lag. She also postulates that
Guta saga very probably had Latin models for substantial parts of
its early material (1976, 99–100, 102). She further rejects Yrwing’s
argument for a dating of Guta saga prior to 1285 on the basis of
the change in the laiþingslami contained in the letter from Magnus
Birgersson. Her argument is that, for Yrwing’s interpretation to becorrect, the letter of 1285 would have to differentiate fundamentally between a compulsory levy and a previous voluntary one,
whereas she reads it merely as a difference of emphasis, in that theGotlanders still have the right to remain at home if they need todefend the island. Accordingly, there is nothing in either Guta sagaor the letter that would prevent the former from being later than thelatter. She maintains that the sources from 1320 give no evidence
that would conﬂict with the taxation and levy arrangements described in Guta saga, and that 1285 cannot therefore be used as alii

Guta saga

terminus ante quem (1976, 104–105). In 1320 Magnus Eriksson
removed the increases in tribute which Birger Magnusson had
imposed in 1313, but the sources do not mention the laiþingslami,
which Sjöholm therefore argues must have been paid as normal.
She claims that Guta saga was written with the purpose of supporting Gotland’s claim to independence in the face of Birger Magnusson’s
tax increases (1976, 105–110).
This opinion is not supported by other evidence and has consequently been ignored by later writers, e. g. Yrwing (1978) and
Mitchell (1984, 151), although the latter refers to the other two
main opinions as represented by Läfﬂer and Yrwing, nor is it mentioned in, for example, either Medieval Scandinavia (1993, s. v.
Guta saga) or National encyklopedin (1989–1996, s. v. Gutasagan).
Only in a review by Ole Fenger (1979, 117) is any mention madeof Sjöholm’s arguments. Fenger, in passing, appears to accept them,but without any reference to the counter-opinions, or giving areason for the endorsement other than that they appear reasonable.
As far as is known, Guta saga is not mentioned in any work thatis earlier than the manuscript in which it ﬁrst appears, although it
is referred to in ﬁfteenth-century sources; hence there is no external information available concerning its date. On the other hand,the fact that Guta saga does not form part of AM 54 4to cannot be
used to argue that it was composed after the exemplar that Bilefeld
used to create that copy; cf. GLGS, xviii.
One further piece of evidence that can be put forward to suggest
a relatively early date of composition is the fact that the jarl is referred to several times. In 1275 the position of jarl was replaced bythat of sveahertig and it seems unlikely that, if that date were long
passed, the author would have used the outmoded term to describe
the king’s right-hand man. The period at the start of the reign ofMagnus Birgersson seems to have been a time of great ﬂuctuationin the relationship between Gotland and the Swedish crown andwould thus be a natural time for the production of a short history
to assert the independence and rights of the Gotlanders. In 1288 thecivil war between Visby and the rest of the islanders led to further
changes, including a promise by the citizens of Visby not to act
without the king’s permission, but there is nothing in Guta saga,apart from the passing reference to the king’s oath, to indicate thatit post-dates the war; cf. STFM I, 300–303, no. 144 and Note
to 14/22–23. It thus seems reasonable to propose a terminus ante

The history of the Gotlanders

liii

quem for the composition of Guta saga of 1275 or very shortly
thereafter, with a terminus post quem of 1220 as agreed by the
majority of scholars.
The place of composition of Guta saga is less open to debate. It
seems fairly clear that it was composed and ﬁrst written down in
Gotland, and in the Gutnish in which it survives. There is internal
evidence in two places for the ﬁrst of these assumptions:Þair sendibuþar aigu friþ lysa gutum alla steþi til sykia yﬁr haf, sum
Upsala kunungi til hoyrir, ok so þair, sum þan vegin aigu hinget sykia.
(6/22–25)

andKunnu hetningar eþa dailumal varþa, sum biskupi til hoyra at retta, þaa hier biþa biskups quemdar ok ai yﬁr fara, utan þuang reki til ok mikil
synd sei, et ai ma proastr loysa. (12/14–17)

It seems probable from these two passages that the author was in
Gotland at the time of writing, even if he were not a Gotlander
himself. Argument has been put forward by Pipping (GLGS, iv)
that the text was originally a Latin one, translated and augmented
into the form in which we have it. Despite the fact that some of thephrases used resemble Latin constructions, for instance, the ‘dative
absolute’ in siþan gangnum manaþi (4/10), the balance of probability
is surely against this, and it is much more likely that a text with the
pro-Gotlandic bias that Guta saga exhibits would have been conceived and written in Gutnish from the outset, albeit inﬂuenced by
Latin written sources; cf. Läfﬂer, 1908–1909, Part 1, 177.
(vii) Authorship and circumstances of authorship
It is not possible to say who the author of Guta saga was, and nosuggestions have been made in this respect. The supposition that he
was a cleric is not without attraction, in view of the detailed
account of the rights and duties of the bishop of Linköping, and thegenerally pious sentiment; cf. SL IV, 297. Certain elements of theearlier narrative, such as the description of pilgrims consecrating
churches and the building of the ﬁrst treding churches, also indicate a clerical interest. If, as has been suggested, the work was
written at the instigation of Andreas Suneson, it would also benatural that a priest should have undertaken the task. There isnothing in the text that contradicts such a general assumption andin want of other evidence it seems the most likely authorship.

liv

Guta saga(viii) Value as a source of history
There are two aspects to the historical value of an old text. First,
there is the value of the content of the text as factual information
about the period it is supposedly describing, and secondly there is
the incidental value of the text as information about the period inwhich it was most probably composed. In the ﬁrst instance, we arepoorly placed to make anything other than a very tentative judgement in the case of Guta saga, since the existence of supporting
evidence is not to be expected. In the second instance we must be
careful to avoid circular arguments of the type: ‘This text is assumed to have been written at this time. Such a thing is known tohave happened at this time, therefore this text must have been
written as a reaction to this thing, and was thus written at thistime.’ That is not to say, however, that no conclusions can be drawn
about the historical events at the time of composition, or about
what the Scandinavians, borrowing from German, call the tendens
behind it.
Taking the simple story-line presented in Guta saga, it is possible
to dismiss considerable sections of it as clearly unhistorical or legendary in character. Such elements have been discussed in detail inconnection with the sources and the details need not be rehearsed
here. It is with the Avair Strabain episode that the author moves
nearer to the description of a historical event. Arguments havebeen presented above (pp. xxxiii–xxxvi) about the dating of theapparently voluntary treaty with Sweden; cf. SL IV, 304–306. Fromthe early medieval arrangements between the central administration and other Swedish districts, it seems possible that some sortof loose and symbiotic union was entered into at a time preceding
the composition of Guta saga, which gradually involved morecommitment from Gotland to Sweden in terms of tax; cf. Tunberg,
1940, 106–107. The inclusion of a description of the earliest treaty
is triggered by the need to stress the original independence of theGotlanders in the face of ever more intrusion by the Swedish crown.
The second event presented as historical is the arrival of St Olafon the island. There is no serious dispute about the suggestion thathe actually did visit Gotland at least once, but there is muchdiscussion about how many times, for how long, with what result,and which of his supposed visits is intended to be represented here.
The actions described (exchanges of gifts, agreement by a local
representative to baptism, building of a chapel) suggest more theThe history of the Gotlanders

lv

buying-off and placating of a harrying warlord than at the submission to a concerted and overtly peaceful missionary attempt. Ormika’sname may only have been a useful peg on which to hang theconversion story, like Avair Strabain’s in the previous episode.
It would be more convincing historically if either the conversion
of Gotland were mentioned elsewhere in the St Olaf hagiography,or the author had not given a slightly different version of theintroduction of Christianity almost immediately afterwards, involving Botair and his father-in-law Likkair. Once again, there
seems to be a tendens behind this: Gotlanders were converted of
their own volition and no one forced them. This has parallels in theconversion of Iceland as told in Íslendingabók (ÍF I, 14–18). Olaf
comes to the Gotlanders as an exile, not as the Church Militant, andhis inﬂuence is limited to a personal conversion (of Ormika),
which had no immediate effect elsewhere on the island.
The historicity of the church-building that is said to have immediately preceded and followed Likkair’s conversion does not allowof proof either way. The ﬁrst churches were no doubt of wood andthere are no remains of so old a church at Stenkyrka. What isinteresting is the description of what existed in the author’s day. S:t
Per’s church in Visby is reduced to just a small section of wallabsorbed into the later S:t Hans’s church. Of other, older, churches
in Visby there is no sign. This raises the possibility that the author
was attached in some way to S:t Per’s church and was anxious tofurther its claim to be on the site of the oldest church that wasallowed to stand on the island. The placing of the next few churches
so conveniently in the three ‘thirds’ of the island says, one imagines, more about the administrative arrangements at the time of thecomposition of Guta saga than about any known building activities in the eleventh century.
The passage leading up to and covering the absorption of theisland into the see of Linköping is reminiscent of the earlier passage describing the treaty with the king of Sweden: various bishops
take a hand in Gotland’s ecclesiastical affairs, but the islanders
ﬁnally select for themselves the bishop whose authority they will
accept. It may not reﬂect the historical course of events. The ﬁnal
effect was a historical one, well-documented and indisputable, but
its execution might in actual fact have demonstrated less well the
independence of the Gotlanders. What does have a historical basis,
since there is a episcopal letter to support it, is the description oflvi

Guta saga

the actual arrangements for the bishop’s visitations. Here, however, the text in Guta saga provides little additional historicalinformation.
The following passage, setting out the levy obligations of theGotlanders with respect to the Swedish king, is of a similar nature
to that covering the relationship with the bishop, much of theevidence being available elsewhere, in letters, and it is thus of no
independent value as a historical source.
The ﬁnal sentences have been discussed in connection with thedating of Guta saga and their value historically can only be seen
in relation to this; see above, pp. l–lii.
To summarise: there is a relative paucity of solid historicalmaterial in Guta saga as regards the events of the period it purports
to describe. Where the attitude and needs of the author are concerned, we get a little more information, but this is largely by
induction, based on our knowledge of the events at or around thetime we deduce him to have lived, and hence these surmises are
subject to the very caveat mentioned at the start of this section. The
ﬁnal verdict on the historical value of Guta saga must be that there
is none proven.
(ix) Language
Comments on some individual aspects of the language and of thecurrent translation appear in the Notes. Pipping (GLGS, xxiii–cxiv)
has presented a detailed analysis of the language and forms of both
Guta lag and Guta saga, and there are further studies, notably
those by Söderberg (1879) and Gustavson (1940–1948). Gustavson(1940–1948, I, vii) argues that there is a case for regarding Gutnish
as a separate language alongside Old Swedish, Old Danish, Old
Norwegian and Old Icelandic. The noticeable features of Gutnish
in comparison to Old Swedish are: (a) the presence of diphthongs,
retained where Old Swedish lacks them (hoyra); (b) the fronting
and rounding of certain vowels in particular positions (dyma, cf.
Swedish döma); (c) the retention of Common Norse short u where
Old Swedish has short o (gutar, fulk); (d) more instances of iumlaut than in other Scandinavian languages (segþi, cf. Old Icelandic sagði); (e) the lack of breaking in certain instances (although there are no examples given from Guta saga). The casesystem is conservative and there are particular forms, such as thegenitive singular of weak feminine nouns (e. g. kuna, gen. kunur)

The history of the Gotlanderslvii

and the pronouns (hann, ‘he’, han, ‘she’) that differ from those in
Old Swedish. The vocabulary also has differences (lamb, ‘sheep’
rather than ‘lamb’); see KL, s. v. Forngutniska and references.
Some scholars have, as a result of the phrase used at the end of
the emigration episode, sumt af varu mali, looked for similarities
between Gothic and Gutnish, and Bugge (NIÆR I, 152–158) notes
a number of further examples. He concedes, however, that theevidence is inconclusive and that there could be other explanations
than that a form of Gothic was at one time spoken in Gotland.
Nevertheless, of all the Scandinavian languages, Gutnish is the onethat most resembles Gothic.
The language of Guta saga in B 64 is similar to that of the latter
portion of Guta lag and the text would thus seem to have been
available to the scribe in a version dating from later than that of theearlier parts of Guta lag, although the same scribe is responsible
for the whole of B 64. In any case, Guta saga has, in all probability,
a separate author from that of Guta lag. Pipping (GLGS, iii) andothers, including Sjöholm (1976, 105), suspect that the scribe who
produced B 64 did not wholly understand the language of Guta saga.
Pipping’s emendations, indicated in the footnotes and discussed in
the Notes, draw attention to some of the places where this is apparent.
(x) Editions of Guta saga
A Previous editions, translations, etc.
The ﬁrst printed edition of Guta lag and Guta saga, entitled GothlandzLaghen på gammal Göthiska, was produced in 1687 by Johan
Hadorph, who was at that time the secretary of Antikvitetskollegiet.
In the dedication, dated 1st February, 1690, Hadorph records thatthe manuscript had been found a few years previously ‘uthi en
Kyrckia der på Landet ibland orenligheet, såsom en förkastat Ting,och omsider hijtkommen till sin rätta Herre och Konung’. His
edition contains a translation into contemporary Swedish and some
added section rubrics, as well as an introduction and a word-list,
with occasional glosses. In the introduction there is a section on
Gotlandic runic inscriptions. The rubrics inserted by Hadorph at
the listed points in the text, with his page numbers, are:
2/1

Om Gothlandz Första Upﬁnnelse och bebyggiande samt Afgudadyrkan
i hedendomen (p. 47).
4/17 Om Göternas afguda dyrkan (p. 48, marginal note).

lviii

Guta saga

6/1

Om Gothlandz Förening med Swerige och dheras Skatt och Frijheet.
Och huru helge Oluf kom til Gothland och lätt Christna Ormika
högste Man den Tijdh på Gottlandh (p. 48).
8/1 Om helge Olafz ankombst til Gottlandh (p. 49, marginal note).
8/11 Om Gutharnas Omwändelse til Christna Troo. 2 Budh til Linkiöpingz
Biskop. Om Kyrkiobyggnat och Prester. 3 Huru dhe begynte föllia
Swea Konung i härfärd och Skatt giöra (p. 50).
10/14 Om första Biskoper och deras Wilkor aff landet (p. 51, marginal note).
12/21 Gutharnas Plicht i Härfärdh medh Swea Konung (p. 52).

Schlyter (CIG, xx–xxi) considers that the translation, althoughgood for the time, is inaccurate in a number of places and that the
text has many misprints, some caused by a misreading of themanuscript. This seems to be a fair judgement.
An apparently accurate text of the ﬁrst chapter of Guta saga,
followed by a Latin translation, was published by Peringskiöld(1699, 442–445), but the next complete edition to be produced wasthat by Karl Schildener in 1818 (G-L), entitled Guta-Lagh das ist:
Der Insel Gothland altes Rechtsbuch. The B 64 text is presented inparallel with the medieval German translation (B 65) and a contemporary German translation. The B 65 text is, however, missing
for much of Guta saga, as Schildener was using a copy by
Hammarsköld that was incomplete; cf. CIG, xxiii. This edition
retains some of the errors contained in Hadorph’s edition, corrects
some and introduces others.
In 1852 Schlyter, as the seventh volume in a series covering theSwedish district laws (CIS), produced what might be regarded as
the ﬁrst scholarly edition of Guta lag and Guta saga (CIG). His
introduction discusses the various manuscripts still preserved, although as Ljunggren (1959, 10–11) notes, he does not appear to beaware of the Old Swedish translation (in Codex Holmiensis D 2).
Schlyter presents the text with a parallel translation into contemporary Swedish. His apparatus is in Latin, but he includes Swedish
footnotes with his translation. He divides the work into six chapters, Chapter 2 covering the visit of St Olaf and Chapter 5 covering
the travelling bishops and the visitation arrangements. These chapter divisions have been used in all subsequent editions. Schlyter
includes a glossary and an index of proper names. The ﬁnal volumeof the series (CIS XIII) is also a glossary, covering the complete setof law texts as well as Guta saga.
In 1859 Carl Säve produced an academic thesis, Gutniska urkunder(GU), part of which is an edition of Guta lag and Guta saga. Säve

The history of the Gotlanders

lix

discusses the language and acknowledges the previous edition by
Schlyter, offering a number of alternative readings.
The most thorough study of the language of Guta saga is presented in the edition produced by Pipping (GLGS). This edition
contains a detailed introduction on the language of B 64 and AM
54 4to, a diplomatic text and a full glossary showing all instancesof each word. The emendations Pipping makes are signalled andcross-referenced to those made by previous editors.
In 1945, volume ﬁve of Corpus codicum Suecicorum medii aevi
was published, containing a facsimile of Guta lag and Guta saga
as preserved in B 64 and B 65 (LG). It includes an introduction inboth Swedish and English by E. Wessén.
The translation of Guta lag and Guta saga into Swedish, produced by Åke Holmbäck and Elias Wessén in SL IV, includes anintroduction, discussing in detail the preservation, dating, content
and historical background of both Guta lag and Guta saga, as wellas very full explanatory notes on the text and content, with extensive references. It does not discuss the language of the original, butrefers frequently to editions that do.
Of the translations into languages other than Swedish and German,
Lis Jacobsen’s translation into Danish, Guterlov og Gutersaga(GGD), published in 1910, contains the fullest commentary. It isbased on Pipping and draws attention to the rich alliteration in the
texts. No complete edition has previously been published in English,
but there is an extract (in Gutnish, with glossary entries) contained
in Gordon (1962, 175–177, ﬁrst published in 1927) and an English
translation by Adolph Burnett Benson of the same extract, derivingfrom Gordon, in Leach (1946, 312–314, 349). A translation into
French of the whole of Guta saga, including an introduction andcommentary, was produced by Jean Marie Maillefer (1985).
Ljunggren’s critical edition covering the surviving Old Swedishand Danish translations of fragments of Guta saga (1959) contains
a comparison of these with the text in B 64 and a proposed stemma
based on these comparisons.
B The present edition
The text is presented as in B 64 but with a number of emendations,some following Pipping (GLGS ), signalled by an asterisk. The
readings of the manuscript and earlier editions are shown in thefootnotes. Characters and words apparently accidentally omitted

lx

Guta sagafrom the manuscript are indicated by angled brackets. The orthography of the text has been normalised, or more strictly standardised,to the most common usage in the manuscript, sometimes following
suggestions in Pipping’s footnotes. All instances of the alternative
forms to be found in the manuscript are presented in Pipping’s
glossary (GLGS Ordbok). Nasal strokes and emendations by thescribe have been expanded or applied without comment, both in
the text and the notes. Punctuation and capitalisation have been
inserted following, as far as possible, modern Swedish practice andparagraph divisions have been made where they have seemed
appropriate. The four chapter divisions marked in the manuscript
have been retained; details of the chapter headings and marginal
notes in the manuscript have been included in the Notes.
The translation, which faces the original text, has retained, where
possible, changes in tense and mood that characterise the legal
sections of the text, but idiomatic English expressions have been
substituted for those in the original. Place-names are given theirmodern English equivalent where they exist, otherwise the modern
Swedish equivalent has been used. Personal names are given in asingle nominative singular form (adopting Pipping’s emendation
where relevant). Punctuation and capitalisation follow modern
English practice.

Guta saga
The history of the Gotlanders

[GUTA SAGA][1]

G

utland hitti fyrsti maþr þann, sum Þieluar hit. Þa
var Gutland so eluist, et þet dagum sank ok natum
var uppi. En þann maþr quam fyrsti eldi a land, ok siþan
sank þet aldri.
5Þissi Þieluar hafþi ann sun, sum hit Hafþi. En Hafþa
kuna hit Huitastierna. Þaun tu bygþu fyrsti a Gutlandi.
Fyrstu nat, sum þaun saman suafu, þa droymdi henni
draumbr, so sum þrir ormar varin slungnir saman i
barmi hennar, ok þytti henni sum þair skriþin yr barmi
10 hennar. Þinna draum segþi han ﬁrir *Hafþa, bonda sinum.
Hann *reþ draum þinna so:‘Alt ir baugum bundit.
Boland al þitta varþa,ok faum þria syni aiga.’
15 Þaim gaf hann namn allum ofydum:‘Guti al Gutland aiga,
Graipr al annar haita,
ok Gunﬁaun þriþi.’Þair skiptu siþan Gutlandi i þria þriþiunga, so et Graipr,
20 þann elzti, laut norþasta þriþiung ok Guti miþal þriþiung.

En Gunﬁaun, þann yngsti, laut sunnarsta. Siþan af þissumþrim aukaþis fulk i Gutlandi so mikit um langan tima,et land elpti þaim ai alla fyþa. Þa lutaþu þair bort af
landi huert þriþia þiauþ, so et alt skuldu þair aiga ok
25 miþ sir bort hafa sum þair ufan iorþar attu. Siþan vilduþair nauþugir bort fara, men foru innan Þorsborg okbygþus þar ﬁrir. Siþan vildi ai land þaim þula utan rakuþaim bort þeþan.
10 Hafþa G-L, 106; CIG, 94, note 8; GLGS, 62, note 5; hasþa MS.
11 raiþ GLGS, 62, note 6; riaþ MS.

THE HISTORY OF THE GOTLANDERS
Chapter 1Gotland was ﬁrst discovered by a man named Þieluar.
At that time the island was so bewitched that it sank by
day and rose up at night. That man, however, was the ﬁrst thatbrought ﬁre to the island, and afterwards it never sank again.
This same Þieluar had a son named Hafþi, and Hafþi’s
wife was called Huitastierna. These two were the ﬁrst tosettle in Gotland. The ﬁrst night that they slept together,she dreamed a dream. It was just as if three snakes were
coiled together within her womb, and it seemed to her as
though they crawled out of her lap. She related this dreamto Hafþi, her husband, and he interpreted it as follows:‘Everything in rings is bound.
Inhabited this land shall be;
we shall beget sons three.’He gave them each a name, while they were still unborn:‘Guti shall Gotland claim,
Graipr the second by nameand Gunﬁaun the third.’
They later divided Gotland into thirds, in such a way that
Graipr the eldest inherited the northern third, Guti the
middle third and Gunﬁaun the youngest inherited thesouthernmost. Subsequently, from these three men, thepopulation of Gotland increased so much over a long periodof time that the land was not able to support them all.
Then they cast lots to send every third person away fromthe island, on the understanding that they should have aright to keep, and take away with them, everything thatthey owned in the way of moveables. But then they were
unwilling to move away, and went instead into Torsburgen,and lived there. Later the people of the island were notprepared to tolerate them, but drove them away from there.

4

Guta sagaSiþan foru þair bort i Faroyna ok bygþus þar ﬁrir. Þar
gatu þair ai sik uppi haldit, utan foru i aina oy viþrAistland, sum haitir Dagaiþi, ok bygþus þar ﬁrir okgierþu burg aina, sum enn synis.
Þar gatu þair ok ai sik haldit, utan foru upp at vatni,
5þy sum haitir Dyna, ok upp ginum Ryzaland. So ﬁerri
foru þair, et þair quamu til Griklanz. Þar baddus þairbyggias ﬁrir af grika kunungi um ny ok niþar. Kunungrþann lufaþi þaim ok hugþi, et ai *maira *þan ann manaþr
10 vari. Siþan gangnum manaþi, vildi hann þaim bort visa.
En þair *annsuaraþu þa, et ny ok niþar vari e ok e, ok quaþu,so sir vara lufat. Þissun þaira viþratta quam ﬁrir drytningina
um siþir. Þa segþi han: ‘Minn herra kunungr! Þu lufaþi
þaim byggia um ny ok niþar. Þa ir þet e ok e, þa matt15 þu ai af þaim taka.’ So bygþus þair þar ﬁrir ok enn
byggia, ok enn hafa þair *sumt af varu mali.
Firir þan tima ok lengi eptir siþan troþu menn a hultok a hauga, vi ok stafgarþa ok a haiþin guþ. Blotaþu
þair synum ok dytrum sinum ok ﬁleþi miþ mati ok
20 mungati. Þet gierþu þair eptir vantro sinni. Land alt hafþi
sir hoystu blotan miþ fulki. Ellar hafþi huer þriþiungr
sir. En smeri þing hafþu mindri blotan miþ ﬁleþi, mati
ok mungati, sum haita suþnautar, þy et þair suþu allir
saman.

9 ai maira þan CIG, 95, note 11; GU, 32, line 14; FL, 153; ain
niþ GLGS, 63, note 3; ai miþ MS. See Note to 4/9.
11 annzsuaraþv þa GLGS, 63, note 4; annzsuaru with suaraþv þa
inserted above the line MS.
16 sumt CIG, 95, note 13; GLGS, 63, note 6; suint MS.

The history of the Gotlanders

5

They then went away to Fårö and settled there. They
could not support themselves there, but travelled to an
island off Estonia called Dagö, where they settled, andbuilt a fortiﬁcation, which is still to be seen.
They could not support themselves there either, but travelled
up by the watercourse called the Dvina, and onward
through Russia. They travelled for such a distance thatthey came to the Byzantine empire. There they asked
permission of the Byzantine emperor to live ‘for the waxing
and waning’. The emperor granted them that, thinking that
this meant no more than a month. After a month had
passed, he wanted to send them on their way. But theyanswered then that ‘the waxing and waning’ meant ‘forever and ever’ and said that was just what they had beenpromised. This dispute of theirs came at last to the noticeof the empress. She then said, ‘My lord emperor, youpromised them that they could settle for the waxing andthe waning of the moon. Now that continues for ever andever, so you cannot take that promise away from them.’ So
there they settled and still live. And, moreover, they retainsome of our language.
Prior to that time, and for a long time afterwards, people
believed in groves and grave howes, holy places and ancientsites, and in heathen idols. They sacriﬁced their sons anddaughters, and cattle, together with food and ale. They didthat in accordance with their ignorance of the true faith.
The whole island held the highest sacriﬁce on its own
account, with human victims, otherwise each third held its
own. But smaller assemblies held a lesser sacriﬁce withcattle, food, and drink. Those involved were called ‘boilingcompanions’, because they all cooked their sacriﬁcial meals
together.

6

Guta saga[2]
Mangir kunungar stridu a Gutland, miþan ha‹i›þit var.
Þau hieldu gutar e iemlika *sigri ok ret sinum. Siþan
sentu gutar *sendimen manga til Suiarikis, en enginþaira ﬁkk friþ gart, fyr þan Avair strabain af Alfa sokn.
5 Hann gierþi fyrsti friþ viþr suia kunung.
Þa en gutar hann til baþu at fara, þa suaraþi hann:‘Mik vitin ir nu faigastan ok fallastan. Gieﬁn þa mir, en
ir vilin, et iek fari innan slikan vaþa, þry vereldi: att mir
sielfum, annat burnum syni minum, ok þriþia kunu.’ Þy
10 et hann var *snieldr ok *ﬁelkunnugr, so sum sagur af
ganga, gikk hann a staggaþan ret viþr suia kunung.
Siextigi marka silfs um ar huert, þet ir skattr guta, so etSuiarikis kunungr ‹haﬁ› ﬁauratigi markr silfs af þaimsiextigi, en ierl haﬁ tiugu markr silfs. Þinna *staþga
15 gierþi hann miþ lanz raþi, fyr en hann haiman fori. So
gingu gutar sielfs viliandi undir suia kunung, þy et þairmattin frir ok frelsir sykia Suiariki i huerium staþ utan
tull ok allar utgiftir. So aigu ok suiar sykia Gutland ﬁrir
utan kornband ellar annur forbuþ. Hegnan ok hielp
20 skuldi kunungr gutum at vaita, en þair viþr þorftin ok
kallaþin. Sendimen al ok kunungr ok ierl samulaiþ agutnalþing senda ok lata þar taka skatt sin. Þair sendibuþar aigu friþ lysa gutum alla steþi til sykia yﬁr haf,sum Upsala kunungi til hoyrir, ok so þair, sum þan
25 vegin aigu hinget sykia.
1 haiþit GU, 32, line 29; GLGS, 64, note 2.
2 sigri CIG, 96, note 3; GLGS, 64, note 3; siþri MS.
3 sendimen GU, 32, line 31; GLGS, 64, note 4; sendimenn GU,
67, note; sendumen MS.
10 snieldr CIG, 96, note 4; GLGS, 62, note 6; senieldir MS.
ﬁel-kunnugr GU, 32, line 37; ﬁelkunnugr FL, 154, §7; ﬁel cunnugr
AL, 39, §18; GLGS, 64, note 7; ﬁel kunungur MS.
13 haﬁ CIG, 97, note 6; GLGS, 64, note 9.
14 staþga CIG, 97, note 7; GLGS, 64, note 11; staþgaþ MS.

The history of the Gotlanders

7

Chapter 2
Many kings fought against Gotland while it was heathen;the Gotlanders, however, always held the victory and constantly protected their rights. Later the Gotlanders sent alarge number of messengers to Sweden, but none of them
could make peace before Avair Strabain of Alva parish.
He made the ﬁrst peace with the king of the Swedes.
When the Gotlanders begged him to go, he answered,‘You know that I am now most doomed and ill-fated.
Grant me then, if you wish me to expose myself to suchperil, three wergilds, one for myself, a second for my
begotten son and a third for my wife.’ Because he waswise and skilled in many things, just as the tales go abouthim, he entered into a binding treaty with the king of theSwedes. Sixty marks of silver in respect of each year is theGotlanders’ tax, divided so that the king of Sweden shouldhave forty marks of silver out of the sixty, and the jarltwenty marks of silver. Avair made this statute in accordance with the advice of the people of the island before heleft home. In this way, the Gotlanders submitted to theking of Sweden, of their own free will, in order that theymight travel everywhere in Sweden free and unhindered,exempt from toll and all other charges. Similarly the Swedes
also have the right to visit Gotland, without ban against
trade in corn, or other prohibitions. The king was obliged
to give the Gotlanders protection and assistance, if theyshould need it and request it. In addition the king, andlikewise the jarl, should send messengers to the Gotlanders’general assembly and arrange for their tax to be collected
there. The messengers in question have a duty to proclaim
the freedom of Gotlanders to visit all places overseas thatbelong to the king in Uppsala and, similarly, to such as
have the right to travel here from that side.

8

Guta saga

Eptir þet siþan quam helgi Olafr kunungr ﬂyandi af
Norvegi miþ skipum ok legþis i hamn, þa sum kallar
Akrgarn. Þar la helgi Olafr lengi. Þa for Ormika af
Hainaim ok ﬂairi rikir menn til hans miþ giefum sinum.
5 Þann Ormika gaf hanum tolf veþru miþ andrum klenatum.
Þa gaf helgi Olafr kunungr hanum atr agin tua bulla okaina braiþyxi. Þa tok Ormika viþr kristindomi eptir
helga Olafs kennidomi ok gierþi sir bynahus i samastaþ, sum nu standr Akrgarna kirkia. Þeþan for helgi
10 Olafr til Ierslafs i Hulmgarþi.
[3]
Þau et gutar hainir varu, þau silgdu þair miþ kaupmannaskap innan all land, baþi kristin ok haiþin. Þasagu kaupmenn kristna siþi i kristnum landum. Þa litu
sumir sik þar kristna ok fyrþu til Gutlanz presti.
15
Botair af Akubek hit þann sum fyrsti kirkiu gierþi, iþan staþ, sum nu haitir Kulasteþar. Þet vildi ai land þulautan brendu hana. Þy kallar þar enn Kulasteþar. Þa eptir
þan tima var blotan i Vi. Þar gierþi kirkiu aþra. Þa samu
kirkiu vildi land ok brenna. Þa for hann sielfr upp a
20 kirkiu þa ok segþi: ‘Vilin ir brenna, þa skulin ir brenna
mik miþ kirkiu þissi.’ Hann var rikr sielfr ok *rikasta
manz dotur hafþi hann, sum hit Likkair *snielli, boandi
þar, sum kallar Stainkirkiu. Hann reþ mest um þan tima.
Hann halp Botairi, magi sinum, ok segþi so: ‘Herþin ai
25 brenna mann ella kirkiu hans, þy et han standr i Vi, ﬁrirniþan klintu.’ Miþ þy ﬁkk þaun kirkia standa obrend.
Han var sett þar miþ aldra helguna namni, innan þanstaþ, sum nu kallar Petrs kirkiu. Han var fyrsti kirkia i
Gutlandi, sum standa ﬁkk.
21 rikasta G-L, 111; CIG, 99, note 7; GLGS, 65, note 6; ricasca MS.
22 snielli CIG, 99, note 8; GLGS, 65, note 7; snilli with e above
the i MS.

The history of the Gotlanders

9

Later, after this, King Olaf the Saint came ﬂeeing from
Norway with his ships, and laid into a harbour, the one called
Akergarn. St Olaf lay there a long time. Then Ormika of
Hejnum, and several other powerful men, went to him with
their gifts. Ormika gave him twelve yearling rams alongwith other valuables. St Olaf then reciprocated and gave
him in return two round drinking vessels and a battle-axe.
Ormika subsequently received Christianity according to St
Olaf’s teaching and built himself an oratory at the same
location as Akergarn church now stands. From there St
Olaf travelled to visit Jaroslav in Novgorod.
Chapter 3
Although the Gotlanders were heathen, they neverthelesssailed on trading voyages to all countries, both Christianand heathen. So the merchants saw Christian customs in
Christian lands. Some of them then allowed themselves tobe baptised, and brought priests to Gotland.
Botair of Akebäck was the name of the one who ﬁrst
built a church, in that place which is now called Kulstäde.
The islanders were not prepared to tolerate that, but burned
it. For that reason the place is still called Kulstäde. Then, lateron, there was a sacriﬁce at Vi. There Botair built a second
church. The people of the island also wanted to burn thisparticular church. Then Botair went up on top of the church
himself and said, ‘If you want to burn it, you will have toburn me along with this church.’ He was himself inﬂuential,and he had as his wife a daughter of the most powerfulman, called Likkair Snielli, living at the place called Stenkyrka.
Likkair carried most authority at that time. He supported
Botair, his son-in-law, and said as follows, ‘Do not persist
in burning the man or his church, since it stands at Vi,
below the cliff.’ As a result, that church was allowed tostand unburnt. It was established there with the name of
All Saints, in that place which is now called St Peter’s. It
was the ﬁrst church in Gotland to be allowed to stand.

10

Guta sagaSiþan um nequan tima eptir, lit suer hans Likkairsn‹i›elli sik kristna, ok husf‹r›oyu sina, barn sin ok
hiskep sin allan. Ok gierþi kirkiu i garþi sinum, þar nu
kallar Stainkirkiu. Han var fyrsti kirkia a landi uppi i
5 norþasta þriþiungi. Siþan gutar sagu kristna manna siþi,þa lydu þair Guz buþi ok lerþra manna kennu. Toku þaalmennilika viþr kristindomi miþ sielfs vilia sinum utanþuang, so et engin þuang þaim til kristnur.
Siþan en menn orþu almennilika kristnir, þa gierþis
10 kirkia annur a landi i Atlingabo. Han var fyrsti i miþalþriþiungi. Siþan varþ þriþi gar a landi i Farþaim i*sunnarsta þriþiungi. Af þaim briskaþus kirkiur allar i
Gutlandi, þy et menn gierþu sir kirkiur at mairu maki.
Fyr en Gutland toki steþilika viþr nekrum biskupi, þa
15 quamu biskupar til Gutlanz, pilagrimar til helga lanz
Ierusalem ok þeþan haim foru. Þan tima var vegr oystra
um Ryzaland ok Grikland fara til Ierusalem. Þair vigþu
fyrsti kirkiur ok kirkiugarþa, miþ byn þaira, sum giera
litu kirkiur.
20Siþan en gutar vendus viþr kristindom, þa sentu þairsendibuþa til hoygsta biskups i Leonkopungi, þy ethann var þaim nestr, so et miþ steddum ret quami hanntil Gutlanz þan reþskep giera miþ þaim forskielum, etbiskupr vildi kuma af Leonkopungi þriþia huert ar til
25 Gutlanz miþ tolf mannum sinum, sum hanum skuldin
fylgia um land alt miþ bonda hestum, so mangum ok ai
ﬂairum.
So a biskupr um Gutland fara til kirkiu vigsla ok
gingerþa sinna taka: þry borþ ok ai maira at kirkiu vigsl
30 huerri, miþ þrim markum; at alteris vigsl att borþ, miþtolf oyrum, en alteri ainsamt skal vigias; þa en baþi iru
2 snielli GU, 33, line 38; GLGS, 66, note 3. See footnote to 8/22.
husfroyu G-L, 111; CIG, 99, note 10; GLGS, 66, note 4.
12 sunnarsta CIG, 100, note 14; GLGS, 66, note 7; sunnarnasta MS.

The history of the Gotlanders

11

Then, at some time after that, his father-in-law Likkair
Snielli had himself baptised, together with his wife, hischildren, and all his household, and he built a church on
his farm, in the place now called Stenkyrka. It was the ﬁrst
church on the island up in the northernmost third. After the
Gotlanders saw the customs of Christian people, they thenobeyed God’s command and the teaching of priests. Thenthey received Christianity generally, of their own free will,
without duress; that is no one forced them into Christianity.
After the general acceptance of Christianity, a second
church was built in the country, at Atlingbo; it was the ﬁrst
in the middle third. Then a third was built in the country,
at Fardhem in the southernmost third. From those, churches
spread everywhere in Gotland, since men built themselveschurches for greater convenience.
Before Gotland allied itself to any bishop permanently,
bishops came to Gotland who were pilgrims to Jerusalem,in the Holy Land, and were travelling home from there. At
that time the route eastwards was to cross through Russia
and the Byzantine empire to Jerusalem. In the ﬁrst place
they consecrated churches and graveyards, according to
the request of those who had caused the churches to be built.
After the Gotlanders became accustomed to Christianity,
they then sent messages to the Lord Bishop of Linköping,since he resided closest to them, to the effect that he shouldcome to Gotland, by a conﬁrmed statute, to lend his support,on the following conditions: that the bishop would comefrom Linköping to Gotland every third year together with
twelve of his men, who would accompany him around thewhole country on farmers’ horses, just that many and no more.
Thus the bishop has a duty to travel around Gotland tochurch consecrations and to collect his payments in kind,
three meals and no more for each consecration of a church,
together with three marks; for an altar consecration, one
meal together with twelve öre, if the altar alone is to be12

Guta sagaovigþ, alteri ok kirkia saman, þa skulu baþi vigias ﬁrir
þry borþ ok þriar markr penninga. Af presti andrum
huerium a biskupr gingerþ taka, um tilquemda siþ, þryborþ ok ai maira. Af andrum huerium presti, sum ai
5 gierþi gingerþ a þy ari, taki biskupr af huerium lausn, so
sum kirkiur iru til skuraþar. Þair sum ai gingerþ gierþu
at þy bragþi, þair skulu gingerþ giera, þegar biskupr
kumbr atr at þriþia ari. En hinir aigu loysa, sum fyrrabragþi gingerþ gierþu.
10
Kunnu dailur varþa, sum biskupr a dyma, þaar skulu
lendas i sama þriþiungi, ‹þy› et þair menn vita mest afsannundum, sum þar nest boa. Varþr ai þar þaun daila
lent, þa skal han skiautas til aldra manna samtalan ok ai
af þriþiungi i annan. Kunnu hetningar eþa dailumal
15 varþa, sum biskupi til hoyra at retta, þa a hier biþabiskups quemdar ok ai yﬁr fara, utan þuang reki til okmikil synd sei, et ai ma proastr loysa. Þa skal yﬁr faramillan Valborga messur ok helguna messur, en ai þar
eptir um vintrtima til Valborga messur. Biskups sak i
20 Gutlandi ir ai *hoygri þan þriar markr.
[4]Siþan gutar toku sir biskup ok presti ok viþr fulkumnum
kristindomi, þa toku þair ok viþr at fylgia suia kunungii herferþ miþ siau *snekkium ufan a haiþin land, ok aiufan kristin. So þau, et kunungr a biauþa gutum laiþing
25 eptir vittr ok manaþar frest ﬁrir liþstemnu dag, ok þauskal liþstemnu dagr vara ﬁrir missumar ok ai siþar. Þa
ir laglika buþit, ok ai ellar. Þa hafa gutar val um at fara,

11 þy CIG, 101, note 11.
20 hoygri CIG, 102, note 13; GLGS, 68, note 4; hoyþri MS.
23 snekkium GLGS, 68, note 6; snieckium MS.

The history of the Gotlanders

13

consecrated; but if both are unconsecrated, altar and church
together, then both shall be consecrated for three meals
and three marks in coin. From every second priest thebishop has a right to collect payment in kind as a visitation
tax, three meals and no more. From every other priest,
who did not make payment in kind in that year, the bishop
is to take a fee from each one, as is laid down for churches.
Those who did not make payment in kind at that time, theyshall make payment in kind as soon as the bishop comesback in the third year. And the others have a duty to pay
a fee, who the previous time had made payment in kind.
Should disputes arise that the bishop has a duty to judge,
they shall be resolved in the same third, since those menknow most about the truth who live nearest to it. Should
the dispute not be resolved there, it shall then be referredto the consideration of all men, and not from one third toanother. Should hostilities or matters of conﬂict occur,
which belong to the bishop to judge, one has an obligation
to await the bishop’s arrival here and not travel over to themainland, unless necessity force it, and it be such a great
sin that the rural dean cannot give absolution. Then one
shall travel over between Walburga’s Day and All Saints’Day, but not after that during the winter, until the following Walburga’s Day. A ﬁne to the bishop, in Gotland, is tobe no higher than three marks.
Chapter 4
Since the Gotlanders accepted bishop and priest, and completely embraced Christianity, they also undertook, on theirpart, to follow the Swedish king on military expeditions withseven warships, against heathen countries, but not against
Christian ones. It had to be in such a way, however, that theking should summon the Gotlanders to the levy after winter,and give them a month’s respite before the day of mobilisation
and, furthermore, the day of mobilisation shall be before midsummer, and no later. Then it is a lawful summons, but nototherwise. Then the Gotlanders have the choice of travelling,14

Guta sagaen þair vilia, miþ sinum *snekkium ok atta vikna vist,en ai maira. Þa en gutar eﬂa ai fylgia, þa gialdin ﬁauratigi
marka penninga ﬁrir hueria *snekkiu, ok þau at andru
ari ok ai at þy sama ari, sum buþit var. Þet haitir
5 laiþingslami.
I þaim manaþi, þa skal aina viku buþkaﬂi um fara okþing nemnas. Þa en mannum sembr et laiþingr skal ut
ganga, þa skal siþan halfan manaþ til ferþar boas. Ensiþan siau netr ﬁrir liþstemnu skulu laiþings menn garlakir
10 vara ok byriar biþa. Þa en so kann varþa, et ai kumbr
byr i þairi viku, þa skulu þair enn biþa siau netr eptirliþstemnu dag. Þa en ai kumbr byr i þairi frest, þa aiguþair haim fara at saklausu, miþ þy et ai gatu þair roandi
yﬁr haf farit utan siglandi. Kuma laiþings buþ i minnum
15 frestum þan manaþar, þa a ai *fara utan haima sitia atsaklausu.
Ir so et kunungr vil ai troa, et buþ quamin olaglika eþa
byr hindraþi at retum frestum, þa aigu sendimenn kunungs,
sum skatt taka a þy þingi, sum nest ir eptir Sankti Petrs
20 messu, taka tolf nemdamanna aiþ, sum sendimenn kunungs
nemna vilia, et þair miþ laglikum forfallum haima satin.
Engin gief‹s› nemda aiþr i Gutlandi utan kunungsaiþr. Kann so illa at bieras, et krunaþr kunungr varþr
miþ nequaru valdi bort rekinn af sinu riki, þa aigu ai
25 gutar skatt ut giefa utan haldi hanum um þry ar. Ok þau
aigu þair e huert ar skatt saman giera ok liggia lata, enþa ut giefa, þa en þry *ar iru ut gangin, þaim sum þaraþr Suiariki.
Lykt bref miþ kunungs insigli skal at allum kunungs
30 ret sendas, ok ai *ypit.
1, 3 snieckium, snieckiu MS; cf. 12/23.
15 fara GLGS, 69, note 3; faras with the s above the line MS.
22 giefs GLGS, 69, note 5 after Bugge, 1877–1878, 261–262.
27 ar G-L, 115; CIG, 104, note 9; GLGS, 69, note 9; ar ar MS.
30 ypit GU, 35, line 38; GLGS, 69, note 11; ypit MS, altered to vpit.

The history of the Gotlanders

15

if they wish, with their longships and eight weeks’ provisions, but no more. Nevertheless, if the Gotlanders are notable to take part, then they are to pay a ﬁne of 40 marks incoin, in compensation for each longship; but this, however, is at the following harvest and not in the same yearthat the summons was made. This is called the ‘levy-tax’.
In that month the summoning-baton shall pass around for
one week and an assembly be announced. When people areagreed that the expedition shall go out, they shall thenfurther arm themselves for the voyage for a fortnight. And
afterwards, for a week before the mobilisation, the men on
the muster ought to be prepared and wait for a favourable
wind. But if it should happen that no favourable wind comes
during that week, they shall still wait seven nights after the
day of mobilisation. If, however, no favourable wind comes
within that speciﬁed time, they then have the right to gohome freed from obligation, since they are not able tocross over the sea rowing, only under sail. Should the levy
summons come within a shorter period than a month, they
do not have to go, but may remain at home with impunity.
Should it be the case that the king is not willing tobelieve that the summons came unlawfully, or that thewind hindered them at the proper speciﬁed times, the king’s
messengers, who collect the tax at that assembly which isnext after St Peter’s mass, have a duty to take an oath fromtwelve commissioners, whom the king’s messengers wish
to select, that they remained at home for lawful reasons.
No commissioned oath shall be given in Gotland apartfrom the king’s oath. Should the misfortune occur that thecrowned king is by some force driven away from his
kingdom, the Gotlanders then have the right not to handover their tax, but retain it for three years; but they neverthelesshave a duty to continue to collect the tax together eachyear and allow it to lie, and then hand it over when three
years have passed, to the one who at that time rules Sweden.
A sealed letter with the king’s authority shall be sent
concerning all the king’s law, and not an open one.

16

Guta saga

NOTES
The manuscript lacks headings to the chapters, which are apparently
signalled by larger initial letters and indentation. Chapter numbers havebeen inserted by a later hand in the margin. These divisions have been
adhered to in this edition. The marginal headings, which have been added
to the manuscript by a later hand, are given in these Notes. Previous
editors have inserted further chapter divisions and headings; see Introduction,
pp. lvii–lix.
Place-names on Gotland, in Sweden and the Baltic, and in Russia thatare mentioned in the notes are shown on the maps on pp. 98–100. Those
occurring in the text are italicised on the maps and appear in the Index.

Chapter 1
2/1. In the manuscript, a sixteenth-century hand has added in themargin ‘Quomodo Gotlandia inuenta et culta’, that is ‘How
Gotland was discovered and inhabited’.
The earliest instance of the name Gotland is from the end of
the ninth century, in The Old English Orosius (Orosius, 16). Here
Gotland is mentioned in Wulfstan’s account of his voyage from
Hedeby to the mouth of the Vistula (Weichsel). Wulfstan statesthat he passed Gotland to port along with Blecingaeg, Meore andEowland (Blekinge, Möre and Öland), and this is almost certainly a reference to Gotland. For the question of the political
position of the island, see the Note to 6/5 in connection with
Avair Strabain’s negotiations with Sweden. Olsson (1984, 13–18)
summarises the theories so far put forward about the origin of
the name Gotland as (a) that it was given to the island by outsiders and is related to the tribe name gautar (götar), used of thepeople from Väster- and Östergötland, which gave rise to gutar
for the inhabitants of Gotland, and gotar for the Goths, (b) thatit can be traced more directly to an early settlement on Gutån
(earlier Guteån) in the parish of Bäl, or Gothemån in the parish
of Gothem, and is related to such words as gjuta, ‘pour out’,
independently of götar; cf. Hellquist, 1980, s. v. göt; Lindroth,1914a and 1941. Olsson’s investigation of place-names and their
physical location, for example two farms called Gute in theparish of Bäl, led him to conclude that features in Gotland gave
rise to the name gutar. The alternative is that the name wasadopted because of the origin of the inhabitants, in Väster- orÖstergötland. Another explanation of the name, relevant to theNotes17

story of Gotland’s discovery, might be that it is related to theconcept of Landit góða, explained by Nansen (1911, 282–283) as
huldrelandet or usynlighetslandet ; cf. Introduction, pp. xviii–xx;
Note to 2/2.
Läfﬂer (1908–1909, Part 1, 170) and Gordon (1962, 199, 255)
are of the opinion that the name Þieluar is probably related toÞjálﬁ, the name of Thor’s follower; cf. Introduction, pp. xvii–xviii.
Gordon gives the meaning of the name Þjálﬁ as ‘one who seizes
and holds’, which would correspond well to the function ofÞieluar in Guta saga. Hadorph (1687, v–vi) notes a variant of thename on two inscriptions from stones in Öster Skam in Östergötland,
unfortunately now disappeared. They read as follows (Ög 27):
þuriR. sati. stain. at. þialfar. faþur. sin. iaR. stranti. a. kautaun.
(Þurir raised this stone after Þialfar, his father, who came to landon kautaun); (Ög 28): . . . sun. iaR. buki. a. kautaun . . . truista.
sina. ( . . . son, who lived at kautaun . . . his dearest). The
signiﬁcance of kautaun is uncertain and it seems possible thatthe name has been misread; cf. SL IV, 300. Hadorph is cautiousof identifying kautaun with Gotland or þialfar with the Þieluarof Guta saga, but both Peringskiöld (1699, 445) and Schlyter(CIG, 317) do so. Säve (GU, viii), however, rejects the idea thatkautaun could be Gotland and questions whether the name þielfar is to be taken as þiel-uar or þielu-ar.
2/2. The word eluist is problematic. The reading of it as eliust byHadorph (1687, 47), misinterpreting the position of the dot overthe i, has led to his translation ‘okunnigt’ (‘unenlightened’).
Schildener (G-L, 259) follows Hadorph, breaking the word down
into the negative particle e and lius, ‘light’, and translating it‘unscheinbar’. Schildener also discusses an alternative explanation, based on the Old High German ellen meaning ‘power’ andthe sufﬁx -lös, giving the meaning ‘powerless’, which could
relate to the island’s enchanted state. He rejects this interpretation, however, and points to the statement that the island was
only above water at night and was therefore, naturally, ‘dark’.
Schlyter (CIG, 93) also favours Hadorph’s reading. He uses thetranslation ‘dunkelt’, but adds other possibilities in his glossary.
He thinks that the word may be a form of oliust, ‘dark’, or
eldlaust, ‘without ﬁre’, and that it might indicate that there was
no ﬁre on the island. These interpretations are possible, but ameaning related to ‘elf’ seems more probable; see Introduction,

18

Guta saga

p. xx. Bugge (1877–1878, 260–261), referring to Lyngby (1858–
1860, 269), gives several examples of similar words in Scandinavian, English and German, which have meanings like ‘bewitched’ or ‘visited by trolls’. He argues, however, that the formof the word as it occurs here is defensible if eluist were a neuter
form, standing for elvitskt (derived from *elvitskr or *elviskr,
rather than from *eluiscr as proposed by Lyngby). Wadstein(1892, 152–153) also takes the word as being related to similar
ones in English meaning ‘elﬁsh’ and considers the form of theword to be in accordance with this interpretation. Wessén (SL IV,
301) summarises these and later theories and translates eluist as‘förtrollat’, best rendered by the English ‘bewitched’, which
carries all the relevant connotations.
2/2–3. There is evidence of a rise in the level of the land in certain
areas of the Scandinavian peninsula, initially very rapid; see KL,s. v. Niveauforandring. Certainly, when Gotland was ﬁrst inhabited,
it was much smaller and had more inlets that it has today, althougheven now most of the island is less than 30 metres above sealevel; cf. Öhrman, 1994, 8–13, 14; Introduction, pp. xviii–xix.
2/3. The importance to a farm of its ﬁrst inhabitant and theprobably unrelated concept of a protective spirit (hustomte) arenoted by Landtman (1922, 20, 46). The link between the
efﬁcacy of ﬁre as a protection, the protection believed to beoffered by Thor, and the belief that ﬁre would not burn in ahouse inhabited by someone possessed by evil spirits, are also
recorded by Landtman (1919, 776). See also Introduction, p. xx.
2/5. Hafþi. Perhaps from the place-name Havdhem; see Introduction, pp. xxi–xxii.
2/7–8. droymdi henni draumbr. The word ‘dream’ is nominative andthe dreamer apparently dative; cf. the English expression ‘adream came to her’; see Söderwall, 1884–1973, s. v. dröma. On
the motif of a pregnant woman’s dreams, see Perkins, 1974–1977,
224; Introduction, pp. xxii–xxiii.
2/8. þrir ormar. In 1955 a picture-stone was found on a grave site
at Smiss in När parish, in eastern Gotland. On the basis of its
chisel shape, it has been thought to date from the seventh century(although this is not undisputed); see Nylén, 1978, 13; Nylén andLamm, 1987, 40–41. It depicts in its lower third a seated woman,
who appears to be naked apart from a headdress, holding up two
wriggling snakes. The woman’s head is large in proportion to her

Notes19

body, and the snakes are also large compared to her arms. The
upper section of the stone shows a triskelion consisting of theheads of three creatures. Each creature is different, although at
ﬁrst glance one might get the impression that the image depicted
three serpents. The ﬁrst appears to be a boar, the second, bycomparison with similar representations on other stones, possibly a serpent or dragon of some kind, and the third a bird of prey,or possibly a ram-headed serpent. Ram-headed serpents appear
frequently in Celtic iconography and the curve of the head of thecreature concerned could either be a beak or a roman nose.
Snake-women appear in Celtic and other mythology, and there
are representations of a number of different goddesses holding
one or more snakes. One example probably represents Verbeia,
the spirit of the River Warfe in Yorkshire; see Green, 1992, 227.
This image, found near Ilkley, also has a disproportionately large
head, but this is the only real similarity. No other picture-stone
has been found in Gotland with a similar motif to the one from
Smiss, although snakes occur quite frequently, as do female
ﬁgures. The triskelion is also a commonly-occurring motif on
picture-stones, although few are as detailed and zoomorphic as
this one. A different interpretation has been put on the stone byWilhelm Holmqvist (1975, 35–39), and he considers that it might
represent Daniel in the lions’ den, and so be post-conversion; cf.
Introduction, p. xxxvi, note 2. A picture-stone from Sandegårda
in Sanda parish, just inland from Västergarn on the west coast of
Gotland, is similar in shape and dating to the stone at Smiss andcarries as its main motif a large serpent in a ﬁgure of eight; see
Lindqvist, 1941–1942, I, ﬁg. 48; II, 110. The serpent is supported(in the heraldic sense) by two more naturalistic snakes which
writhe up the inside of the borders of the design. The similarityof the central creature to one of the three in the Smiss stone andof the snakes to those held by the snake-witch is striking. A small
disc with a pierced decoration, about two and a half inches indiameter, was found in a woman’s grave at Ihre in Hellvi parish,
north-eastern Gotland, and seems to depict three intertwined
serpents. The grave is dated, on the evidence of other ﬁnds within
it, to the beginning of the ninth century. Nerman, however, on thebasis of similar ﬁnds from that parish and elsewhere, has dated
it to around AD 650–700. Jan Peder Lamm of Statens Historiska
Museum, Stockholm has suggested in private correspondence20

Guta sagawith the writer (14/4/1999) that the article in question might
have been an antique when it was buried and this raises thepossibility of such decorative discs having been heirlooms passed
from mother to daughter. See Nerman, 1917–1924, 59–60, 86–88;
1969–1975, II, Plate 174, ﬁgure 1451. In addition, there is a typeof pendant, again often associated with women’s graves, in theform of a spiral with a snake’s head at its outer end, and one suchobject forms part of the tenth-century Eketorpsskatten from Örebro
län, Sweden; cf. VABC, s. v. Ormspiralshängen; Från stenåldersjägare, 1986–1987, 88–90. Pendants of this kind might havebeen worn at the breast as amulets both to protect the wearer (thesnake as a source of danger) and to promote fertility (the snake
as a phallic symbol). The danger against which the amulet was
to provide protection could have been that of a difﬁcult labour,with the snake as a mimetic charm, much in the same way thatcertain fruits and stones that contained a core that rattled andthus imitated the child in the womb were used to assist in labour;see KL, s. v. Barsel; Encyclopaedia of religion and ethics, 1908–
1926, III, s. v. Charms and amulets, 394, 419, 422. A further typeof snake amulet has been found in Gotland, consisting of acopper locket (‘dosa’) containing the coiled skeleton of a snake,or possibly a slow-worm; cf. Magnusson, 1976, 113. The imageryof a coiled creature in a closed space again suggests that thisobject was an amulet worn either to procure pregnancy or to easechildbirth. The snake’s sloughing of its skin could be taken as a
metaphor for the latter. Snakes’ tongues were used as amulets
against black magic and illness as late as the fourteenth century,and snakes were sacred to the Baltic peoples, being particularly
associated with marriage and birth; see KL, s. v. Amulettar ; Gimbutas,
1963, 203.
According to Hellquist, 1980, s. v. slunga (1), slunga corresponds to Swedish slingra, ‘entwine (oneself)’, but he also considers it related to the Middle Low German slingen, with theadditional meaning ‘plait’, and to Anglo-Saxon slingan, ‘creep’.
The images of the disc and the amulet mentioned above correspond to the former interpretation. If one assumes that it wascommon for a pregnant woman to wear a snake spiral or somesuch amulet, it is possible that the dream represents the movement of the snake or snakes from the amulet into her body, as
well as the birth itself. The phrase slungnir saman would then beNotes21

being used in two meanings: ‘crept together’ and ‘coiled together’, with respectively the past and passive participles.
2/9. barmi: ‘womb’ in this instance, although the usual translationis ‘breast’ or ‘bosom’. The Swedish sköte, which is also used asa synonym for barm has, additionally, the connotation moderssköte,‘womb’, and despite Hellquist’s dismissing this interpretation ofbarm as hardly tenable (1980, s. v. barm), it seems possible in thepresent context. The natural site from which the snakes representing Huitastierna’s three sons would emanate is, it might besuggested, her womb. SAOB (s. v. barm (2)) gives moderlif, kved,‘womb’, as an obsolete meaning, with an example of its use in
1614. This is in fact one of the oldest citations included in theentry and gives a strong indication that ‘womb’ may have been
the principal medieval meaning. That the word was also used in
Old Danish in this sense is indicated by Falk and Torp (1903–
1906, s. v. Barm). Kalkar (1881–1918, s. v. Barm) gives moderliv,‘womb’, as the primary meaning and cites barmbroder as meaning halvbroder på mødrene side which would correspond to thesame interpretation. Schlyter in his glossary to Guta lag (CIG,
243) gives sinus as the Latin equivalent for barm. This can mean‘breast’ but also ‘lap’, ‘curve’, ‘fold’, ‘hiding place’. Peringskiöld(1699, 443) translates barmi as Latin gremio, ‘lap’, ‘breast’ and‘womb’. One possibility is that ambiguity is intended and thatthe dream is an example of a ‘pun’ dream with the ambiguity
between ‘breast’ and ‘womb’ being an extension of the pun
implicit in the phrase slungnir saman, mentioned in the Note to
2/8; cf. Perkins, 1974–1977, 211–213.
2/12–14, 16–18. The metre of the verse is irregular. Lines 12–13
and 16–17 are like dróttkvætt, but there is no alliteration in lines
14 and 18. The alliteration in the passage leading up to the verse
suggests that the six lines are all that survive of a longer poem.
The rings (baugum) of the verse echo the coiling of the snakes,
as well as the rings that appear frequently on picture-stones. Alt
could refer to the future of Gotland as a whole, or simply to‘everything’, and the binding in rings could be a reference to theinterconnection of various events, or to the idea that the future of
Gotland is to be determined by the coiling of the snakes (Hafþi’sand Huitastierna’s sons). The word boland could mean either‘inhabited land’ or, possibly, ‘farming land’, that is cultivatedland. Nerman (1958) offers a different explanation for the signiﬁcance22

Guta sagaof baugum, suggesting that they refer to the rings worn by both
men and women during the Migration period (c.400–c.550),
although not during the Vendel period immediately following.
From this he infers that the traditions behind the verse date frombefore AD 550. See also Introduction, pp. xxiii–xxiv.
2/19. The division of an area into three administrative districts
seems to have been a common one in Scandinavia, occurring
both on Öland and in Närke by the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, as well as in Norway; see Tunberg, 1911, 48. There isalso evidence in the oldest law for Dalarna that it was divided
into three; see Tunberg, 1911, 135–138. In the case of Gotland,
it appears that the word landet was used of the whole island andthat the Gutnal þing or Gutnalþing or Gutna alþing was theoverall authoritative body; cf. Tunberg, 1911, 138; Note to 2/27.
Each of the subordinate thirds had its own þriþiungs þing. The
thirds themselves were divided into siettungar, two within eachthird, and each siettungr into a number of hundari, the smallest
administrative area, of which there were 20 on the island by theLate Middle Ages; see KL, s. v. Hundare. The arithmetic behind
the arrangement is discussed by Steffen (1945, 252) who explains the fact that the middle third had only six hundari, whereas
the other two had seven, by arguing that the island was originallydivided into two along a northwest-southeast line, with 10 hundariin each. The hundari also had þing, 10 in each half of the island.
The northern half had its main þing place at Tingstäde and thesouthern half at Suderting, now Ajmunds, in the parish of Mästerby.
The word þriþiung itself is related to the English riding as anadministrative division. See also Note to 6/21–22; Introduction,
p. xxv.
2/23–24. There is evidence of a population reduction at the end of
the ﬁfth and in the ﬁrst half of the sixth centuries. The period of
emigration could have extended over a number of decades andthen have been followed by a time of unrest in Gotland andattack by outside powers, culminating in the assimilation of
Gotland into Sweden; see Note to 6/1; Introduction, pp. xxv–
xxvii; Nerman, 1963, 19–21, 23.
2/25. sum þair ufan iorþar attu: literally ‘that they owned above
ground’. This phrase would be translated in Swedish legal language by lösöre, ‘moveables’ or ‘chattels’ as opposed to land.
The corresponding Old Swedish expressions were lösöre, lösä

Notes23

pänningar, löst goz, but in Guta lag the term used is simply
oyrar ; cf. GLGS, 32; KL, s. v. Lösöre and references. In Grágás
two sections concerning the ﬁnding of property refer speciﬁcallyto whether it was above or below the ground. In the former case
it usually passed to the ownership of the ﬁnder. It is possible thatthe emigrants were forbidden to dig up anything buried on theirland; cf. Grágás, Ib, 75; 185–186; KL, s. v. Hittegods.
2/26. The ﬁrst element of the name Þorsborg itself is probably
related to the name of the god Þórr, one of the most populardeity-names used as place-name elements, and the place waspossibly named in the late Middle Ages. At least three otherexamples of the place-name Torsborg are found in Sweden: in
Uppland, between Sigtuna and Skokloster, in Härjedalen, and onÖland, east of Torslunda. This last has a fornborg just to the eastof it; cf. Hallberg, 1985, 91. See also KL, s. v. Fornborgar andreferences; Introduction, pp. xxvii–xxix.
2/27. It has been suggested by Steffen (1945, 246) that land is here
being used to mean the alþing and this seems to make somesense. The decision to ballot away a third of the population
would probably have been taken by the alþing in this instance,
and they would thus have the responsibility for ensuring that theedict was obeyed. The gutnal þing is referred to as land alt in a
passage in Guta lag ; cf. GLGS, 46.
4/1. The modern form of the place-name, Fårö, might suggest that
it is related to Swedish får, Old Swedish far, ‘sheep’. The word
for sheep in Gotland, however, was and is lamb. An alternative
derivation is from fara (‘travel’, ‘fare’, ‘go on one’s way’). Thismight, it has been suggested, refer to the crossing of the soundbetween Gotland and Fårö, in this case by the emigrants. Olsson(1984, 98–100) agrees and states that if the name had anything
to do with får it could not have been given to the island by the
inhabitants, but must have been given by outsiders. When P. A.
Säve made his unpublished study of dialect in the nineteenth
century, he noted that the islanders used the pronunciation /farö/with a long a, rather than /fårö/. Säve’s ﬁndings have been used
by, among others, Adolf Noreen, Danell and Schagerström, andHerbert Gustavson; see Noreen, 1879, 336; GO; Gustavson,
1940–1948, I, 96; 1977, 12. On Fårö, at Vardabjerget, just southof Fårö church, there are remains of a prehistoric fort, which had
a simple earth wall, as opposed to the more substantial limestone

24

Guta saga

construction at Torsburgen. It is suggested by Nordin (1881, 97–99) that this fort may have been raised by the evacuees. Cf. also
Olsson, 1984, 136–137.
4/3. Estonia, like Gotland, has a chalky landscape, and is mainly
low-lying, being less than 320 metres above sea-level at its
highest point. From at least the time of Tacitus, one of the Baltic
tribes, probably the Lithuanians or Letts, was designated Æstii,
but this term was later transferred to the Finno-Ugric tribes in
Estonia and Livonia; cf. Tacitus, 1914, 54, 198. The origin of theword is not known, but could be Germanic; see Hellquist, 1980,
s. v. est. Hellquist considers the place-name Aistland to be secondary to the name of the tribe, and thus of no signiﬁcance indetermining the origin of the element est itself.
Dagö, Estonian Hiimuaa, is a ﬂat, low-lying island with amarshy, sparsely-populated interior, only the southern part being
fertile, and having harbours only on its northern coast. The
second element of its name as recorded in Guta saga does not,however, appear to mean ‘island’. Tamm (1890–1905, s. v. ed)
has Swedish ed as ‘det gamla namnet för “näs” i detta ords nutida
mening = “isthmus”, vanligt i svenska ortnamn’. The same wordlies behind the dialect word ed (eda or ida according to Hellquist,
1980, s. v. ida) meaning ‘ställe i en fors, där vattnet strömmar
tillbaka’. Tamm takes it to be related to Old Swedish eþ n. ‘ställe
där den som färdas på en vatten-farled måste för naturhinder taga
vägen över en kortare sträcka land, t. ex. över ett näs (landtunga)eller förbi ett vattenfall’. It has the same meaning as Old Icelandic eið (n.), and according to Tamm means ‘gång’ or ‘ställe överhvilket man går fram’ as opposed to sund, ‘ställe där man simmar
över’. There is a narrow wooded promontory, now called Köppo,stretching from the western edge of Dagö and it is possible that
it was this promontory that was referred to here. The island ofViðoy in the Faeroes has a promontory joined to it by an isthmus
called Viðareiði. The name Dagaiþi could thus be a pars pro toto.
Svensson (1919, 9), however, relates the sufﬁx to a proposed*-haiþi, which, he argues, persisted in Estonian (‘Estlands ﬁnska
dialekt’) in the Middle Ages, although he gives no examples. He
relates this sufﬁx to that in names such as Finnhed, which as aresult of confusion came to refer to several different parts of theBaltic seaboard. The name Dagaiþi, if it implies a heath-likelandscape, would also be consistent with the island of Dagö as it

Notes25

appears on maps today. Carl Säve (1852, 163, note 4) suggeststhat the name may be related to a personal name Dagr, or to thefact that eastward-bound travellers were accustomed to stop there
for a day, at some ness or promontory. He also notes the name
Kylley or Kyllaj, a harbour on the east coast of Gotland, in theparish of Hellvi. This is pronounced as Kyllai, Kyll-aid by theolder generation, that is with a similar second element to that in
Dagaiþi. Johansen (1951, 125, 278, 280–281) mentions that thewestern peninsula is called Dagerort. He also gives several different
spellings of the name for the island (Dageyden, Dagden, Dageden),
all of which seem to point to Dagaiþi being very close to theoriginal form. In 1228, the form Dageida (translated as insula
deserta) is recorded, and Johansen is of the opinion that, with thelack of any archaeological ﬁnds on the island from that period or
earlier, this interpretation of the name seems possibly to be justiﬁed.
4/4. There is no existing evidence for a fortiﬁcation on Dagö.
4/6. The Western Dvina formed the ﬁrst part, undertaken by boat,of one of the major trade routes to Byzantium. The route continued
by land across to the River Dnieper, then by boat, passing theriver rapids by portage, and ﬁnally across the Black Sea undersail to Byzantium. Three other sources mention the routes taken
by Scandinavians to the East. The passing of the rapids of the
Dnieper is described in Constantine Porphyrogenitus’s De administrando imperio (1962–1967, I, 57–61; II, 38–52). Here the ‘Russian’names of the rapids are given interpretations of Scandinavian
origin. In the Russian primary chronicle the route between the
Varangians and the Greeks (the people of the Byzantine Empire)is described, starting from Greece, as being along the Dnieper,
via portage to the River Lovat and thence to Lake Ilmen. From
there, the River Volkhov ﬂows into Lake Neva (Ladoga), which
eventually opens into the Varangian Sea (the Baltic), as does the
Dvina. The latter is called ‘the route to the Varangians’. The
Varangians are described as a tribe related to the Swedes, Normans,
Gotlanders, Russes, English and others; see RPC, 52, 53, 59.
Thirdly, Adam of Bremen mentions that there was a route from
Sweden to Greece and that it was followed by ship. The referenceby him to an island called Iumne, described as Christian andbelonging to Denmark, has given rise to speculation that Gotland
might be intended. He states that the island has a safe harbour forships being despatched to the barbarians and to Greece. Adam

26

Guta saga

also describes a route from Denmark via Birka to Russia; see
Adam of Bremen, 1961, 252, 254, 460, G Schol. 126. The Arabic
writer, al-Masudi, writing in about 956, mentions a people called
al-Kud.kanah, a name that has been interpreted as ‘northmen’and, tentatively, ‘Gotlanders’ (al-Kud_lanah). Reference is also
made to Bah r˘ Warank, the Varangian Sea; see Birkeland, 1954,
30–42, 142. Another Arabic writer, Ibn Rustah, records the traderoutes of the Rus (ar-Rusiya) down the Volga to an island or
peninsula in a lake (probably Novgorod); see Birkeland, 1954,
15–16, 135, notes 5 and 6. In Gotland, a small stone carrying arunic inscription was found at Bogeviken, in Boge parish innorth-east Gotland (Pilgårdsstenen). The inscription, which has
been dated to the late tenth century, includes the words kuamu
uitiaifur, which Krause (1953) interprets as ‘De kommo långt i
Aifur’. It is possible that Aifur refers to the fourth and largest of
the rapids described by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, of which
Aifur was the Scandinavian name; see GV, 427–429. The traderoute along the Dvina was important during the ninth and tenthcenturies, but trade with Kiev was replaced by trade with Novgorod
in the following century. See also Foote and Wilson, 1979, 224–
229; KL, s. v. Rysslandshandel and references.
4/7. Grikland. The Byzantine Empire is meant here, rather than
Greece, and the ‘king’ referred to, the Byzantine emperor. Grikland
is mentioned on several runestones, including one in Gotland,
the slipstone from Timans in Roma parish (G 216). This is the
only inscription found in Gotland that mentions Grikland, a factwhich Svärdström does not think, however, to be of any special
signiﬁcance; cf. GR II, 235. See also Note to 8/3.
4/8. The phrase ny ok niþar refers to the new and the waning moon.
It was used as a legal term in the oldest laws, for exampleGulaþingslo≈g (NGL I, 29), and the older and later Västgötalagar,in connection with the sale of slaves. The seller was responsible
for the slave being free of hidden faults for a ‘waxing andwaning’ after the sale; cf. Codex iuris Vestrogotici, 1827, 60,
176. In other law texts ‘month’ is used for the same time period;cf. NGL I, 25; KL, s. v. Ny og ne and references.
4/9. Pipping, in rejecting Schlyter’s emendation of ai miþ ann to ai
maira þan, and putting forward the otherwise unsupported reading, ain niþ ann, presents the idea that a ‘waning’ was used todesignate a complete month. One waning occurs each month, but

Notes27

the period of the waning itself occupies only half a month. A
slightly more radical change to the text would seem to havesome justiﬁcation; cf. Pipping, 1904, 14–15; GLGS, 63 note 3;
CIG, 95; AL, 38, §31.
4/11. The phrase e ok e also occurs as ee ok ee and ä ok ä; cf.
Konung Alexander, 1855–1862, II, 319, line 9854; Erikskrönikan,
1963, 227, line 3958. The expression seems to have been borrowed into Middle English; cf. a33 occ a33 in The Ormulum,
1852, line 3212; Olszewska, 1933, 76, 80.
4/16. Trade between Gotland and the Goths ﬂourished during theﬁrst century, but the Weichsel (Vistula) route through to theDonau (Danube) was blocked by the Slavs in the third century,and more westerly routes gradually replaced it in importance; cf.
Lindqvist, 1933, 58–61. Points of similarity between Gutnish
and the Gothic language are discussed by Bugge (NIÆR I, 152–158)
in connection with a runic inscription on a silver clasp from
Etelhem parish in central Gotland, although he does not conclude
that the medieval inhabitants were ethnically Goths. Examples
he gives of possible inﬂuence or remains are Gutnish and Gotlandic
lamb, ‘sheep’ and the form of the ending in Ormika. He suggeststhat the Gothic spoken in Gotland before the arrival of Swedishspeakers coloured the development of the Swedish used on theisland; cf. NIÆR I, 157. Carl Säve (GU, x–xi) wonders if visitorsfrom Gotland to the Byzantine empire or Jerusalem could haveencountered people calling themselves gutans, and been struckby the similarity of their language to their own. See also Introduction, pp. xxx–xxxi.
4/17. In the manuscript, a sixteenth-century hand has added in themargin ‘cultus idololatricus’, that is ‘the cult of idolatry’.
4/17–18. The punctuation here follows that suggested by Wessén(SL IV, 292). Earlier editions, that of Hadorph (1687, 48) for
example, take hauga to qualify vi and insert a full stop after
stafgarþa, or at least include a haiþin guþ as part of the following clause (referring speciﬁcally to the sacriﬁcing of their sonsand daughters). On the grounds of rhythm alone the former
punctuation seems preferable, and there is no need to lose themeaning of hauga as ‘howe’ by taking it as an adjective toqualify the ‘holy places’. Hadorph (1687, 48) also translates vi as‘Nääs’, which he then interprets as ‘Åsar’. Ás is the name of theplace at which the ﬁrst church in Iceland was built; cf. Notes to28

Guta saga

8/18 and 8/25. The phrase is apparently formulaic, since it also
occurs in Guta lag in a slightly different form; cf. GLGS, 7.
4/18. Olsson (1976; 1992), having studied over 40 places in Gotlandwith names apparently related to the word, comes to the conclusion that stafgarþar were sites of abandoned Iron-Age dwellings,
which became the subject of an ancestor cult. This explanation
seems probable. Other alternatives which he rejects are: (1) thata stafgarþr was a fenced area, surrounded by staves, which wasa cult site of some sort, (2) that it was an enclosed cult site
containing one or more raised wooden pillars, (3) that it was asecular area fenced in a certain manner and (4) that it was a place
where wood was collected. Olsson admits the third of these to be
linguistically justiﬁable. There could, he thinks, be a connection
between stafgarþr and the Swedish dialect skidgård, ‘gärdesgård’,the area immediately surrounding the dwelling on a farm andmarked off from the agricultural land. Stafgarþr-names, however, always seem to be associated with the sites of Early IronAge house foundations. Olsson rejects the fourth suggestion,that stafgarþar were places where wood was gathered, or permitted to be gathered, for a similar reason. He considers the ﬁrst two
interpretations together, and argues that their supporters are inferring, from Guta lag and Guta saga, a meaning which has noother justiﬁcation. He also suggests that, since the retention of aplace-name is dependent upon continuous habitation, and since
all the Early Iron-Age sites concerned seem to have been abandoned before AD 600, it seems unlikely that memories of cult use
before that time would have been retained in the place-names up
to 1500 years after the sites had been abandoned; see Olsson,
1976, 18, 97–100. His overall conclusion is that stafgarþr is ‘ett
gammalt gotländskt ord för “(plats med) järnåldershusgrund(er)”’
and that certain of these sites, but probably not all, had become
places of worship, just as certain hult were cult sites, but by nomeans all groves of trees; see Olsson, 1976, 101–103. In a later
article, Olsson (1992, 95–96) initially rejects Måhl’s suggestion(1990, 23–24) that stav had the meaning bildsten, and that stavgarþr
[sic] thus meant a place or enclosure with a picture-stone, on the
grounds that this meaning was secondary to the existence of
places with the name stavgard. He then cites a private communication from Gösta Holm (3/11/1976) in which the latter suggeststhat the old foundations were used as enclosed areas, gardar,

Notes29

within which, perhaps, cult pillars were raised. If these pillars
were of stone, then Måhl’s suggestion of an enclosure containing
picture or other stones would be linguistically acceptable, andthe etymology of stafgarþr explained.
4/18–19. Evidence for human sacriﬁce in Scandinavia exists inarcheological material, art and literature, both native and foreign.
The Oseberg ship-burial is an example of a ‘double grave’ inwhich one of the occupants did not, apparently, die a natural
death. In the period of conversion in Iceland sacriﬁces were
made, perhaps, to prevent the spread of the new religion; see
Kristnisaga, 1905, ch. 12. Cf. also KL, s. v. Blot ; Menneskeoffer ;Offer and references; Introduction, pp. xxxii–xxxiii.
4/19–20. The term ﬁleþi would have included horses and a description in Hákonar saga góða in Heimskringla (ch. 14; ÍF XXVI,
167–168) gives circumstantial details of a sacriﬁcial meal centred around boiled horse-meat. The matr referred to would probably have been food derived from home-grown crops, a tradition
continued in the Christian harvest festival. Mungat was a speciallybrewed ale for times of celebration; see KL, s. v. Øl, col. 693. It
was possibly drunk in connection with ritual dedications to thegods, for a good harvest, for the dead, etc. as described in
Hákonar saga góða. Again, the custom of brewing ale and drinking it at times of celebration continued into the Christian era, andis written, for example, into the law of the Gulathing district of
Norway (NGL I, 6). Cf. also Foote and Wilson, 1979, 401–402;
KL, s. v. Hästkött ; Minne and references; Magnusen, 1829, 4, 13.
4/20–21. It might have been customary for the annual sacriﬁce onbehalf of the island to have been held at the alþing. If the originof the name Roma is taken to be rum ‘area, open place’ (Olsson,
1984, 47), it could be that the central cult and administrative sites
were one and the same; cf. KL, s. v. Ting på Gotland; Tingsted
and references.
4/21–22. Ellar hafþi huer þriþiungr sir. These were probably interim, seasonal sacriﬁces. Magnusen (1829, 3–15) gives detailsof the times of sacriﬁce at which strong ale was brewed byguilds, which were gradually taken over by the Christian festivals, for example the feasts of All Saints (November 1st), Christmas, Walburga (Valborg, May 1st) and St John (S:t Hans, June 24th).
4/22–23. The lesser assemblies were probably the hundaris þingand siettungs þing; see Note to 2/19.

30

Guta saga

4/23. The ﬁrst element of suþnautr is related to Gutnish sauþr,‘spring, brook’, Old Icelandic soð, ‘meat broth’, suð, ‘simmering’ and ultimately sjóða, ‘cook’. It is also associated with Old
Swedish söþer, ‘sheep’ and Gutnish soyþr, ‘beast’, which are inturn related to Gothic sauþs, ‘sacriﬁce’. The second element isrelated to the Old Icelandic nautr, ‘companion’, Old Swedishnöter, ‘someone who enjoys something together with’; see Hellquist,
1980, s. v. sjuda; njuta; nöt (2). Possible archaeological support
for the practice of holding communal sacriﬁcial meals is suggested by Nerman (1941b); see Note to 4/19–20. See also Introduction, pp. xxxii–xxxiii.
Chapter 2
6/1. In the margin of the manuscript the following is added: ‘pacis
conditio cum Rege sveciæ facta. et Tribvtum Anniuersarium’,that is ‘peace agreement made with the king of the Swedes andthe annual tribute’.
stridu a Gutland. This could possibly refer in part to the raids
against Gotland made by Olaf Haraldsson; see Note to 8/4.
6/2. The Swedish name for the islanders of Gotland is gotlänningar,
but the term gutar persisted throughout the Middle Ages. See
Note to 2/1.
6/4. Avair’s nickname, if it is interpreted as ‘straw legs’ (i. e. one
who wrapped his legs in straw), is reminiscent of the derogatoryname birkibeinar given to the Norwegian supporters of Eystein
Meyla who in 1174 rose up against Magnús Erlingsson. It is
assumed that they were given this name because they were sopoor that they used birch leggings instead of boots. The negative
connotation of the name had disappeared by 1217–1218, when
they joined with the clerical party in the Norwegian civil war in
support of a hereditary monarchy; cf. KL, s. v. Birkebeiner, cols
600, 610. Other possible meanings might be ‘straw bones’ (‘försina smala bens skull’ as suggested in VABC, s. v. Avair Strabain),‘tall and thin-legged’ (Öhrman, 1994, 62) or perhaps ‘strawstraight’, if bein means ‘straight’ (Hellquist, 1980, s. v. ben).
Other -bein nicknames recorded are þiokkubeinn ‘thick-legs’,
sperribein ‘stiff in the feet’ and krakabein ‘thin-legged’ (a nameused by the Danes of Olaf Tryggvason); cf. Sveriges medeltida
personnamn, 1974– , s. v. Aver ; Lind, 1920–1921, s. v. -bein.
The name Alfa could be related to alv, ‘jordlager under matjorden’Notes31

and to the German dialect word alben, ‘ett slags lös kalkjord’;see Hellquist, 1980, s. v. alv. The geology of considerable areasof Gotland might be consistent with this interpretation. Olsson(1984, 43) suggests an alternative, that Alva is related to alver,‘ﬂackt, trädlöst, öppet, öde fält’. Neither of these etymologies
can be supported by reference to other Gotlandic place-names.
6/5. This is the only record of the ﬁrst treaty between Gotland andSweden, but it was probably drawn up during the eleventh century. It is possible that Gotland passed in and out of Swedish
control at various times from the sixth to the twelfth centuries,
with its incorporation only being recorded ofﬁcially in the thirteenth century. Certainly the author of Guta saga assumes thatthe ﬁrst agreement was put in place in heathen times, but not so
far in the past that a ﬁrm tradition did not exist; cf. SL IV, 304–
306; Introduction, pp. xxxiii–xxxv, esp. p. xxxiv, note 1.
From the later mention of Uppsala, it is evident that the kingof the Svear is being referred to here. The Svear inhabited theeastern part of Sweden, around Lake Mälaren. Tacitus’s use of
the name Suiones in the late ﬁrst century is assumed by Hellquist
and others to have included all the Scandinavian Germanic tribes,
and so may Jordanes’s Suehans in the sixth century, although thishas been disputed; cf. Hjärne 1938, 14–19. By the ninth century,
however, the corresponding name most probably referred only tothe inhabitants of eastern Sweden; cf. Tacitus, 1914, 53, 196;
Jordanes, 1997, 39; Hellquist, 1980, s. v. svear ; KL, s. v. Svear
and references.
6/7. The original meaning of the Old Swedish fegher, ‘condemnedto death’, is retained in Swedish dialect and, with various othermeanings, in the related Scottish word ‘fey’; see Hellquist, 1980,
s. v. feg. The Old Swedish fallin, ‘suitable for’, and possibly byextension ‘destined for’, might be a relevant meaning for fallastanin this instance; cf. Hellquist, 1980, s. v. falla.
6/8. The wergild laid down in Gutnish law (GLGS, 19) is threemarks of gold (equivalent to 24 marks of silver or 96 marks inmoney), so in this case Avair was stipulating a value of nine marks;
cf. SL IV, 259. A proportionally high valuation (in this instancesix hundreds as compared with the more usual two hundreds fora man of standing) was placed on the life of Ho≈skuldr Hvítanessgoði in Njáls saga, ch. 123 (ÍF XII, 312). For a more detailed
discussion of compensation for loss of life, cf. KL, s. v. Mansbot.

32

Guta saga

6/9–11. Þy et . . . af ganga. This could refer either to the preceding
speech or to the following negotiations. If the former, the author
is admiring Avair’s foresightedness in making provision for his
family should his mission miscarry; if the latter he is explaining
to some extent why Avair succeeded in his negotiations whereothers had failed. The former interpretation has a certain immediacy about it, but the balance of the syntax (the inversion ofsubject and verb in the following sentence) and the generally
more objective tone, would favour the latter interpretation in theabsence of other evidence. Although Hadorph (1687, 49) punctuates and translates the clause as belonging to the previous
sentence and Gordon (1962, 177) as belonging to the following
sentence, Schlyter (CIG, 96), Säve (GU, 32), Noreen (AL, 38,§§18–19) and Wessén (SL IV, 292) all treat the clause as aseparate sentence, thereby retaining the ambiguity of the original. The adjective snieldr can mean: ‘wise’, ‘clever’, ‘brave’ or‘eloquent’. In connection with the expression ﬁelkunnugr it could
be noted that in Icelandic fjo≈lkunnigr has speciﬁc connotationsof supernatural powers, of being ‘skilled in the black arts’; cf.
C–V, s. v. Fjöl-kunnigr ; ÍO, s. v. fjölkyn(n)gi. Pipping (GLGS,
Ordbok, 23), however, translates it merely as ‘mångkunnig’. It is
possible that the phrase so sum sagur af ganga refers to tales
relating to Avair’s supposed supernatural powers, which the author thought were not relevant to the immediate narrative, or not
helpful to his argument. See also Introduction, pp. xxxv–xxxvi.
6/12. The mark of silver was a unit of weight rather than money;cf. KL, s. v. Mark. Lindquist (1984, 139–144) investigates theimplications of the amount of tax agreed upon for the islanders.
In particular, he relates the tax level to the imposition of theledung in the latter part of the twelfth century and the severe
increases in taxation brought in by Birger Magnusson in 1313.
His conclusion is that until the start of the ﬁfteenth century the
resulting tax was not particularly onerous, and in fact very much
lower than that in, for example, the Lake Mälaren area. The
increases brought in by Birger Magnusson were cancelled during
the minority of Magnus Eriksson, in letters dated August 25th,
1320, as a recognition of the loyalty shown by the Gotlanders
since the death of Magnus’s father, Erik; see DS III, 473–475,
nos 2255–2256.
6/14. The term, svearnas jarl in full, denoted the king’s highest

Notes33

ofﬁcer, a position recorded in Sweden from the mid-twelfth tothe mid-thirteenth century. The jarl was responsible for theledung-ﬂeet; see Note to 12/24–25. Probably the most famous
holder of the title was Birger Jarl (†1266) who was appointed in
1248 by Erik Eriksson (†1250), the last king of his line. Birger
held the position of regent from 1250 until his own death andthe title jarl was replaced by (svea) hertig; cf. KL, s. v. Jarl.
Sverige. The jarl’s position in this case probably related directly
to Gotland’s association with Sweden and may be an argumentfor dating the absorption of Gotland into Sweden to no earlier
than the middle of the twelfth century. The mention of the jarlat this point in the narrative could, however, be an anachronism
introduced by the author. See also Introduction, p. lii.
6/16. The phrase sielfs viliandi is intended to stress that the Gotlanders
were not subjugated by the Swedes, but entered into a mutuallyadvantageous arrangement. The apparent low level of taxation,
as discussed in the Note to 6/12, would seem to support the
supposition that the full subjugation of Gotland to Sweden did
not occur with the ﬁrst payment of tax, but only later.
6/17. The alliterative phrase frir ok frelsir could be a quotationfrom the legal document drawn up between Sweden and Gotland;
cf. KL, s. v. Handelsfred. See also Introduction, p. xxxvi.
6/18. Toll payments for the movement of goods were common
throughout the Middle Ages in Scandinavia; see KL, s. v. Told.
6/19. kornband: literally, ‘corn prohibition’. In 1276 Magnus Ladulås
conﬁrmed the freedom of Gotlanders to import corn (barley)from Sweden, except in those years when there was a generalexport ban; see STFM I, 273–274, no. 126; PRF I, 1; KL, s. v.
Kornhandel. The fact that this edict is described as a ‘conﬁrmation’
could indicate that the arrangement existed earlier on a more
informal basis.
The word hegn, Old Swedish hægn, is related to the English‘hedge’ in the sense of ‘hedge around, protect’; cf. Hellquist,
1980, s. v. hägn. Olszewska (1937–1945, 242) notes the corresponding Middle English help and hald, ‘help and protection’.
6/21–22. The gutnalþing, the general assembly of Gotland, washeld at Roma in the centre of the island during the Middle Ages.
The form gutnalþing is problematic, because of the -n-, andSchlyter (CIS XIII, 241, s.v. gutnal þing) comments that gutaalþing would be the expected form, and that no explanation can

34

Guta saga

be offered for the -n-. Bugge (NIÆR I, 152), however, suggeststhat Gutna was an older form of Guta, the genitive plural of
Gutar (cf. Old Norse goti, genitive plural gotna). The adjective
gutnisk refers to the language, etc. of Gotland, as opposed to thepeople; cf. SAOB, s. v. gutisk. Lindroth (1915, 73) has put forward an alternative view, that Gutnal was a place-name, meaning‘gutarnas helgedom’ and that this was Latinised to Gutnalia. He
cites several instances in which the element -al could mean‘helgedom’. The expression gutnal þing would then mean simply‘the assembly at Gutnal’, with no implication that it was from theoutset an assembly for the whole of the island. Cf. also Olrik andEllekilde, 1926–1951, I, 540–541. Roma itself is not mentioned
in the oldest manuscript of Guta saga, nor in Guta lag, although
it is referred to in the Low German translation (manuscript dated
1401) where it says, ‘czu gutnaldhing das ist czu Rume’; see
CIG, 164. Roma seems ﬁrst to have come to prominence when it
became the site of the Cistercian monastery, called Beata Mariade Gutnalia; cf. Steffen, 1945, 250; Introduction, p. xlvii. This
form of the name occurs as early as the twelfth century; cf.
Yrwing, 1978, 166–167 and references. The place-name Romamight possibly be related to the name Rome itself, but more
likely to the place-name element rum, signifying an open place;see Hellquist, 1980, s. v. rum; Olsson, 1984, 47. Cf. also KL, s. v.
Ting på Gotland; Note to 4/20–21.
6/23. friþ lysa. This could also be interpreted as referring to a formal
declaration of truce at a public meeting, perhaps for a particularperiod of time; cf. KL, s. v. Fridslagstiftning; Magnusen, 1829, 14.
6/24. Gamla Uppsala was the administrative and cult centre of Sweden
until the start of the eleventh century, but already appeared intenth-century sources. The kings at ﬁrst had the title Uppsalakonung,but were later called sveakonung, to differentiate them from therulers of the götar from the south and west. It was in Gamla
Uppsala that the temple, described by Adam of Bremen as late as1070, was raised and the kings buried. When the ﬁrst Swedish
bishopric was established at the instigation of Olaf Skötkonung
around 1000, it was at Skara in Västergötland, rather than in
Uppsala. It is reasonable to suggest that this indicates the strong
pagan inﬂuence which still pervaded Uppsala, making it unsuitable as a see. One might also infer that the Götar had at this time
accepted the overlordship of the Uppsala kings. When a bishopricNotes35

was founded in Uppland in 1050 it was at Sigtuna, and not until
1164 was the archbishopric at Uppsala established, after thebishopric of Sigtuna had moved there in the 1130s. In 1273 or
1290 the see and the name Uppsala were transferred to the siteof the modern town; see Adam of Bremen, 1961, 470–473; Footeand Wilson, 1979, 25–34, 389–391, 418; Kumlien, 1967, 13–15,
18–21; Lindqvist, 1967.
8/1–10. The narrative concerning St Olaf (or Óláfr as his name isusually given in Old Norse texts) has the following added, in a
sixteenth-century hand, in the top margin of the manuscript: ‘De
S. OLAO’, that is ‘Concerning St Olaf’. Most editions record
this paragraph as chapter 3.
This passage is the ﬁrst mention in written sources of theconversion of Gotland to Christianity. Gotland is not included in
the general legends concerning Olaf, and Söderberg (1922, 224,
227–228) states that there is evidence from runic inscriptions
that Christianity was well established in Gotland by 1050, andthat this would be unlikely if it were ﬁrst introduced in 1028. Cf.
also Lindqvist, 1960–1962, 87; Introduction, p. xxxvi, note 2.
On the other hand, P. A. Säve (1873–1874) records legends about
Olaf in Gotland, particularly from the northern part of the island;see Introduction, pp. xxxviii–xxxix. Nihlén (1975, 154–155)
also gives an account of a number of tales in some of which Olaf
seems to take over the role of Thor as the protector of the people
from giants and trolls. Olaf’s importance on the island could
possibly be more the result of his being the ﬁrst Scandinavian‘saint’ (although never ofﬁcially recognised in Rome) than of
any particular missionary effort; cf. Ochsner, 1973, 26–28. One
suggestion proposed is that this episode is a later insertion into
Guta saga; cf. Söderberg, 1922, 235–236; Lindqvist, 1960–1962,
110, 114; Fritzell, 1971, 20. Cf. also Introduction, pp. xxxvi–xl.
8/1–2. Olaf was driven into exile by King Knut of Denmark throughthe agency of Hákon jarl in 1028–1029; cf. Óláfs saga helga,ch. 181 (ÍF XXVII, 328–330). According to Snorri Sturluson theprincipal reason for the revolt against him was that he curtailed
the common practice amongst powerful Norwegians of harrying
the coast of Norway.
8/3. The name Akrgarn, which fell into disuse in the seventeenth
century, seems to be composed of two elements that occur quite
frequently in place-names. The ﬁrst, acr or aker, is the Gotlandic

36

Guta saga

form of Swedish åker, ‘ﬁeld’. The second, garn, is related to aword meaning ‘gut’ or ‘intestines’, but has come also to have themeaning ‘yarn’. Hellquist (1980, s. v. Garn (2)) suggests that inplace-names it could relate to an older meaning ‘något långsträckt’and this interpretation seems likely here (a place with a string ofﬁelds, for example, or a peninsula with ﬁelds). Harry Ståhl (KL,s. v. Svear) suggests that the word means ‘långsträckt holme’,
while Lindroth (1914b, 125–126) puts forward alternative interpretations: (1) that it could mean ‘långsträckt vattendrag’, which
would be consistent with places such as Gammelgarn and Östergarn,and (2) that the meaning ‘klippholme’ had been imported fromthe Swedish mainland and applied to places like Akrgarn and
Grogarn. Olsson (1984, 49–50) rejects this latter and points tothe narrow sound between the peninsula and the mainland in thecase of Akrgarn, and the narrow gravel ridges in the case of
Grogarn, as more likely origins of the name. Since this interpretation appears to correspond best to the original meaning of theword garn, it seems to be a more probable explanation than
Lindroth’s second one. Akergarn, which was a port in the Middle
Ages, is now no longer on the coast. The coastline there is barren
and it is some way from agricultural land. Like S:t Olofshamn(also known as Gamlehamn) on Fårö, and Hau Gröno in Fleringe
parish on the sound between Fårö and Gotland, Akergarn has theremains of a medieval chapel, and like S:t Olofshamn might havebeen used in prehistoric times. During the Middle Ages it waspossibly a ﬁshing port, particularly a refuge for long-distanceﬂeets; see Lundström, 1983, 108–116.
The name Ormika also occurs in a cryptic runic inscription ona slipstone from Timans, in the parish of Roma (G 216). Alongside the personal name ormiga is the name ulvat (or ulfuair),and the place-names krikiaR, iaursaliR, islat and serklat. These
are usually interpreted as Greece (the Byzantine empire; see
Note to 4/7), Jerusalem, Iceland and the Islamic Caliphate. The
inscription, dated to the second half of the eleventh century,
could refer to the actual travels of two merchants or pilgrims; see
GV, 436; von Friesen, 1941, 12–14. There is no reason, however,to assume, as von Friesen does, that the Ormiga mentioned in theinscription is identical to the Ormika of Guta saga. Cf. also NIYR
III, 305 note 2. Bengt Söderberg (1971, 41–42) contends thatsuch an assumption is historically untenable, but one wonders if

Notes37

it is not possible, as Elisabeth Svärdström (GR II, 237) suggests,
that the inscription is an imaginative assembly of names (twofamous Gotlanders and four exotic places), not referring to any
particular event. The form of the name is unusual and Svärdström(GR II, 235) suggests that the sufﬁx -ika is a diminutive derived
from West Germanic, in particular Anglo-Saxon or Frisian, similar to that found in Old Swedish Svænke, but retaining the original intermediate vowel. It has also been suggested by Bugge(NIÆR I, 156–157) that the form of the name reﬂects a Gothic
origin. See also Introduction, p. xli.
8/4. The ﬁrst element of Hainaim is related to the Swedish dialect
word häjd, interpreted as ‘stängsel’ (enclosure); see Hellquist,
1980, s.v. hejd. The second element, -(h)aim, probably relates to aword meaning ‘settlement’. The place-name might, if it were preChristian, refer to an enclosed community, possibly with some
sort of cult background; cf. stafgarþr, Note to 4/18. A relationship to a cult site might be supported by the fact that in the northof the parish lies Bjärs, where there is a large burial ground, withﬁnds ranging from the ﬁrst century to around AD 1050; cf. Nylén,
1966, 196–198. On the other hand, Olsson (1984, 26) relates theﬁrst element to *haiþnir, *hainir, ‘hedbor’ (heath-dwellers), andpoints for support to the many heaths and sparsely-vegetatedareas in the parish. Hadorph (1687, 50) spells the name Hainhem;cf. Note to 10/11.
The episode described here, in which tribute is offered to Olaf,
could have its origin in Olaf’s visit to Gotland in 1007; cf.
Pernler (1977, 13). Tribute was paid on that occasion by Gotlandic
representatives to prevent Olaf from harrying Gotland, and thiswould probably have involved the extended stay that Snorri
records. Pernler thinks that this incident might have been confused by the author of Guta saga with a later visit, related toOlaf’s return from Russia in 1030, which would have been verymuch shorter; cf. Óláfs saga helga, ch. 192 (ÍF XXVII, 343);
Introduction, pp. xxxvi–xxxviii.
8/5. According to Hellquist (1980, s. v. vädur) veþur was often
used in, for example, biblical language, and originally denoted ayearling male sheep or other animal, as indicated by the fact that
the Gothic wiþrus is used to translate the Greek word for ‘lamb’.
Weþur does not have the sense of the Modern English cognate
wether, ‘a castrated male sheep’. In Old English and other Germanic

38

Guta saga

languages, weþer and its equivalents meant ‘male sheep’ in
general; see Lockwood, 1969, 179.
8/6. Tamm (1890–1905, s. v. bulle) gives one meaning of bulle as‘drykeskärl utan fot, tumlare, mots. isl. bolli, m. drykesskål av
kupig form’. See also Introduction, pp. xl–xli.
8/7. The braiþyx was the principal attribute of St Olaf. One of theoldest pictorial representations of him with an axe is from circa
1150 at Hängelösa in Västergötland; see KL, s. v. Øks, cols 667–
673; Olav den hellige, cols 568–576 and references.
8/7–8. Some, including Fritzell (1972, 34–35) and Ochsner (1973,27) have argued that the speciﬁc, Hamburg–Bremen form ofChristianity fostered by St Olaf himself is referred to here, which
would imply that an earlier teaching, possibly Celtic or Russian,but more probably English, had existed in Gotland previously.
This interpretation is based partly on a precise deﬁnition of themeaning of kennidombr and partly on the lack of other written
evidence for St Olaf having been the apostle of Gotland. Pernler(1977, 12) questions this interpretation, on the very reasonablegrounds that Guta saga was written at least 200 years after the
supposed event and it is hardly likely either that the exact relationship between Ormika and St Olaf would have been known, orthat Ormika was, in fact, the ﬁrst convert.
8/8. A bynahus was a private chapel for a family or community; see
Introduction, pp. xli, xlv; KL, s. v. Kapel; Oratorium; Privatkirke
and references.
8/9. Akergarn/S:t Olofsholm is 30 kilometres from Hejnum. Pernler(1977, 13) questions whether Ormika would have had his private
chapel built at that distance from his home and Tiberg (1946, 22)dismisses the whole St Olaf episode as a later addition; cf.
Smedberg, 1973, 163. It is possible, however, that the author
included the passage, perhaps placed out of chronological sequence, because there was already a thriving cult on the island at
the time he was writing. A letter to the clergy and laity of
Gotland from Bishop Laurentius (Lars) of Linköping in August,
1246 (DS I, 315–316, no. 336) allocates the income from thealtar of St Olaf’s at Åckergarn to the nuns of the convent ofSolberga in Visby. This allocation was conﬁrmed in May, 1248
by a letter from the papal legate, Bishop Wilhelm of Sabina(DS I, 335, no. 362) in which the name is given as Ackergarn.
The matter is raised again in April, 1277, in a letter from Bishop

Notes39Henrik of Linköping (DS I, 516, no. 625), which allocates half
the income to the parish priest and parishioners of Helghavi andcalls the place Hakergarn. Three years later, the bishop conﬁrms
the arrangement in relation to Akirgarn (DS I, 571–572, no. 702).
Further letters concerning the nuns’ rights in Akergarnaholm or
Akergarn from Bishops Petrus and Nicholaus, in 1349 and 1360
respectively, are mentioned by Wallin (1747–1776, II, 119, 121).
A map of Gotland from 1646, held in the General Landmäterikontoret, and other maps from the seventeenth century show a S:t
Oluf church on the site of the present ruins and Schlyter points
out that Akergarn and S:t Olofsholm are one and the same; cf.
CIG, 314–315 and references. This does not imply that the building shown on the map was the one raised in the eleventh century;
see Pernler, 1978; 1981, 103–109.
8/10. Jaroslav, sometimes called the Lawgiver or the Wise (c.978–1054), Prince of Kiev, was one of the legitimate sons of Prince
Vladimir (†1015). From 1016 until 1019 he fought against his
half-brother, Svyatopolk I, for his share of the principality, whileruling in Novgorod. When Mstislav, his other half-brother, diedin 1036, Jaroslav took over the whole of the principality of Kiev,
which covered the larger part of Russia at that time, and set up
a bishopric in Novgorod, and his son Vladimir as ruler there.
Kiev had been converted to Christianity under Vladimir I (called‘The Christianiser of Russia’), after his baptism in 989, andJaroslav was responsible for authorising the ﬁrst Russian law
code. He established his seat of government in Novgorod andspent more time there than in Kiev; see below; Franklin and
Shepard, 1996, 201–202. Jaroslav was a natural source of assistance in Olaf’s exile as he was related by marriage to Olaf, being
married to Olaf’s sister-in-law. She was the daughter of Olaf
Skötkonung, king of Sweden and founder of the ﬁrst Swedish
bishopric, at Skara. Ingegärd, Jaroslav’s wife, was originally,
according to Snorri Sturluson (ÍF XXVII, 117), pledged to St
Olaf, but was married in 1019 to Jaroslav, leaving Olaf to marryher illegitimate half-sister. Contact was maintained, however,and Jaroslav brought up Olaf’s illegitimate son, Magnús, later
king of Norway. Ingegärd (referred to as Irina, Eirene in Russian
sources) is buried in the St Sophia church in Novgorod. Jaroslav
also sheltered another Norwegian royal refugee: Harald Sigurdssonharðráði, who was Olaf’s half-brother. Harald stayed some four

40

Guta saga

years with Jaroslav on his way to Byzantium, where he led the
Varangian guard, and married Jaroslav’s daughter; see DMA, s. v.
Yaroslav the Wise; Chronicle of Novgorod, 1914, viii, 1–3; RPC,
59–135; Medieval Scandinavia, 1993, s. v. Haraldr harðráði.
Holmgarðr was the Scandinavian name for Novgorod. It appears
that the name was transferred from one settlement to another atsome point in its history. Although there is no agreement on its
original site, Hulmgarþr has been identiﬁed with the Russian
Gorodishche, ‘hill-fort, fortiﬁed settlement’, which was widelybelieved to have been founded around AD 800 on an island in
Lake Ilmen, and this would be consistent with the meaning of theword Holmgarðr. Archaeological ﬁnds also point to a Scandinavian
connection; see Franklin and Shepard, 1996, 40, 105. Novgorod,meaning ‘new fortiﬁcation’, is thought to have been built in thetenth century, not on the island, but two or three miles north ofthe point where the River Volchov runs from Lake Ilmen towards
Lake Ladoga, perhaps uniting two smaller settlements on eitherside of the river; see DMA, s. v. Novgorod; RPC, 233. There is noevidence at the site of Novgorod of a settlement prior to thattime, but equally there are objections to identifying Gorodishche
as the ‘old’ town; see Thompson, 1967, 12. It seems that thename Novgorod was used in some sources to denote the older
settlement (Gorodishche), this name being transferred to thelater settlement in the same way that Scandinavian sources retained the name Holmgarðr, although the meaning no longer
applied; see Franklin and Shepard, 1996, 130, note 36. Jaroslav
and the monarchy had moved from the island to the new settlement by the eleventh century; see Thompson, 1967, 10. Tradebetween Sweden and Russia was important from the early ninth
century and was at that time largely conducted from Birka. As
Birka declined, the Gotlanders took over and in the eleventh century
the trade from Gotland was concentrated on Novgorod, which
lay on the major route between the Baltic and Constantinople.
Guta saga contains one of the classic descriptions of this route;see Note to 4/6. Two fragments of a runestone (G 220) fromHallfrede in Follingbo parish, south-east of Visby, carry the
inscription: . . . tkaiR : aR : to i : hulmka - . . . | . . . iþi - : . . .
which has been interpreted as ‘. . . (after) Uddgair. He died in
Hulmgarþr . . .’; cf. GR II, 244–246; GV, 437. In the ﬁrst half ofthe twelfth century the Gotlanders had a trading station in NovgorodNotes41

with a church dedicated to St Olaf. According to one interpretation (von Friesen, 1913, 70), this church is mentioned in a runicinscription (U 687) from Sjusta(d) in Skokloster parish in Uppland;
see Jansson, 1987, 49–50; Montelius, 1914, 101. This is, however, not undisputed; cf. Brate and Bugge, 1887–1891, 334. If
von Friesen’s interpretation is taken as correct, the inscription
tells of a Spjallbude (Spjalbode) of whom it is said, ‘Hann vardauðr i Holmgarði i Olafs kirkiu’: an uaR : tauþr : i hulmkarþi
: i olafs kriki. The Russians also had trading stations in Gotland.
The details of trade with Russia are discussed by Hugo Yrwing;
see KL, s. v. Rysslandshandel ; Östersjöhandel and references.
Chapter 3
8/11. This section in the manuscript has been marked in the margin: ‘conuersio ad ﬁdem christianam’, that is ‘conversion to theChristian faith’.
8/11–12. The word *kaupmannaskepr is variously translated torefer to the goods, ‘köpmansvaror’ (Schlyter, CIG, 98; Wessén,
SL IV, 293) or to the trading itself, ‘kiöpenskap’ or ‘köpenskap’,with ‘voyages’ understood (Hadorph, 1687, 50; Pipping, GLGS,
Ordbok, 43). The latter interpretation might seem to be preferable
since the sufﬁx -skap is widely used to form abstract nouns denoting skills.
8/13. kristnum landum. These would presumably include Englandand Russia as well as Denmark, Norway and Germany, but
not Finland or the Baltic countries, with whom the Gotlanders
also traded.
8/14. Pernler (1977, 18) has suggested an Anglo-Saxon inﬂuenceon the ecclesiastical law in Guta lag and, as there was considerable trade between Gotland and England from the twelfth century, it is possible that the priests referred to here were of English
origin; cf. Chaucer, 1987, The Canterbury tales: General Prologue, line 408; KL, s.v. Englandshandel. This proposal is supported to some extent by the more frequent occurrence of thename Båtel (‘Botulf’) in personal and place-names in Gotland
than in mainland Sweden and Norway, and the appearance of
Botulf in Gotländska runkalendern, a fourteenth-century calendar
written in runes (Lithberg and Wessén, 1939, 7, 59, 92). Therehis day is marked as one of relative importance; see Pernler,
1977, 18–19. A similar Anglo-Saxon missionary inﬂuence could42

Guta saga

equally have come through the medium of trade with Norway(which certainly came under English ecclesiastical inﬂuence) orwith Denmark. If there was a partial conversion in the eighth or
ninth centuries, the interpretation of the conversion of Ormika as
being to St Olaf’s speciﬁc form of Christian doctrine should not
be dismissed without consideration, although there is no direct
support for it; see Note to 8/7–8. Ochsner (1973, 22–24) suggeststhat the missionaries who came during this period were from
Ireland. Internal events in Ireland at the time, however, seem topreclude Irish Celtic missionary activity in Gotland at the end of
the eighth and start of the ninth century; see Pernler, 1977,
38–39. A more likely factor during the ninth and tenth centuries
was the Hamburg–Bremen mission of Ansgar and his followers.
As a result of trade along the Dvina, it would also have beenpossible for contacts to have been made with the Eastern Church,whose missionaries were active amongst the Slavs of that area in
the ninth century. These former clashed with German missionaries
in Moravia (now Slovakia) during that period, thus providing
another Christian point of contact for Gotlandic merchants; cf.
Pernler, 1977, 35–36; Ware, 1976, 82, 83. See also Introduction,
pp. xxxvi–xxxvii, note 2.
8/15. The name Botair does not occur elsewhere before 1350, butthere are several medieval instances of the name Botair from Gotland, including a priest, Botherus, from the parish of Tofta, on
the west coast of Gotland. Names in Bot- were generally common
in Gotland; cf. Sveriges medeltida personnamn, 1974– , s. v. Boter.
The ﬁrst element of the name Akubekkr, as in the case of
Akrgarn, could refer to a ﬁeld (akr), but Olsson (1984, 43) thinksthat it is related to the word aka in an oblique form aku, meaning‘lort i fårull’ amongst other things. The second element is likely
to be related to bekkr, ‘stream’. Olsson’s explanation would
suggest a meaning ‘Skitbäcken’, or something similar, which isa possible interpretation when related to the topography of thearea near the present church. A farm called Bäcks lies just to thenorth of the parish church.
8/16. The implicit explanation in Guta saga for the place-name
Kulasteþar is that it was the site on which Botair’s ﬁrst church
was burned, and it has been surmised that the name has somesuch meaning as ‘place with burnt coals’; see Introduction, pp. xliii–
xliv. The identiﬁcation of Kulstäde with Kulasteþar would place

Notes43

the supposed ﬁrst church in Gotland at the meeting point of four
assembly districts (Dede, Hejde, Bande and Stenkumla) andalso at the meeting point of four parishes (Akebäck, Roma,
Björke and Vall), but isolated from the surrounding farms bywoodland and marsh; see Fritzell, 1974, 7–9. An alternative,
more likely, explanation of the place-name to that offered by theauthor of Guta saga is that Kol is a common male name and thesufﬁx -städe often attached to personal names. Both the medial-a- and the -ar ending are, however, difﬁcult to explain linguistically. Olsson (1984, 36) suggests a personal name Kuli as apossible origin, but also that the -a- could be an intrusive
vowel. Of the -ar ending, Pipping (GLGS, Ordbok, 45) remarksthat the name was originally a genitive singular form. Olsson(1984, 35–38) notes several similar place-names with alternative
forms, but he offers no suggestion concerning this version of theplace-name element -städe. It is possible that the ending is aparallel to the nominative ending of Þieluar. On the meaning of
the element -städe itself, different interpretations have beensuggested, namely ‘slåttervall’ (‘hayﬁeld’) or ‘ställe’ (‘place’);cf. Hellberg, 1958, 15, 29; Olsson, 1964, 49.
8/17. The Icelanders attempted, but failed, to burn the ﬁrst church
built in Iceland; see Kristnisaga, 1905, ch. 3.
8/18. As Gun Westholm (1985, 293) points out, there seems to be
no doubt in the mind of the author of Guta saga that by Vi wasmeant Visby, or at least a settlement near enough to the site of
Visby to be thought of as its predecessor. It is worth considering,
however, whether Visby was really intended, or some more general holy place. Carlén (1862, 88) maintains that Vi does actuallydesignate what is now Visby and that the latter name derives
from Vi and not from Vikingaby, Viksby or Vinetasby, as has beensuggested by other scholars. This last would refer to the Slav
town Vineta, on the island of Wolin, adjacent to the island of
Ysedom (Usedom) in the mouth of the Oder in Pomerania. The
town was destroyed, and its inhabitants were thought to have ﬂed
to Visby. Vineta was at one time the richest trading town on theBaltic. It fell before the start of the thirteenth century, either in
814 under Charlemagne, in 840 as a result of civil war, or in 1182
under Waldemar I. There is a story that it sank and that its walls
can still be seen. Traditions seem to agree, however, that the
inhabitants ﬂed to the already famous Visby and exerted an

44Guta saga

inﬂuence upon it. Carlén concedes that the present town of Visby
was apparently not an important trading site before AD 1000.
There is no record of Visby’s Gotlandic inhabitants or ofﬁcials
before the ﬁnal quarter of the thirteenth century and several
sources point to Visby having been a German town, in whichcase it is unlikely that it was the natural successor to Vi. The ﬁrst
mention of there being two communities in Visby is, according
to Björkander (1898, 30), Magnus Ladulås’s letter, dated 23rd
May, 1276, conﬁrming the Gotlanders’ privileges in Sweden; cf.
STFM I, 273–274, no. 126. Excavations in 1932 at S:t Pers Plats
failed to ﬁnd any evidence of a settlement in the vicinity that
could have been Vi; cf. Knudsen, 1933, 34. On the other hand,
there is archaeological evidence for a Viking-Age trading settlement along the shoreline at Visby and there is a rich burial site
at Kopparsvik, about 600 metres to the south of the city wall; cf.
Westholm, 1985, 296. The predominance of males in that community would indicate that it was not originally a permanent
settlement, although it became so towards the end of the Viking
Age. The question of the relationship between the name Vi andthe current name Visby is also one which has been much discussed; see Introduction, pp. xlii–xliii. The name of Visby is ﬁrst
recorded, as Wysbu, in an entry for 1203, by Henry of Livonia(Lettland) in the seventh chapter of his chronicle; see Heinrici
Chronicon Livoniae, 1959, 26, 27, note 1. Since the Chronicle
was not completed until around 1226, it might be pre-dated by areference to Wisby in 1225, in a letter of consecration for the
church of St Maria from Bishop Bengt of Linköping; see DS I,
241, no. 231; Yrwing, 1940, 217–220, 225–226; Knudsen, 1933,
33. Against the traditional interpretation of Visby as coming fromVi-s-by, Knudsen (1933, 33–34) reasons, ﬁrst, that most, though
not all, Scandinavian place-names ending in -by have a naturalfeature as their ﬁrst element and do not carry the genitive -s-,secondly, that most Swedish and Danish Viby place-names are
related to vik or vig respectively (‘inlet’, ‘creek’) and thirdly, that
it is more likely that the name Visby is related to vis or ves(<*wis) meaning ‘bending or fast-moving water course’ or ‘lowlying land’. This latter interpretation has also been put forward
by Herbert Gustavson (1938, 35) and is both topographically
relevant to Visby and philologically consistent. It might also be
preferable to what Knudsen (1933, 32) calls ‘Iveren for at forklare

Notes45

et Stednavn . . . saa interessant som muligt, og navnlig saa
gammelt som muligt’. On the other hand, Olsson (1984, 20)
considers that the -s-, which he refers to as ‘det besvärande -s-’,can be satisfactorily explained by theories put forward by Lars
Hellberg (1960, 143), as an explanatory, ‘epexegetisk’, genitive,
added when the -by was appended. Cf. also Olsson, 1996, 23–25.
8/22. Likkair’s nickname, snielli, is open to several interpretations.
The word could mean ‘wise’, ‘clever’ but alternatively ‘brave’,‘strong’, perhaps even ‘rash’ or ‘hasty’; see Hellquist, 1980, s. v.
snille; snäll. If the e in the manuscript is taken to replace the i,snelli could be an example of a doublet for the form snielli which
exhibits vowel-breaking; see textual note to 8/22; Noreen, 1904,
74. See also Introduction, pp. xliii–xlv.
8/23. The name Stainkirkia suggests that the place was the site of astone church at a time when these were not very common. The authorof Guta saga, however, states later (10/3–4) that Likkair’s churchwas þar nu kallar Stainkirkiu, and does not necessarily imply by
this that the church Likkair built was of stone. Since the church
was on Likkair’s farm, it seems most probable that it was initiallya private chapel. As Wessén (SL IV, 312) suggests, the farm musthave had another name originally. The present church at Stenkyrka
dates from the latter half of the thirteenth century, but there areremains of an earlier building under the nave; cf. Lagerlöf and
Svahnström, 1991, 231–233. See also Introduction, pp. xliv–xlv.
8/24–25. Herþin ai brenna. The form herþin is taken as the second
person plural imperative by Pipping (GLGS, Ordbok, 37) andothers, giving the meaning ‘Do not burn’ or similar. On the other
hand, Hadorph (1687, 50) translates the phrase as ‘Söken wij at
upbränna’, that is as the ﬁrst person plural subjunctive (although
the expected form would appear to be herþum), giving the meaning ‘Let us seek to burn’. This interpretation clearly misreads thenegative ai, but includes Likkair himself in the decision, andseems to make some sense, especially in view of the argumentthat Likkair presents for sparing the church and its builder; see
Note to 8/25. If one substitutes ‘ej’ for ‘at’ in Hadorph’s translation, the interpretation could be ‘Let us not seek to burn’, with
the inﬁnitive mark understood. Noreen (1904, 470, 476) gives-um or -om as the usual endings for the ﬁrst person plural in bothindicative and subjunctive, but notes that in two runic inscriptions
from Gotland -im appears for the ﬁrst person plural subjunctive

46

Guta sagawith an imperative function. Assuming this ending to be the one
intended in Guta saga at this point would involve only a smallchange to the text and would certainly make good sense. The
verb herþa means ‘harden’, but also ‘stubbornly persist’, whichis evidently the meaning here; see Wadstein, 1894–1895, 6.
8/25. Wessén (SL IV, 293) and others translate þy et as ‘ty’ (‘since’).
Lindqvist (1960–1962, 113) argues that this does not make sense
if vi was a cult site and it seems, perhaps, unlikely that the factthat the church had been built at such a place would be put
forward as a reason for not burning it. Lindqvist suggests that vi
did not only denote a cult site, but also a secular place of refuge,such as a market, or where the assembly was held. A sacriﬁce is,however, speciﬁcally mentioned. Even so, there is no need tolink the site of the church with the actual place of sacriﬁce, andthere could have been both a cult and a secular site in the area,
which lies at the meeting-point of several thing-districts; cf.
Pernler, 1977, 21; Introduction, pp. xlii–xliii. Fritzell (1972, 44)suggests an alternative, that the phrase means ‘fastän’, but þy etconsistently means ‘because, since’ in Guta saga. An alternativeis that it is a misreading by the scribe of þau et, ‘although’; cf.
8/11. Likkair’s argument could also be explained, without
signiﬁcantly changing the meanings of the words involved, in
two ways. The ﬁrst would be that the holy place should not bedesecrated by the shedding of blood, even the blood of a nonbeliever. Such an interdict in a sanctiﬁed area seems to have been
a common one in pre-Christian Scandinavian society; cf. ÍF I,
125–126; Snorri Sturluson, 1982, 46. The second explanation isthat Likkair did not think it was a good enough reason to burn the
church simply because of its siting. See also the preceding Note.
8/25–26. ﬁrir niþan klintu. This has been taken by Schlyter (CIG,
99) to be an explanatory phrase, not intended to be part of thedirect speech, and there would certainly be no need for Likkair
to add this explanation for his audience. Since vi is a common
noun for a sacred place, however, the phrase was possibly addedin order to distinguish this particular site. Arnﬁnn Brekke, in astudy of Icelandic and Norwegian farm names (1918, 4, 19, 71),
lists a number that consist of the preposition undir and equivalents (which would correspond to ﬁrir niþan), usually followed
by a word meaning ‘hill’ or ‘cliff’. As examples of place-names
from Sweden, Underlund and Underliden may be mentioned,

Notes47

both of which are in Halland, although only the latter has a senseof a hill incorporated in the name; cf. Pamp, 1988, 11. There areseveral examples in England of place-names with distinguishingadditions (for example, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Weston Underwood). On the other hand, the interpolation of phrases by theauthor into direct speech is not unknown in other Scandinavian
texts; cf. ‘er býr þar, er nú heitir at Stað í Skagaﬁrði’ in Heiðarvíga
saga, ch. 37 (ÍF III, 1972, 319, note 2). There seems to be somedoubt whether the form klintu is the dative singular of klint (i. e.
feminine vowel-stem) or the dative or accusative of klinta (i. e.
feminine on-stem). The dative was more commonly used after
prepositions in Old Swedish than was the case later, althoughﬁrir niþan seems usually to have taken the accusative. Cf. Söderberg,
1879, 14; Söderwall, 1884–1973, s. v. klinter ; Noreen, 1904,
301, 307, 336; GLGS, Ordbok, 44.
8/27. aldra helguna namni. Archaeologists have excavated for anumber of years in search of a possible site for this church. Eric
Swanström (1982, 79–80) considers that the orientation of graves
found in the vicinity of S:t Hans’s and S:t Pers church in Visby
indicates that there was an earlier church than the latter on thesame site. Gustavson (1982) describes an inscription found there
and suggests that it was associated with a heathen burial site. It
is interesting to note that the day of dedication of S:t Pers church
would be June 29th and that of S:t Hans’s church June 24th, thenearest major saint’s day. This assumes S:t Hans to be St John the
Baptist, rather than St John the Evangelist; cf. Lagerlöf and
Svahnström, 1991, 61.
8/28. Petrs kirkia. The remains of this church, now called S:t Pers,consisting of a stretch of wall only, form a part of the southwestern corner of the ruins of S:t Hans’s church in Visby. A
possible chronology for the development of this archaeologicalsite is proposed by Eric Swanström (1985; 1986). This suggeststhat what he calls ‘Allhelgonakyrka’ was a limestone Romanesque church (remains of which have been found within theperimeter of S:t Hans’s church), rather than the wooden building
which was probably intended by the author of Guta saga. Swanström
dates the oldest remains (‘Allhelgonakyrka’) to the end of theeleventh century on the basis of a picture-stone, re-carved toform a gravestone. He suggests that during the twelfth century
the population of the area grew, and S:t Pers was built, 16 metres

48

Guta saga

to the south of the original church. The German-speaking population then took over ‘Allhelgonakyrkan’ towards the end of the
century. When that church proved inadequate, a new church,
dedicated to S:t Hans, was started between the two older churches
around the turn of the century, with a result that, by 1300, S:tHans’s had expanded to cover ‘Allhelgonakyrka’ and the latterhad to all intents and purposes disappeared; see Swanström,
1985, 122; 1986, 46, 50. It is a possibility that the author of Gutasaga knew of the subsumed ‘Allhelgonakyrka’ and used its nameas that of Botair’s church. There is, however, no evidence of theremains of a wooden church on the site of S:t Hans’s church and,
although it seems probable that its construction had commenced
when Guta saga was written, the author makes no mention of S:t
Hans’s; cf. Lagerlöf and Svahnström, 1991, 61.
8/28–29. The statement that Aldra helguna was the ﬁrst church that
was allowed to stand in Gotland would seem to contradict theepisode concerning Ormika’s chapel, if the erection of the latter
were presumed to have occurred earlier. The relative chronologyof these two accounts of church-building is a matter for speculation. Spegel (1901, 66) dates the introduction of Christianity toGotland to around 800 and Ochsner (1973, 25) links the conversion to an Irish mission of the period, based on the dating of theremains of wooden churches. Fritzell (1972, 42) also subscribes
to an early dating for the original Allhelgonakyrka. There is,according to Pernler (1977, 22), nothing to support this view, andthe dating of buildings purely on the basis of accounts in Gutasaga seems to have little justiﬁcation. If Spegel’s supposition
were correct, it would mean that Guta saga was preserving a
tradition more than 400 years old. Certainly, as Pernler argues,
the granting of permission for Botair’s church to stand does not
imply a wider decision by the general assembly to accept Christianity
on behalf of the island, according to the narrative of Guta saga
as it is preserved. It is speciﬁcally stated that Christianity was
accepted later, when there had been further exposure to it both athome and abroad. In terms of probability this gradual acceptanceseems far more likely than a sudden conversion on the basis of
Likkair’s oratory. On the other hand, if the conversion of the
majority of the islanders were dated to some time later than
Botair’s church-building activity, this would still, perhaps, place
the latter in the ninth or early tenth century, and certainly before

Notes49

St Olaf’s visit; cf. Söderberg, 1922, 242–243, 246; Smedberg,
1973, 163–166; Introduction, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii, note 2.
10/3. The Swedish dialect word häskap, ‘hushåll, matlag’ (so Hellquist)
and the Old Swedish häskaper, ‘familj’ appear to be related to
the Old Icelandic hýski with a similar meaning; see ÍO, s. v.
hyski. Hellquist compares these forms to the southern Swedish
dialect word höske ; see Hellquist, 1980, s.v. hjon and references.
10/4. In the manuscript, a sixteenth-century hand has added in themargin: ‘consecratum A.° 1’, that is ‘consecration number one’.
10/7. sielfs vilia: ‘free-will’ in the sense of their own volition. A
similar expression was used in relation to the forging of links
with Sweden; see Note to 6/16. The concept of a free acceptanceof Christianity contradicts the legend recorded by Strelow (1633,
131) and seems more likely; see Note to 8/1–10.
10/10. According to Olsson (1984, 29) the ﬁrst element of theplace-name Atlingabo contains the personal name Atle and thewhole is to be interpreted as ‘Atles ättlingars område’ (‘Atle’s
family’s area’). He cites as additional evidence the existence ofa farm in the parish called Lilla Atlings. The name-element -ings
is thought to indicate the inhabitants of a certain area, or descendants from a certain family, but not all names with this element
have such a derivation; cf. Olsson, 1984, 27–28.
10/11. Farþaim. The element -haim corresponds to -hem in placenames on the mainland. Olsson (1984, 25) proposes the meaning‘bygd’, ‘bebyggd trakt’, ‘gård’, ‘by’ and states that in ‘genuin
dialekt’ the pronunciation of this element is /aim/, /um/ or /ume/,which might account for the lack of an h following the þ. Söderberg(1879, 36) notes that h is frequently dropped at the beginning of
the second element of composite words. Olsson assumes that theﬁrst element contains *fardh, ‘ställe där man kan färdas fram’,related to the verb fara in the sense of ‘färdas’ (‘travel forth’) andsuggests that a natural gravel ridge in the area could have provided a suitable causeway. It seems likely that a natural featurelies behind this place-name and Gustavson (1938, 11) dismisses
the suggestion, put forward by Pipping (1919, 19), that the ﬁrst
element could be related to a personal name with the form
Fardhe.
10/12. The verb briskas is probably related to a word meaning‘broad’. Compare Swedish bred, Norwegian brei (d )ska, ‘spreadout’, Riksmål briske sig (Nynorsk briska seg), ‘puff oneself up’,

50

Guta saga

and Swedish dialect breska, ‘to spread out’, particularly to spreadout one’s legs; cf. Falk and Torp, 1903–1906, s. v. briske sig;
Norsk riksmålsordbok, 1937–1957, s. v. briske ; Norsk ordbok,
1966– , s. v. briska.
10/13. at mairu maki. Cf. Swedish mak in i sakta mak, ‘withouthurrying’, and maka in maka åt sig, ‘move something nearer’. In
Norwegian Riksmål, make seg means ‘take it easy’, in Danish
dialect mag means ‘comfortable’, and in Icelandic makindi means‘rest, ease’; cf. SAOB, s. v. mak ; maka; Norsk riksmålsordbok,
1937–1957, s. v. mak; make; C–V, s. v. makindi; Note to 10/18–19.
10/14. In the manuscript, a sixteenth-century hand has added in themargin ‘LEX et conditio Episcopo Lincopensj Visitaturo designata’, that is ‘The law and agreement concerning the bishop of
Linköping’s visits drawn up’. Most editions record the following
section as chapter 5.
10/16. The natural route eastwards from Scandinavia would havebeen down through Russia, as the text says. To stop in Gotland on
the way would have been convenient and, once Gotland had been
converted, the itinerant bishops would no doubt have wished toencourage church-building; cf. Note to 8/10; Introduction, p. xlvi.
10/16–17. Þan tima war vegr oystra um Ryzaland ok Grikland
fara. The concept of a well-used eastern route (via the Dvina andthe Dnieper) existed also in Old Icelandic. It passed throughRussia, the Baltic countries and parts of Eastern Europe; cf.
C–V, s. v. austrvegr. During the twelfth century, this easterlyroute was dropped in favour of a more westerly route, along the
Vistula to the Dniester and the Black Sea, and Gotland’s importance as a staging post might have declined. The author appears
to indicate that vegr oystra was no longer by that route; cf.
Pernler, 1977, 60 note 3; Foote and Wilson, 1979, 227–228.
10/18–19. The ﬁrst churches were certainly privately-sponsored byland-owners, principally as baptismal and burial churches. A
private church (called a hœgendiskirkja in Norway) is referred toin the laws. Such churches were usually built on the estates of themen who paid for them and the word hœgendi is related to words
meaning ‘convenience’ and ‘comfort’; cf. Note to 10/13. As lateas the twelfth century, churches were being built and ﬁnanced
privately, but by the end of the following century, churches wereself-ﬁnancing; cf. Hildebrand, 1879–1953, III, 80–81; KL, s. v.
Fabrica; Patronatsrätt ; Privatkyrka ; Introduction, p. xlv.

Notes51

10/21. hoygsta: ‘highest’. This word possibly reﬂects what would
have been written in the salutation of a letter, and Pernler (1977,62) suggests that the Gotlanders had sent to the bishop for
assistance in a time of famine. One of the courtesy adjectives forbishops as late as the nineteenth century was högvördig, an
attributive employed in much the same way as the word ‘Lord’is used in addressing English bishops, and Herra in Iceland; see
Rask, 1843, 56. The adjective might be in the superlative because
there is evidence that the see of Linköping, founded in 1120, wasranked only next below the archbishopric of Uppsala, preceding
Skara; cf. Schück, 1959, 400–401; Hellström, 1996, 112. Certainly, Linköping was regarded as important enough, during thetwelfth century, to be the venue for a meeting in 1152 or 1153 ledby the papal legate and future pope, Nicholas Breakspear, andwas being considered for the primacy; cf. Schück, 1959, 49–50;
Pernler, 1977, 57. The term ‘highest’ would not have been usedin this sense after 1164 when the archbishopric of Uppsala wasfounded and Lindqvist notes that it was not because the bishopof Linköping was the ‘highest’ that he was approached, but
because he was the ‘nearest’. Alternatively, ‘highest’ could be
distinguishing the permanent bishop in Linköping from a numberof itinerant bishops, in which case the phrase about his being the‘nearest’ was an explanation inserted by the author; see Lindqvist,
1960–1962, 115.
Leonkopungr is one of several forms of the name Linköping.
Others, include Lingköpunger, Liongköpunger, Lynköpunger, andLiungaköpunger; see Hellquist, 1980, s. v. Linköping. Läfﬂer (1877,77) interprets the form of the place-name in Guta saga as an
attempt by a Gotlander to render the Swedish pronunciation. See
also Noreen, 1904, 119 note 2. The laghþing of Östergötland wascalled the Liongaþing and its meetings were held at a crossroads near Linköping; cf. KL, s. v. Liongaþing; Ting ; Palmqvist,
1961, 40–47. The see of Linköping was the third to be instituted
in Sweden, after Skara and Sigtuna, probably at about the sametime as those of Strängnäs and Västerås, that is around 1100, andbefore Uppsala in the 1130s; see Introduction, pp. xlvii–xlviii;
Tunberg, 1913, 16, 21; Gallén, 1958, 6.
10/22. þaim nestr. During the Middle Ages the bishopric of Linköping
covered Östergötland, north and west Småland (i. e. excluding
Värend, south-east Småland, which transferred to the see of52

Guta saga

Växjö in 1163), Kalmar, Öland and Gotland; see Hildebrand,
1879–1953, III, 85; KL, s. v. Småland. As suggested in Note to
10/21 the bishop might have been solicited for help and theinclusion of Gotland in the see of Linköping may have been aconsequence of that request.
Pernler (1977, 67) thinks it probable that the phrase steddum
ret implies that the Gutnalþing had made the arrangements now
recorded with the bishop. The details are not only given here, but
in a number of ecclesiastical diplomas and are set out by Bishop
Bengt and his predecessor, Karl (†1220), and conﬁrmed by thepapal legate, Wilhelm; see DS I, 690–691, 693, nos. 832, 837; DS
II, 219, no. 1174; SL IV, 313–318; Introduction, pp. xlvii–xlviii.
The archbishop, Andreas Suneson, was also called upon to support the Gotlanders in their claim for special status. Pernler and
Wessén both draw attention to the several correspondences between the texts of Guta saga and DS I, 690–691, no. 832 (theletter from Archbishop Andreas Suneson of Lund and Bishops
Karl and Bengt of Linköping) as well as differences in theirperspective; see, for translation, SL IV, 313–314.
10/23. reþskep giera: ‘lend [his] support’. From the Gotlanders’perspective the bishop was serving their pastoral needs rather
than exercising a right.
10/24. The text of the Latin letter adds non nisi, ‘only’ and that theisland was divided into thirds, in tribus terræ trientibus; see DS
I, 690; SL IV, 314.
10/25. miþ tolf mannum sinum. Pernler (1977, 71) notes that there
is a discrepancy here between Guta saga and the primary sources,in that the latter specify that the farmers should supply twelve
horses, which would be one short if the bishop had not brought
his own. In Östgötalagen the expression is speciﬁcally ‘mæþmannum tolf ok sialuær han þrattande’; cf. CIO, Kristnu balkær,12; SL I, 12, 26–27.
10/26. miþ bonda hestum. The bishop could not easily have brought
horses across to Gotland and would therefore have had to borrow
horses for himself and his entourage. A similar arrangement is
mentioned in the Gulaþing area, which is broken by fjords; see
Pernler, 1977, 73. Paragraph 33 of the church law section ofGulaþingslo≈g, Um reiðskiota biscopi (NGL I, 20), states that 18
horses are to be provided.
10/29. þry borþ ok ai maira. Nothing is mentioned of these arrange-

Notes53

ments in Guta lag and there are no exactly parallel descriptionsof the number of meals to be provided at visitations in otherSwedish secular laws; see Pernler, 1977, 74. There is evidence
that the number of days which the bishop of Linköping’s visits
could last was reduced to two in 1248 and in 1279 the amount offood to be provided was speciﬁed, but not the number of meals;cf. SL I, 26–27; Pernler, 1977, 77; KL, s. v. Gengärd and references.
10/30–31. att borþ, miþ tolf oyrum. Each öre was 1/8 mark. The
details about payments relating to the consecration of altars andchurches do not occur in the letter from Archbishop Andreas andBishops Karl and Bengt and could be a later addition; cf. DS I,
690, no. 832; Pernler, 1977, 80. It is probable that it was the lay
people who ‘caused the churches to be built’ that paid for these
consecrations; see Note to 10/18–19.
12/2–3. Af presti andrum huerium: ‘From every second priest’. It
is clear from DS I, 690, no. 832, which refers to ‘half thechurches’, that this phrase must be parallel to the earlier þriþia
huert ar, which certainly means ‘every third year’. The phrase
thus means ‘every second priest (on the island)’, or half the priests
on the island, and not ‘every other priest’, referring to all priests
who have not had any consecration performed, as assumed by
Schlyter (CIG, 101). As indicated in the Note to 10/30–31, it isprobable that it was not, in fact, the priests who paid for theconsecrations.
12/3. um tilquemda siþ: ‘as a visitation tax’. Schlyter’s reading is
um tilqwemd sina, meaning ‘at his visit’; see CIG, 101. This involves two changes to the text. Hjelmqvist (1903, 169–173) suggests a single change, to um tilquemda tiþ, ‘at the time of arrival’.
Pipping (GLGS, 67 note 5) simply interprets the word siþ as ‘tax’,
that is, equivalent to a Latin pro visitationis consuetudine. It
seems preferable not to alter the text where a reasonable meaning
can be obtained from the manuscript as it stands, but cf. SL IV, 318.
12/4. Af andrum huerium presti: ‘From every other priest’. Hjelmqvist(1903, 162–169), appears to be correct when he takes this phrase
to refer to the remainder of the priests in this instance, that is,
those who do not pay a tax in kind that year (but cf. Note to
12/2–3), and the Latin text supports this view. The stipulation is
open to misinterpretation as ﬁrst stated and the author expands
on it (sum ai gierþi gingerþ a þy ari) to remove the ambiguity;
cf. SL IV, 314–315.

54

Guta saga

12/5. The word lausn was often used to convey the sense of apayment made to free one from an obligation. Here it seems to
be used to contrast payment made in money with that made in
kind, on every alternate visit.
12/6. The expression til skuraþar originally meant ‘notched’ intoa wooden tally, and is another instance of the difference between
Guta saga and Archbishop Suneson’s letter (DS I, 690, no. 832).
The letter refers in this connection to a more formal writtenagreement which is not implied in the wording in Guta saga; cf.
Läfﬂer, 1908–1909, Part 1, 165–167; SL IV, 315–316, 318; Introduction, p. xlvii. There is a possible indication in this passage
that there was some opposition to the money being collected, anda reminder that the payment was one supported by custom andregulation. The letter states that the payment must be madehumiliter. Details of the visitation taxes paid are recorded in a
number of sources; see SRS III, 290–293; SL IV, 316.
12/11. i sama þriþiungi. The question of disputes is not covered by
DS I, 690–691, no. 832, although the division of Gotland into
thirds is referred to. Disputes would, however, have been resolved during the bishop’s visitation. Guta lag and Guta saga are
the only sources giving details of the thirds as administrative
areas, as opposed to ecclesiastical divisions, in Gotland. Sinceother sources refer only to siettungs- and landsþing, it is possiblethat the stress laid upon the thirds was the result of clericalinﬂuence in the writing of both Guta lag and Guta saga; cf.
Steffen, 1945, 247–248; Note to 2/19. Laws similar to that described here applied in Iceland in relation to the Quarter Courts.
Disputes could not be referred from one Quarter Court to another, but had to be referred to the ﬁfth Court for appeal.
12/13. til aldra manna samtalan. This would involve the referral of
the case to the Gutnalþing. Although the concept of courts at
various levels, to which disputed cases were referred, seems tohave existed, and is mentioned in Gutnish law, the nature of theactual mechanism involved is not clear; cf. GLGS, 46; KL, s. v.
Ting på Gotland. The genitive -ar ending was sometimes dropped
in nouns after the preposition til, as in this case; see Noreen,
1904, 300–301.
12/14. The phrase hetningar eþa dailu mal could simply be an
example of parallelism, or it could be that the scribe intended toreplace the single word by the following phrase, and omitted toNotes55

delete hetningar eþa; cf. Wadstein, 1894–1895, 7; Bugge, 1877–
1878, 263–264.
12/17. A detailed discussion of the history and function of theofﬁce of proastr is given by Pernler (1977, 151–216). The onlyinference that can be made from the cryptic reference here tooffences too great for the proastr to absolve is that the proastr
was the equivalent of the rural dean (praepositus ruralis). Whether
at the time there were three (one for each third) or more, andwhether any particular dean is being referred to here, it is notpossible to say; cf. Pernler, 1977, 161, 162. The ﬁrst dean forwhom any record remains is Nicolaus of Dalhem, the parish eastof Roma. His monument is incorporated in the porch of thechurch at Dalhem and is dated to the end of the twelfth century.
The ﬁrst mention of proastr in a datable written source is from1213, in a letter from Pope Innocent III; cf. DS I, 178, no. 152;
Pernler, 1977, 153. It is worth noting that in Gotland the local
priests had the right to elect their dean. This privilege was speciﬁcally conﬁrmed by Pope Innocent IV in September, 1253, probably
because it had been questioned by the bishop of Linköping,along with the division of the tithe and the selection of parish
priests; cf. DS I, 366, nos. 411, 412; Pernler, 1977, 155. The
arrangement was further conﬁrmed by Pope Boniface VIII in a
letter dated August, 1296, where it was also implied that Pope
Gregory X had issued a similar edict, although this latter is notpreserved; cf. DS II, 217, no. 1171.
12/18. millan Valborga messur ok helguna messur. This period
covers the late spring to early autumn months (1st May to 1st
November). The stipulation is obviously in part a practical measure: the crossing would have been uncomfortable and dangerous
outside these dates. Walburga (†779) was an English nun who,
according to tradition, took part in the conversion of the Germans and was canonised after the appearance of a miraculous
healing oil on her tombstone. Her four festivals are often associated in medieval Sweden with events in the ﬁscal year, rather
like Lady Day (March 25th). For example, Valborgsmässoskat
was a spring-time tax, which was connected with the ledung; seeKL, s. v. Valborg.
12/20. The low level of ﬁnes to be paid by Gotlanders to the bishop
was the subject of much disputing and dissatisfaction on the partof Bishop Bengt, as witnessed by his letters. The fact that no part

56

Guta sagaof the tithe was due to the bishop, but that it was divided between
the priest, the church and the poor had also been conﬁrmed byPopes Gregory IX and Innocent III, despite the objections at
various times of the bishops of Linköping; cf. DS I, nos. 256,
270, 271, 411; Bullarium Danicum, 1931–1932, I, 190, 191, 223;
Skov, 1946, 114; Pernler, 1977, 133–138.
Chapter 4
12/21. In the manuscript, a sixteenth-century hand has added in
the margin: ‘Bellica expeditio qva conditione suscepta olim
fuerit’, that is ‘Under what conditions war expeditions were
undertaken at that time’.
12/23. The word snekkia or sneckia is one of several used in
Scandinavia to describe ships used in the levy (longships), although it could also apparently be used to designate a nonmilitary ship; cf. KL, s. v. Skibstyper. In the context of war,snekkia appears to have been applied to a long and narrow craft,and especially to the Swedish levy ships; see Foote and Wilson,
1979, 236. It seems probable that snekkia designated the smallest
type of warship; see Falk, 1912, 99. The standard capacity of thelevy ship was 20 benches and thus seven standard rowing crews
would have amounted to 280 men, at two men per bench; see
Foote and Wilson, 1979, 235. Evidence shows, however, that thecarrying capacity of the ships was much larger than that, perhaps
80 warriors or more and, since it is particularly stated that thevessels should sail to the levy, the forces expected to be provided
along with the ships might have been in the region of 560 men;cf. Falk, 1912, 100, 102. The other type of warship was a 60-oared‘dragon’ or skeið, which was a deeper-draughted vessel, unsuitablefor coastal waters; cf. Christiansen, 1997, 15–16. The fact thatseven ships were stipulated has led to discussion about the administrative arrangements in Gotland at the time. The three thirds
were each divided into two giving six siettungar and each ofthese would obviously be expected to supply one vessel. It issuggested by Björkander (1898, 48–50) that the seventh vessel
was to be provided by Visby, which by that time had begun todistance itself administratively from Gotland at large, and thisseems to be a reasonable assumption, although he argues that it
was speciﬁcally the German community that had the commitment. In a letter dated 1353 from the rådmän of Visby to theirNotes57

counterparts (‘consules’) in Lübeck, in which it is implied that
Visby only has an obligation to support the king of Sweden’s
conﬂicts with the heathens, there is speciﬁc mention of a ship(‘navis dicte snicke’) with the implication that it is to be provided by the Visby community as a whole; cf. DS VI, 453–454,
no. 4958; Yrwing, 1978, 21, 22. There are a number of placenames on the coast of Gotland containing the element snäck-. Of
these, Snäckviken, just north of Visby, is one that has a suitable
harbour for the ledung to assemble in. The name could in thiscase be related to snekkia, although other such names would notnecessarily have had that connection; cf. Olsson, 1984, 132–135.
From the middle of the twelfth century until the beginning of
the thirteenth there was a campaign against the heathens of theBaltic countries instigated by the papacy and supported by the
Scandinavian monarchy. In 1199, as a result of an appeal fromPope Innocent III, Bishop Albert visited Gotland to recruit forhis crusade in defence of the Christian Livonians (inhabitants ofnorthern Latvia and southern Estonia) against their heathen countrymen; see STFM I, 113–114, no. 55. The Gotlanders werereluctant to take part in this crusade, since the objects of theattack were their own trading partners, although they had apparently taken part in an earlier mission to Estonia; cf. Pernler,
1977, 62, 108; Björkander, 1898, 28; Yrwing, 1991, 164. In
1226, the Gotlanders (and the Danes on Gotland) actually refused to take part in a similar crusade against the islanders ofÖsel when urged by the Papal Legate, although the Germans
agreed to do so; see Heinrici Chronicon Livoniae, 1959, 328;
Yrwing, 1963, 94; KL, s. v. Korståg; Christiansen, 1997, 100.
12/24–25. The ledung was the name given to the arrangements
made for seaborne warfare in Scandinavia in the early Middle
Ages. The landowning farmers were obliged to supply both men
and equipment for the ﬂeet as a levy. Gradually, this obligation
was discharged by the payment of a land tax in kind. In mainland
Sweden, the hundari was the unit used to determine the level of
support to be given to the levy, but in Guta saga there is no
mention of the hundari and the siettungr seems to have been theadministrative division behind the number of ships speciﬁed,with the addition of an extra ship for Visby; cf. Note to 12/23.
The levy is considered to be at least as old as the Vendel timeand possibly as old as the Migration period, while the hundari

58

Guta saga

division is considered by some scholars to be not much older
than the eleventh century. Hyenstrand, however, thinks that thiswas the original division; cf. Introduction, p. xxv. By the time ofMagnus Eriksson, the ledungslami had replaced the actual provision of ships, and armies of mounted knights had replaced theseaborne forces; cf. KL, s. v. Leidang.
12/26. ﬁrir missumar. Any summons for a levy after midsummer
would be unreasonably close to the harvest, since the muster
would extend beyond the middle of August. The summons had
therefore to be made before 25th May.
12/27–14/1. The Gotlanders probably exercised the option of not
taking part in certain of the musters for the reason given earlier;cf. Note to 12/23.
14/1. atta vikna vist. This indicates the maximum expected duration of the muster. The men would have to have returned by midAugust for the harvest. The change in time unit used from manaþr
to vika might have been motivated to some extent by desire foralliteration with vist in the original statute.
14/2–3. The option of making payment instead of providing men
and vessels was probably current at the time of writing. In 1285
a standard tax was imposed whether the levy was called out or
not, and if this tax had already been brought in, it is reasonable
to suppose that it would have been mentioned; cf. Introduction,
pp. xlviii, l, li–lii. Four marks in coin was equivalent to one markin silver, so the amount of the tax would correspond to 10 marks
in silver per vessel; see SL IV, 259, 263.
14/5. The word laiþingslami means literally ‘levy-hindrance’ or ‘levyincapacity’. The evidence seems to point to a tax being enforced
as an alternative to the provision of warships in Denmark, Sweden
and Åland, while the conversion of the levy to a ﬁxed annual tax
occurred in Norway from middle of the twelfth century; see
Wadstein, 1894–1895, 7; KL, s. v. Leidang, cols 438–442, 446–
450, 455–458.
14/6. The method of summoning people to some meeting or action
by the passing around of a specially marked token was usedwidely in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. The token was sometimes an iron arrow, sometimes a wooden stick with a burned end
and sometimes a cross (if the summons were to church services).
In Sweden, the form of the baton seems to have also varied with
its use, and according to whether it was intended to be used onceNotes59

only or repeatedly as an ofﬁcial symbol; see KL, s. v. Budstikke.
Ihre (1769, s. v. Budkaﬂe) describes it thus: ‘baculus nuntiatorius. . . Utebantur hoc nuntii genere veteres scripturae & literarum
ignari, ut certis in vulgus cognitis ﬁguris indicarent, quid rerum
ageretur. In primis vero notabile est, quod ab altera parte ustulati
essent, ab altera fune trajecti.’ This description refers to a missilelike baton with a scorched end, used to pass messages before
reading and writing were widespread. It seems more likely, however, that a marked baton, passed from area to area to act as a callto arms, was intended here; cf. Rietz, 1862–1955, s. v. Bu(d)-kavel.
14/8. halfan manaþ til ferþar boas. The information here enables
a typical timetable to be constructed, assuming that the levy day
was just before midsummer:
25th May:
summons issued and baton passed around (St Urban’s day)1st June:men gather and prepare their ships, arms and provisions
15th June:
men wait in readiness for a favourable wind
22nd June: levy day, four weeks after the summons
25th June:
midsummer
29th June:last day for sailing (St Peter’s day)24th August: last day for return

The summons could have been issued earlier, but time had to beallowed for sowing to be completed; cf. SL IV, 321.
14/9. The word *garlakr is related to Swedish gar, used of thecopper-reﬁning process, and the Old Icelandic go≈rr, ‘complete’.
The more recent dialect forms found in Gotland, garlak andgarlaker, are translated as ‘waken, tilreds, färdig’; cf. Hellquist,
1980, s. v. gar ; GO, s. v. garlak.
14/10. The expression byriar biþa occurs in mainland Swedish,Norwegian and Icelandic sources and was obviously an accepted
concept; cf. for example Upplandslagen, SL I, 95; Fornsvenska
texter, 1959, 22; Konungs skuggsjá, 1920, 89; Flóamanna saga,ch. 21 (ÍF XIII, 278). The Swedish dialect bör, sometimes byr,
retains the meaning ‘medvind’; see Hellquist, 1980, s. v. bör ;Rietz, 1862–1955, s. v. Byr; Kalkar, 1881–1918, s. v. Bør ; Børfast;
Söderwall, 1884–1973, s. v. byr and references.
14/13. at saklausu. This was a very commonly occurring legal
phrase to indicate ‘without blame’; cf. CIS XIII, s. v. saklös.
14/13–14. The ships would have been able to hold many more men
under sail than under oar, and the work would have been lessphysically demanding.

60

Guta saga

14/18. Here byr is being used to mean ‘wind’ in general rather thanspeciﬁcally ‘favourable wind’, which is the more common usage;cf. Note to 14/10.
14/19–21. St Peter’s and St Paul’s day is June 29th, so this assembly would be the summer or early autumn one, that is the ﬁrst one
after the ﬁnal sailing day for the levy. This date is consistent withthe chronology suggested in the Note to 14/8.
14/20. In Norwegian the word nefndarmenn is used to designate
men who have been chosen to perform a particular duty, particularly in relation to the leidang. It is clear that the men referred tohere are fulﬁlling a similar function and the number 12 might
point to a hundari division of the island; cf. Hyenstrand, 1989,
122; KL, s. v. Nefndarmenn, col. 282; Nämnd, col. 446; Edgärdsman.
14/22–23. kunungs aiþr. That is, the oath just described concerning
the inability to satisfy the levy obligation. The stipulation that noother commissioned oath must be given on the island, except thisparticular one, is puzzling. It might refer to a speciﬁc incident
when oaths were taken illegally; or perhaps be an indirect reference to the civil war, and the building of the wall around Visby,in 1288, in which case Guta saga must be dated later than
generally assumed; cf. STFM I, 300–303, no. 144.
14/24 bort rekinn af sinu riki. It has been suggested that this passage
refers to a speciﬁc incident; see Introduction, pp. xlviii, xlix–l.
14/25. haldi hanum um þry ar. The implication is that until thesituation had been stable in Sweden for three years, the Gotlanders
should not release their money, but that when the new regime
was established, all outstanding tax should be paid.
14/26. liggia lata. It is possible that it was intended that the money
should be invested in the interim.
14/29. Lykt bref. The implication here is that any negotiations
between the Gotlanders and the king were to be conﬁdential.
The oldest Swedish royal seal belonged to kings Karl Sverkersson(1161–1167) and Knut Eriksson (1167–c.1196) who reigned after
St Erik (†1160). A portion of the seal of Erik X Knutsson (1208–
1216) is preserved, showing two crowned leopards facing eachother; cf. Hildebrand, 1884–1885, 9. The seal would act not only
to preserve privacy, but also as an identiﬁcation of the letter anda guarantee of its being genuine. The immediate recipient of theletter might be illiterate, or not be privy to its contents.

Glossary61

GLOSSARY
All words are listed in the form found in the text, but only under the headword if they are in an oblique case or conjugated form and would otherwise occur within two lines of the head-word. Translations refer principally to the words as used in the text of Guta saga, although alternatives
are given if they provide additional support for the interpretation.
References are to page and line numbers of the text. All instances arecited except for the nominative of personal pronouns and common adverbs
and conjunctions. References to words and forms that are the subject ofeditorial emendations are placed in square brackets [ ]. Head-words that
do not occur in that form in the text of Guta saga are marked by asterisks.

Abbreviations* form not found in the text of Guta sagaacc. accusative
a[s] [a[s]m, a[s]f, a[s]n] accusative [singular] [masculine, feminine, neuter]ap [apm, apf, apn] accusative plural [masculine, etc.]adj. adjective
adv. adverb(ial)comp. comparative
conj. conjunction
dat. datived[s] [d[s]m, d[s]f, d[s]n] dative [singular] [masculine, etc.]
dp [dpm, dpf, dpn] dative plural [masculine, etc.]def. art. deﬁnite article
dem. demonstrativef. feminine noungen. genitiveg[s] [g[s]m, g[s]f, g[s]n] genitive [singular] [masculine, etc.]
gp [gpm, gpf, gpn] genitive plural [masculine, etc.]
i[p] inﬁnitive [passive]
imp. imperative
m. masculine noun
md. middle voicen. neuter noun
nom. nominativen[s] [n[s]m, n[s]f, n[s]n] nominative [singular] [masculine, etc.]
np [npm, npf, npn] nominative plural [masculine, etc.]
num. numeral
pers. personal
pl. pluralposs. possessive
pret. preterite
pron. pronoun
prp. preposition

62

Guta saga

ptc. participle (present or past)
reﬂ. reﬂexive
rel. relative
sing. singularsubj. subjunctive
sup. supine
superl. superlative
v. verb
2s 2nd person singular present indicative
3s[p] 3rd person singular present indicative [passive]
1p 1st person plural present indicative
2p 2nd person plural present indicative
3p 3rd person plural present indicative
subj. 1s 1st person singular present subjunctive
subj. 3s 3rd person singular present subjunctive
subj. 3p 3rd person plural present subjunctive
pret. 2s 2nd person singular past indicative
pret. 3s[p] 3rd person singular past indicative [passive]
pret. 3p[p] 3rd person plural past indicative [passive]
pret. subj. 3s 3rd person singular past subjunctive
pret. subj. 3p 3rd person plural past subjunctive

a1 prp. with dat. in; at. 2/6. 10/4. 10/10. 10/11. 12/5. 14/19. withacc. into; to; in; against; (on) top of. 2/3. 4/17. 4/18. 4/18. 6/1.
6/11. 6/21. 8/19. 12/23.
a2 see aiga.
af prp. with dat. from, away from, out of; of, about, concerning.
2/21. 2/23. 4/8. 4/15. 4/16. 6/4. 6/13. 8/1. 8/3. 8/15. 10/12. 10/24.
12/2. 12/4. 12/5. 12/11. 12/14. 14/24. as adv. 6/10.
agin adv. in return, back. 8/6.
ai adv. not, no. 2/23. 2/27. 4/2. 4/5. 4/9. 4/15. 8/16. 8/24. 10/26.
10/29. 12/4. 12/4. 12/6. 12/12. 12/13. 12/16. 12/17. 12/18. 12/20.
12/23. 12/26. 12/27. 14/2. 14/2. 14/4. 14/10. 14/12. 14/13. 14/15.
14/17. 14/24. 14/30. Cf. e.
aiga v. own, have (possession); claim, have right (to do something); have duty (to do something); shall (auxiliary use). i 2/14.
2/16. 2/24. 3s a 10/28. 12/3. 12/10. 12/15. 12/24. 14/15. 3p aigu
6/18. 6/23. 6/25. 12/8. 14/12. 14/18. 14/24. 14/26. pret. 3p attu 2/25.
aina see *ann.
*ainsambr adj. alone. nsn ainsamt 10/31.
aiþr m. oath. ns 14/22. 14/23. as aiþ 14/20.
al see *skulu.
*aldr pron. and adj. whole, everything; each; all. nsn alt 2/12.

Glossary63

4/20. dsm allum 14/29. asm allan 10/3. asn alt 2/24. 10/26. npm
allir 4/23. gp aldra 8/27. 12/13. dp allum 2/15. apm alla 2/23.
6/23. apf allar 6/18. apn all 8/12.
aldri adv. never (again). 2/4.
allar1 adv. everywhere. 10/12.
allar2, allir, allum see *aldr.
almennilika adv. generally. 10/7. 10/9.
alt see *aldr.
alteri n. altar. ns 10/31. 12/1. gs alteris 10/30.
*ann num. one. Also used as the indef. art. (4/2. 4/4. 4/9. 8/7). asm
ann 2/5. 4/9. asf aina 4/2. 4/4. 8/7. 14/6. asn att 6/8. 10/30. See
also *ainsambr.
annar num. and adj. second; other; following. nsm 2/17. nsf annur
10/10. dsm andrum 12/2. 12/4. dsn andru 14/3. asm annan
12/14. asf aþra 8/18. asn annat 6/9. dp andrum 8/5. apn annur
6/19.
*annar huer num. and adj. every second; every other. dsm andrum
huerium 12/2. 12/4. Cf. *þriþi huer.
*annsuara v. answer. pret. 3p annsuaraþu [4/11].
annur see annar.
*ar n. year; (good) harvest. ds ari 12/5. 12/8. 14/4. 14/4. as ar
6/12. 10/24. 14/26. np ar [14/27]. ap ar 14/25.
at1 prp. with dat. for; in; by, at, with; in respect of, concerning. 4/5.
10/13. 10/29. 10/30. 12/7. 12/8. 14/3. 14/4. 14/13. 14/15. 14/18.
14/29. as adv. at (bieras) 14/23.
at2 inﬁnitive mark to. 6/6. 6/20. 12/15. 12/22. 12/27.
at bieras v. md. happen. See *biera.
atr adv. back. 8/6. 12/8.
att see *ann.
atta num. eight. 14/1.
attu see aiga.
*auka v. increase. pret. 3sp aukaþis 2/22.
aþra see annar.
*baiþas v. md. ask permission, request. pret. 3p baddus 4/7.
*band n. prohibition. See *kornband.
*barmbr m. womb; lap; bosom, breast, esp. of a woman. ds barmi
2/9. 2/9.
*barn n. child. ap barn 10/2.
*baugr m. ring. dp baugum 2/12.

64

Guta sagabaþu see *biþia.
*beþi (. . . ok) conj. both (. . . and). baþi 8/12. Cf. *beþir.
*beþir pron. both. nn baþi 10/31. 12/1.
biauþa v. with dat. summon. i 12/24. ptc. nsn buþit 12/27. 14/4.
*biera v. give birth to; md. happen, occur. i (at) bieras 14/23. ptc.
dsm burnum 6/9.
*binda v. bind. ptc. nsn bundit 2/12.
biskupr m. bishop. ns 10/24. 10/28. 12/3. 12/5. 12/7. 12/10. gs
biskups 10/21. 12/16. 12/19. ds biskupi 10/14. 12/15. as biskup
12/21. np biskupar 10/15.
biþa v. await; with gen. wait for. i 12/15. 14/10. 14/11.
*biþia v. beg, request. pret. 3p (til) baþu 6/6.
*blota v. with dat. sacriﬁce. pret. 3p blotaþu 4/18.
blotan f. sacriﬁce. ns 8/18. as blotan 4/21. 4/22.
bo n. property. See boland, *Atlingabo.
boa v. live; md. arm oneself. i boas 14/8. 3p boa 12/12. ptc. nsm
boandi 8/22.
boland n. inhabited land. ns 2/13.
*bondi m. husband; farmer. ds bonda 2/10. gp bonda 10/26.
*borg f. fortiﬁcation. as burg 4/4. See also *Þorsborg.
bort adv. away; on (one’s) way. 2/23. 2/25. 2/26. 2/28. 4/1. 4/10. 14/24.
*borþ n. meal (time). as borþ 10/30. ap borþ 10/29. 12/2. 12/4.
*bragþ n. time, point in time. ds bragþi 12/7. 12/9.
*braiþyx f. battle-axe. as braiþyxi 8/7.
bref n. letter. ns 14/29.
brenna v. burn. i 8/19. 8/20. 8/20. 8/25. pret. 3p brendu 8/17.
ptc. nsf (o)brend 8/26.
*briskas v. md. spread, spread out. pret. 3p briskaþus 10/12.
*bulli m. round drinking vessel. ap bulla 8/6.
bundit see *binda.
burg see *borg.
burnum see *biera.
*buþ n. command, summons, bidding. ds buþi 10/6. np buþ 14/14.
14/17. See also *forbuþ.
buþit see biauþa.
buþkaﬂi m. summoning baton, message staff. ns 14/6.
byggia v. live; settle (down), establish oneself. i 4/14. 4/16. i md.
(þar) byggias (ﬁrir) 4/8. pret. 3p bygþu 2/6. pret. 3p md. bygþus
(þar ﬁrir) 2/27. 4/1. 4/3. 4/15.
*byn f. request. ds byn 10/18.

Glossary65*bynahus n. oratory. as bynahus 8/8.
byr m. favourable wind; wind. ns 14/11. 14/12. 14/18. gs byriar 14/10.
dagr m. day; speciﬁed day. ns 12/26. as dag 12/25. 14/12. dp
dagum 2/2.
daila f. dispute, conﬂict. ns 12/12. np dailur 12/10.
*dailumal n. matter of conﬂict. np dailumal 12/14.
*dombr m. domain. See *kristindombr.
*dotir f. daughter. as dotur 8/22. dp dytrum 4/19.
draumbr m. dream. ns 2/8. as draum 2/10. 2/11.
*droyma v. impersonal with dat. dream. pret. 3s droymdi 2/7.
*drytning f. empress, queen. as drytningina 4/12.
dyma v. judge. i 12/10.
dytrum see *dotir.
e adv. always, (for) ever; continuously. 4/11. 4/11. 4/14. 4/14. 6/2.
14/26. Cf. ai.
*eﬂa v. be able to. 3p eﬂa 14/2. pret. 3s elpti 2/23.
*eldr m. ﬁre. ds eldi 2/3.
ella conj. or. 8/25. Cf. ellar1, eþa.
ellar1 conj. or. 6/19. Cf. ella, eþa.
ellar2 adv. otherwise. 4/21. 12/27.
elpti see *eﬂa.
elzti see *gamal.
*eluitskr adj. bewitched. nsn eluist 2/2.
en1 conj. if. 6/7. 6/20. 10/31. 14/1.
en2 conj. but, however; and. 2/3. 2/5. 2/21. 4/11. 4/22. 6/3. 6/14.
12/8. 12/18. 14/2. 14/8. 14/26.
en3 adv. as part of the conjunctions fyr en, siþan en, þa en 6/6.
6/15. 10/9. 10/14. 10/20. 10/31. 14/2. 14/7. 14/10. 14/12.
engin pron. and adj. none, no one; no. pron. nsm 6/3. 10/8.
adj. nsm 14/22.
enn adv. still, moreover. 4/4. 4/15. 4/16. 8/17. 14/11.
eptir prp. with acc. after. 8/1. 8/17. 12/25. 14/11. 14/19. with dat.
in accordance with, according to. 4/20. 8/7. as adv. after, afterwards, after that. 4/17. 10/1. 12/19.
et conj. that. 2/2. 2/19. 2/23. 2/24. 4/7. 4/9. 4/11. 6/8. 6/12. 10/8.
10/22. 10/23. 12/17. 12/24. 14/7. 14/10. 14/17. 14/17. 14/21.
14/23. See also miþ þy et, þy2.
eþa conj. or. 12/14. 14/17. Cf. ella, ellar1.

66

Guta saga*fa v. get; achieve; be allowed. 1p faum 2/14. pret. 3s ﬁkk 6/4.
8/26. 8/29.
*faigr adj. doomed. superl. asm *faigastr most doomed. faigastan 6/7.
*faldr adj. ill-fated, condemned to failure. superl. *fallastr most
ill-fated. asm fallastan 6/7.
fara v. go (home); travel, leave, cross, pass; move. i 2/26. 6/6.
10/17. 10/28. 12/16. 12/17. 12/27. 14/6. 14/13. [14/15]. subj. 1sfari 6/8. pret. 3s for 8/3. 8/9. 8/19. pret. 3p foru 2/26. 4/1. 4/2.
4/5. 4/7. 10/16. pret. subj. 3s fori 6/15. sup. farit 14/14.
faum see *fa.
*ferþ f. voyage, journey. gs ferþar 14/8. as (her)ferþ 12/23.
ﬁauratigi num. forty. 6/13. 14/2.
ﬁelkunnugr adj. skilled in many things, versatile. nsm [6/10].
ﬁerri adv. a distance, far away. 4/6.
ﬁkk see *fa.
*ﬁleþi n. cattle, beast. ds ﬁleþi 4/19. 4/22.
ﬁrir prp. with acc. before (in time), prior to; to the notice of; incompensation for. 4/12. 4/17. 12/1. 12/25. 12/26. 14/3. 14/9.
with dat. for. 2/10. as adv. þar ﬁrir in that place, see byggia.
ﬁrir niþan prp. with dat. or acc. below. 8/25.
ﬁrir utan prp. with acc. without. 6/18.
ﬂairi, ﬂairum see *margr.
*ﬂya v. ﬂee. ptc. nsm ﬂyandi 8/1.
for see fara.
*forbuþ n. prohibition. ap forbuþ 6/19.
*forfall n. pl. reasons, (legal) causes. dat. forfallum 14/21.
fori see fara.
*forskiel n. pl. conditions, reasons. dat. forskielum 10/23.
foru see fara.
*frels adj. unhindered, free. npm frelsir 6/17.
*frest f. or n. period, speciﬁed time; respite. ds frest 14/12. asfrest 12/25. dp frestum 14/15. 14/18.
*frir adj. free. npm frir 6/17.
*friþr m. peace; freedom. as friþ 6/4. 6/5. 6/23.
*froyia f. wife. See *husfroyia.
fulk n. population; (collective noun) humans; people. ns 2/22. ds
fulki 4/21.
*fulkumin adj. (ptc.) complete. dsm fulkumnum 12/21. See also
kuma.
fydum see fyþa.

Glossary67

fylgia v. with dat. follow, go (along) with, accompany, take part.
i 10/26. 12/22. 14/2.
fyr adv. comp. before, previously. superl. fyrsti ﬁrst. 2/1. 2/3. 2/6. 6/5.
8/15. 10/18. fyr en conj. before 6/15. 10/14. fyr þan conj. before. 6/4.
*fyra v. bring. pret. 3p fyrþu 8/14.
*fyrri adj. comp. previous, former. dsn fyrra 12/8. superl. *fyrstrﬁrst. nsf fyrsti 8/28. 10/4. 10/10. asf fyrstu 2/7.
fyrsti1 see fyr.
fyrsti2, fyrstu see *fyrri.
fyrþu see *fyra.
fyþa v. give birth to; support. i 2/23. ptc. dp (o)fydum 2/15.
gaf see giefa.
*gamal adj. old. superl. elzti eldest. nsm 2/20.
ganga v. go (with a purpose); pass, circulate; enter. i 14/8. 3p
ganga 6/11. pret. 3s gikk 6/11. pret. 3p gingu undir submitted
to. 6/16. ptc. dsm gangnum 4/10. npn gangin 14/27.
gar see giera.
*garlakr adj. prepared, ready. npm garlakir 14/9.
gart see giera.
*garþr m. fence, enclosure; farm, estate; (church-, grave-)yard. dsgarþi 10/3. (Hulm)garþi 8/10. ap (kirkiu)garþa 10/18. (staf)garþa
4/18.
gatu see *gieta.
gialdin see *gielda.
*gief f. gift. dp giefum 8/4.
giefa v. give, grant; hand out, release. i (ut) giefa 14/25. 14/27. 3sp
gief‹s› 14/22. pret. 3s gaf 2/15. 8/5. 8/6. imp. 2p gieﬁn 6/7.
giefum see *gief.
*gielda v. pay a ﬁne, pay out. subj. 3p gialdin 14/2.
giera v. do; collect; make, build; lend; pay. i 10/18. 10/23. 12/7.
14/26. pret. 3s gierþi 6/5. 6/15. 8/8. 8/15. 8/18. 10/3. 12/5. pret.
3sp gierþis 10/9. pret. 3p gierþu 4/4. 4/20. 10/13. 12/6. 12/9.
ptc. nsf gar 10/11. asn gart 6/4.
*gieta v. be able to, have strength to. pret. 3p gatu 4/2. 4/5. 14/13.
gikk see ganga.
*gingerþ f. payment in kind; a sort of tax, paid in the form of provisions. as gingerþ 12/3. 12/5. 12/6. 12/7. 12/9. gp gingerþa 10/29.
gingu see ganga.
ginum prp. with acc. through. 4/6.

68

Guta saga*gutnalþing n. General assembly (alþing) of the Gotlanders.
as gutnalþing 6/22.
*guþ n. idol, (heathen) god. ap guþ 4/18.
*haf n. sea. as haf 6/23. 14/14.
hafa v. have (also as an auxiliary verb); take; hold, retain, keep.
i 2/25. 3p hafa 4/16. 12/27. subj. 3s ‹haﬁ› 6/13. haﬁ 6/14. pret.
3s hafþi 2/5. 4/20. 4/21. 8/22. pret. 3p hafþu 4/22.
*hailigr adj. holy, saint. nsm helgi 8/1. 8/3. 8/6. 8/9. gsm helga
8/8. gsn helga 10/15.
haim adv. home(wards). 10/16. 14/13.
haima adv. at home. 14/15. 14/21.
haiman adv. from home. 6/15.
haita v. be called, be named. i 2/17. 3s haitir 4/3. 4/6. 8/16. 14/4.
3p haita 4/23. pret. 3s hit 2/1. 2/5. 2/6. 8/15. 8/22.
*haiþin adj. heathen. nsn ha‹i›þit 6/1. npm hainir 8/11. apn
haiþin 4/18. 8/12. 12/23.
*halda v. with dat. or acc. hold, retain, keep; support, protect. subj.
3p haldi 14/25. pret. 3p hieldu 6/2. ptc. asn (sik uppi) haldit
4/2. (sik) haldit 4/5.
*halfr adj. half. asm halfan 14/8.
halp see *hielpa.
*hamn f. harbour. as hamn 8/2.
hann m., han f. pers. pron. he, she. nm 16 times. nf 8 times. gm
hans 8/4. 8/25. 10/1. gf hennar 2/9. 2/10. dm hanum 8/5. 8/6.
10/25. 14/25. df henni 2/7. 2/9. am hann 6/6. af hana 8/17.
*haugr m. grave howe. ap hauga 4/18.
*haur adj. high. comp. *hoygri higher. nsf hoygri [12/20]. superl.
*hoygstr highest; also courtesy title, equivalent to ‘Lord’. gsm
hoygsta 10/21. asf hoystu 4/21.
*hegnan f. protection, defence. as hegnan 6/19.
helga, helgi see *hailigr.
*helgun n. saint; pl. All Saints. gp helguna 8/27. 12/18. See
also *messa.
hennar, henni see hann.
*her m. armed force. See *herferþ.
*herferþ f. military expedition. as herferþ 12/23. See also *ferþ.
herra m. lord. ns 4/13.
*herþa v. persist in; in negative imp. = desist from, let (or leave)alone. imp. 2p herþin 8/24.

Glossary69*hestr m. horse. dp hestum 10/26.
hetningar f. pl. hostilities. np 12/14.
hieldu see *halda.
*hielp f. assistance, help, support. as hielp 6/19.
*hielpa v. support, help, assist. pret. 3s halp 8/24.
hier adv. here. 12/15.
*hindra v. hinder. pret. subj. 3s hindraþi 14/18.
hinget adv. here, hither, i. e. to Gotland. 6/25.
*hinn pron., def. art. the other, the one (that, who). npm hinir
12/8.
*hiskepr m. household. as hiskep 10/3.
hit see haita.
*hitta v. discover, ﬁnd. pret. 3s hitti 2/1.
*hoygri, hoygsta see *haur.
*hoyra v. belong. 3s (til) hoyrir 6/24. 3p (til) hoyra 12/15.
hoystu see *haur.
huer pron. and adj. each one; every, each. nsm 4/21. dsm huerium
6/17. 12/3. 12/4. 12/5. dsf huerri 10/30. asf hueria 14/3. asn
huert 2/24. 6/12. 10/24. 14/26.
huer þriþi see þriþi huer.
hugþi see *hyggia*hult n. grove. ap hult 4/17.
*hus n. house. See *bynahus.
*husfroyia f. (house)wife. as husf‹r›oyu 10/2.
*hyggia v. think. pret. 3s hugþi 4/9.
i prp. in, into; on; to; of, within, during. with dat. 2/8. 2/22. 6/17.
8/10. 8/13. 8/18. 8/25. 8/28. 10/3. 10/4. 10/10. 10/10. 10/11.
10/11. 10/12. 10/21. 12/11. 12/19. 14/6. 14/11. 14/12. 14/14.
14/22. with acc. 2/19. 4/1. 4/2. 8/2. 8/8. 8/15. 12/14. 12/23.
iek pers. pron. I. ns 6/8. ds mir 6/7. 6/8. as mik 6/7. 8/21.
iemlika adv. constantly. 6/2.
ier see vara.
ierl m. jarl, earl. ns 6/14. 6/21.
illa adv. unfortunately, badly. 14/23.
*-in sufﬁxed def. art. asm (veg)in 6/24. asf (Faroy)na 4/1.
(drytning)ina 4/13.
innan prp. with acc. in, to, into. 2/26. 6/8. 8/12. 8/27.
insigli n. authority, seal. ds 14/29.
*iorþ f. ground. gs (ufan) iorþar 2/25.

70

Guta saga

ir1 pers. pron. pl. you. nom. 6/7. 6/8. 8/20. 8/20.
ir2, iru see vara.
kaﬂi m. baton. See buþkaﬂi.
*kalla v. call, name; request, call for. 3s kallar 8/2. 8/17. 8/23.
8/28. 10/4. pret. subj. 3p kallaþin 6/21.
kann see *kunna.
*kaupmannaskepr m. trading (voyages). ds kaupmannaskap 8/11.
*kaupmaþr m. merchant. np kaupmenn 8/13.
*kenna f. teaching. ds kennu 10/6.
*kennidombr m. teaching. ds kennidomi 8/8.
kirkia f. church. ns 8/9. 8/26. 8/28. 10/4. 10/10. 12/1. gs kirkiu(vigsla) 10/28. kirkiu (vigsl) 10/29. ds kirkiu 8/21. as kirkiu
8/15. 8/18. 8/19. 8/20. 8/25. 10/3. (Petrs) kirkiu 8/28. (Stain)kirkiu
8/23. 10/4. np kirkiur 10/12. 12/6. ap kirkiur 10/13. 10/18. 10/19.
kirkiugarþa see *garþr.
*kirkiugarþr m. graveyard, churchyard. See *garþr.
kirkiur see kirkia.
*klenat n. valuable. dp klenatum 8/5.
*klint or *klinta f. cliff. ds or as klintu 8/26.
*kornband n. prohibition against trade in corn. as kornband 6/19.
*kristin adj. Christian. npm kristnir 10/9. gpm kristna 10/5. dpn
kristnum 8/13. apn kristna 8/13. apn kristin 8/12. 12/24.
*kristindombr m. Christianity. as kristindom 10/20. ds kristindomi
8/7. 10/7. 12/22.
*kristna1 f. Christianity. gs kristnur 10/8.
kristna2 see kristin.
kristna3 v. baptise, christen. i 8/14. 10/2.
kristnir, kristnum see kristin.
kristnur see kristna1.
*kruna v. crown. ptc. nsm krunaþr 14/23.
kuma v. come; with dat. bring. i 10/24. 3s kumbr 12/8. 14/10.
14/12. 3p kuma 14/14. pret. 3s quam 2/3. 4/12. 8/1. pret. 3p
quamu 4/7. 10/15. pret. subj. 3s quami 10/22. pret. subj. 3p
quamin 14/17. ptc. dsm (ful)kumnum 12/21.
kuna f. wife. ns 2/6. ds kunu 6/9.
*kunna v. may, should. 3s kann 14/10. 14/23. 3p kunnu 12/10.
12/14.
*kunnugr adj. skilled. See ﬁelkunnugr.
kunu see kuna.

Glossary

71

kunungr m. king; (Byzantine) emperor. ns 4/8. 4/13. 6/13. 6/20.
6/21. 8/1. 8/6. 12/24. 14/17. 14/23. gs kunungs 14/18. 14/20.
14/22. 14/29. 14/29. ds kunungi 4/8. 6/24. 12/22. as kunung
6/5. 6/11. 6/16. np kunungar 6/1.
la see liggia.
laglika adv. lawfully, legally. 12/27. (o)laglika 14/17.
*laglikr adj. lawful, legal. dp laglikum 14/21.
laiþingr m. levy, (sea-borne war) expedition, muster. ns 14/7. gs
laiþings(lami) 14/5. laiþings (menn) 14/9. laiþings (buþ) 14/14.
as laiþing 12/24.
laiþingslami m. tax which was paid on failure to take part in a seaborne war expedition, ‘levy-hindrance (tax)’. ns 14/5.
land n. land; country, island, realm; people of the island, islanders,
population; ‘authorities’. ns 2/23. 2/27. 4/20. 8/16. 8/19. (bo)land
2/13. gs lanz 6/15. 10/15. ds landi 2/24. 10/4. 10/10. 10/11. asland 2/3. 10/26. dp landum 8/13. ap land 8/12. 12/23. See also
*Aistland, *Grikland, Gutland, *Ryzaland.
*langr adj. long. asm langan 2/22.
lata v. leave, allow, permit; cause, arrange (for). i 6/22. 14/26.
pret. 3s lit 10/1. pret. 3p litu 8/13. 10/19.
*laus adj. free from. See *saklaus.
*lausn f. fee, ﬁne. as lausn 12/5.
laut see *liauta.
*leggia v. lay. pret. 3s reﬂ. legþis 8/2.
*lenda v. resolve (a dispute). ip lendas 12/11. ptc. nsf lent 12/13.
lengi adv. for a long time. 4/17. 8/3.
*lerþr adj. learned. *lerþr maþr = priest. gpm lerþra 10/6.
*liauta v. inherit. pret. 3s laut 2/20. 2/21.
liggia v. lie. i 14/26. pret. 3s la 8/3.
lit, litu see lata.
*liþ n. group of men. See *liþstemna.
*liþstemna f. mobilisation, muster of forces. gs liþstemnu 12/25.
12/26. 14/12. as liþstemnu 14/9.
loysa v. pay fee or ﬁne; give absolution. i 12/8. 12/17.
*lufa v. I. promise. II. grant, allow. pret. 2s lufaþi 4/13. pret. 3slufaþi 4/9. ptc. asn lufat 4/12.
*luta v. cast lots. pret. 3p lutaþu 2/23.
lydu see *lyþa.
*lykia v. seal down, close. ptc. nsn lykt 14/29.

72

Guta saga

lysa v. proclaim. i 6/23.
*lyþa v. obey. pret. 3p lydu 10/6.
*maga v. be able to. 2s matt 4/14. 3s ma 12/17. pret. subj. 3p
mattin 6/17.
*magr m. (son-)in-law. ds magi 8/24.
maira, mairu see *mikil.
*mak n. convenience. ds maki 10/13.
*mal n. language; matter, case before the law. ds mali 4/16. np(dailu)mal 12/14.
manaþr m. month. ns 4/9. gs manaþar 12/25. 14/15. ds manaþi
4/10. 14/6. as manaþ 14/8.
*mangr adj. many (a), a large number of. npm mangir 6/1. dp
mangum 10/26. apm manga 6/3. Cf. *margr.
mann, manna, mannum, manz see maþr.
*margr adj. many (a). comp. ﬂairi several (other), more. npm 8/4.
dp ﬂairum 10/27. Cf. *mangr.
*mark f. mark (amongst other meanings in weight of gold or
silver, or in coin). np markr 12/20. gp marka 6/12. 14/3. dp
markum 10/30. ap markr 6/13. 6/14. 12/2.
*matr m. food. ds mati 4/19. 4/22.
matt, mattin see *maga.
maþr m. man, person. ns 2/1. 2/3. gs manz 8/22. as mann 8/25.
np menn 4/17. 8/4. 10/9. 10/13. 12/11. 14/9. (kaup)menn 8/13.
(sendi)menn 14/18. 14/20. gp manna 10/5. 10/6. 12/13.
(nemda)manna 14/20. (kaup)manna(skap) 8/11. dp mannum
10/25. 14/7. ap (sendi)men [6/3]. 6/21.
men conj. but (instead). 2/26.
menn see maþr.
*messa f. mass, (ecclesiastical) feast. gs (helguna) messur 12/18.
(Valborga) messur 12/18. 12/19. as (Petrs) messu 14/20.
mest1 see mikil.
mest2 adv. most. 12/11.
mik see iek.
*mikil adj. great, much, large. nsf mikil 12/17. nsn mikit 2/22.
comp. *mairi greater, more, larger. dsn maira [4/9]. 14/2. mairu
10/13. asn maira 10/29. 12/4. superl. *mestr most, largest,
greatest. asn mest 8/23.
millan prp. with gen. between. 12/18.
minn poss. pron. or poss. adj. mine; my. nsm 4/13. dsm minum 6/9.

Glossary73*minni adj. comp. shorter, lesser. asf mindri 4/22. dp minnum 14/14.
mir see iek.
missumar see *miþsumar.
miþ prp. with dat. with, together with; in accordance with, according
to; by; on; of. 25 times. miþ þy as a result, therefore (literally,‘with this’). miþ þy et as conj. because, since; in order that. 14/13.
See also þy2.
miþal(-)þriþiungr m. middle third; the middle of Gotland’s threedivisions or ridings. See þriþiungr.
miþan conj. while. 6/1.
*miþsumar m. midsummer. as missumar 12/26.
*mungat n. ale, beer, feast. ds mungati 4/20. 4/23.
*namn n. name. ds namni 8/27. as namn 2/15.
*nat f. night, 24 hours. as nat 2/7. dp natum 2/2. See also *siau netr.
*nauþugr adj. forced. npm nauþugir 2/26.
nekrum see *nequar.
nemda aiþr m. oath of a commissioner or chosen man. ns 14/22.
*nemdamaþr m. commissioner, chosen man. gp nemdamanna 14/20.
nemna v. announce; select; decree, lay down. i 14/21. ip nemnas 14/7.
*nequar indeﬁnite pron. some, any. dsm nekrum 10/14. dsn nequaru
14/24. asm nequan 10/1.
*ner1 adj. close, near(by). superl. nestr closest, nearest. nsm
10/22. nsn nest 14/19.
*ner2 prp. with dat. and adv. near. superl. nest nearest to 12/12.
nest1,2 see *ner1,2.
nestr see *ner1.
*netr f. pl. nights. See *siau netr.
*niþ f. waning (of the moon). np niþar 4/11. ap niþar 4/8. 4/14.
niþan see ﬁrir niþan.
*norþastr adj. superl. northern(most). dsm norþasta 10/5. asmnorþasta 2/20.
nu adv. now. 6/7. 8/9. 8/16. 8/28. 10/3.
ny n. waxing moon, new moon. ns 4/11. as ny 4/8. 4/14.
o- negation see brenna, fyþa, laglika, *vigia.
obrend see brenna.
ok conj. adv. and, also, as well. 86 times.
ofydum see fyþa.
olaglika see laglika.

74

Guta saga*ormbr m. snake. np ormar 2/8.
orþu see varþa.
ovigþ see *vigia.
*oy f. island. as oy 4/2. See also *Faroy.
*oyri m. öre (1/8 mark weight of silver, etc.); coin (1/8 coinedmark). dp oyrum 10/31.
oystra adv. eastwards. 10/16.
*penningr m. coin (1/36 coined öre); pl. in coin (value 1/4 equivalent weight of silver); money. gp penninga 12/2. 14/3.
*pilagrimbr m. pilgrim. np pilagrimar 10/15.
*prestr m. priest. ds presti 12/2. 12/4. ap presti 8/14. 12/21.
proastr m. rural dean. ns 12/17.
quam, quami, quamin, quamu see kuma.
*quemd f. arrival. gs quemdar 12/16. See also *tilquemd.
*queþa v. say. pret. 3p quaþu 4/11.
raku see *reka.
*raþ n. advice. ds raþi 6/15.
*raþa v. carry authority; with dat. rule; with acc. interpret. 3s raþr14/28. pret. 3s reþ [2/11]. 8/23.
*reka v. drive, force, direct. subj. 3s reki 12/16. pret. 3p raku
2/27. ptc. nsm rekinn 14/24.
ret see *retr1.
*retr1 m. right(s), statute, law; treaty. ds ret 6/2. 10/22. 14/30. as
ret 6/11.
*retr2 adj. proper, right, lawful. dp retum 14/18.
retta v. judge. i 12/15.
retum see *retr2.
reþ see *raþa.
*reþskepr m. support. as reþskep 10/23.
*riki n. kingdom, realm. gs (Suia)rikis 6/3. 6/13. ds riki 14/24.
(Suia)riki 14/28. as (Suia)riki 6/17.
rikr adj. inﬂuential, powerful, mighty. nsm 8/21. npm rikir 8/4.
superl. *rikastr richest. gsm rikasta [8/21].
*roa v. row. ptc. npm roandi 14/13.
*saga f. tale, account. np sagur 6/10.
sagu see *sia.

Glossary75

sak f. ﬁne, obligation. ns 12/19.
*saklaus adj. free from charges. dsn (at) saklausu with impunity. 14/13. 14/16.
saman adv. together. 2/7. 2/8. 4/24. 12/1. 14/26.
*sami adj. and pron. same, the same. dsm sama 12/11. dsn sama
14/4. asm sama 8/8. asf samu 8/18.
*samtalan f. consideration. gs samtalan 12/13.
samulaiþ adv. likewise, similarly. 6/21.
sank see *sinqua.
*sanktus Latin adj. saint(ed). gsm sankti 14/19.
*sannund f. truth. dp sannundum 12/12.
satin see sitia.
*segia v. say; *segia ﬁrir relate (to). pret. 3s segþi 2/10. 4/13.
8/20. 8/24.
sei see vara.
*semia v. impersonal with dat. be agreed. 3s sembr 14/7.
senda v. send. i 6/22. ip sendas 14/30. pret. 3p sentu 6/3. 10/20.
*sendibuþi m. messenger; message. np sendibuþar 6/22. ap
sendibuþa 10/21.
*sendimaþr m. messenger. See maþr.
sendimen(n) see maþr.
*senn poss. pron. reﬂ. (his, her, its, their) own. dsm sinum 2/10.
6/2. 8/24. 10/3. 10/7. dsf sinni 4/20. dsn sinu 14/24. asm sin
6/22. 10/3. asf sina 10/2. gp sinna 10/29. dp sinum 4/19. 8/4.
10/25. 14/1. apn sin 10/2.
sentu see senda.
*setia v. establish, set (out), lay down. ptc. nsf sett 8/27.
*sia v. see. pret. 3p sagu 8/13. 10/5.
siau num. seven. 12/23.
*siau netr f. pl. a week. ap siau netr 14/9. 14/11.
*siauþa v. cook, boil. pret. 3p suþu 4/23.
sielfr pron. self. nsm 8/19. 8/21. gsm sielfs (viliandi) 6/16.
sielfs (vilia) 10/7. dsm sielfum 6/9.
*sielfs vili m. free will. See sielfr, *vili.
*sielfs viliandi adj. of (one’s) free-will, voluntary. See sielfr,*vilia2.
sielfum see sielfr.
siextigi num. sixty. 6/14. 6/12.
*sigla v. sail. pret. 3p silgdu 8/11. ptc. npm siglandi 14/14.
*sigr m. victory. ds sigri [6/2].

76

Guta saga

sik see *sina2.
*silfr n. silver. gs silfs 6/12. 6/13. 6/14.
silgdu see *sigla.
sin, sina1 see *senn.
*sina2 pers. pron. reﬂ. gen. himself, herself, itself, themselves; on(his, her, its, their) own (account). dat sir 2/25. 4/12. 4/21. 4/22.
8/8. 10/13. 12/21. acc. sik 4/2. 4/5. 8/14. 10/2.
sinn, sinna, sinni see *senn.
*sinqua v. sink. pret. 3s sank 2/2. 2/4.
sinu(m) see *senn.
sir see *sina2.
sitia v. remain, stay. i 14/15. pret. subj. 3p satin 14/21.
siþ see *siþr.
siþan1 adv. then, afterwards, later, subsequently; after, further. 14 times.
siþan2 conj. since, after. 10/5. 12/21.
siþan en conj. after, since. 10/9. 10/20.
siþar adj. later. 12/26.
siþir see um siþir.
*siþr m. custom; tax, customary payment. as siþ 12/3. ap siþi 8/13. 10/5.
skal see *skulu.
skap see *kaupmannaskepr
skattr m. tax. ns 6/12. as skatt 6/22. 14/19. 14/25. 14/26.
*skepr m. quality, characteristic; manner. See *hiskepr, *kaupmannaskepr, *reþskepr.
*skiauta v. refer. ip skiautas 12/13.
*skip n. ship. dp skipum 8/2.
*skipta v. with dat. divide. pret. 3p skiptu 2/19.
*skriþa v. crawl, creep. pret. subj. 3p skriþin 2/9.
*skulu v. will; should, ought to; be obliged to, have to; be. 3s al
2/13. 2/16. 2/17. 6/21. skal 10/31. 12/13. 12/17. 12/26. 14/6.
14/7. 14/8. 14/29. 2p skulin 8/20. 3p skulu 12/1. 12/7. 12/10.
14/9. 14/11. pret. 3s skuldi 6/20. pret. 3p skuldu 2/24. pret. subj.
3p skuldin 10/25.
*slikr adj. such, so great (a). asm slikan 6/8.
*slingua v. coil, plait, entwine. ptc. npm slungnir 2/8.
*smar adj. small. comp. *smeri smaller. npn smeri 4/22.
*snekkia f. longship; warship. as snekkiu [14/3]. dp snekkium[12/23]. [14/1].
snieldr adj. wise, clever; (weak form as personal nickname). nsm[6/10]. snielli, sn‹i›elli [8/22]. 10/2.

Glossary77

so adv. so, thus, just so, as follows, the case; such, just; in such away (that), in this way; on the understanding, to the effect (that);similarly. 24 times.
*sokn f. parish. ds sokn 6/4.
*stafgarþr m. ancient site. See Note to 4/18 and *garþr.
stafgarþa see *garþr.
staggaþan see *staþga1.
standa v. stand. i 8/26. 8/29. 3s standr 8/9. 8/25.
staþ see *steþr.
*staþga1 v. bind, establish, conﬁrm. ptc. asm staggaþan 6/11.
staþga2 see *staþgi.
*staþgi m statute. as staþga [6/14].
steddum see *steþia.
*stemna f. meeting. See *liþstemna.
steþi see *steþr.
*steþia v. conﬁrm. ptc. dsm steddum 10/22.
steþilika adv. permanently, lasting. 10/14.
*steþr m. location, place; (every)where. ds (i huerium) staþ 6/17.
as staþ 8/9. 8/16. 8/28. ap steþi 6/23. See also Kulasteþar.
*strida v. ﬁght, battle. pret. 3p stridu 6/1.
suafu see *sufa.
*suara v. answer. pret. 3s suaraþi 6/6. Cf. *annsuara.
suer m. father-in-law. ns 10/1.
*sufa v. sleep. pret. 3p suafu 2/7.
sum rel. pron. which, who, that; conj. as, as if. 35 times. so sum
2/8. 6/10. 12/6.
*sumar m. summer. See *miþsumar.
*sumbr pron. some (of). asn sumt [4/16]. npm sumir 8/14.
*sun m. son. ds syni 6/9. as sun 2/5. dp synum 4/19. ap syni
2/14.
*sunnarstr adj. superl. southern(most). dsm sunnarsta [10/12].
asm sunnarsta 2/21.
*suþnautr m. a person with whom one boils meat; comrade-insacriﬁce; ‘boiling-companion’. np suþnautar 4/23.
suþu see *siauþa.
sykia v. visit; travel. i 6/17. 6/18. 6/25. (til) sykia 6/23.
*synas v. md. be seen, be visible. 3s synis 4/4.
synd f. sin. ns 12/17.
syni, synum see *sun.
synis see *synas.

78

Guta sagataka v. with dat. take; collect, receive, embrace. i 4/15. 6/22. 10/29.
12/3. 14/20. 3p taka 14/19. subj. 3s taki 12/5. taka viþr receive,
accept; undertake, take upon one; ally oneself to. pret. 3s tok(viþr) 8/7. pret. 3p toku (viþr) 10/6. 12/21 (verb understood).
12/22. pret. subj. 3s toki (viþr) 10/14. taka sir with acc. accept.
pret. 3p toku (sir) 12/21.
til1 prp. to; until; for. with gen. 4/7. 6/3. 8/4. 8/10. 8/14. 10/8.
10/15. 10/21. 10/23. 10/24. 10/28. 12/19. 14/8. with undeclined
head-word 10/15. 10/17. 12/13.
til2 adv. thereto. 12/16.
*til biþia v. beg (for something). See *biþia.
*til hoyra v. with dat. belong to. See *hoyra.
*tilquemd f. visitation, visit; arrival. gs tilquemda (siþ) 12/3. See
Note.
*til skura v. lay down, deﬁne. ptc. npf til skuraþar 12/6.
til sykia v. visit. See sykia.
*timi m. (period of) time. as tima 2/22. 4/17. 8/18. 8/23. 10/1.
10/16. (vintr)tima 12/19.
tiugu num. twenty. 6/14.
tok, toki, toku see taka.
*tolf num. twelve. dm tolf 10/25. 10/31. am tolf 8/5. 14/20.
*tro f. belief. See *vantro.
troa v. believe. i 14/17. pret. 3p troþu 4/17.
*tuair num. two. nn tu 2/6. am tua 8/6.
*tuldr m. toll, excise duty. as tull 6/18.
ufan prp. with acc. on, against. 12/24. with gen. above. 2/25.
ufan a prp. with acc. on, against. 12/23.
um prp. with acc. through; around, over; in respect of. 2/22. 4/8.
4/14. 6/12. 8/23. 10/1. 10/17. 10/26. 10/28. 12/19. 14/25. as.
12/3, see Note. adv. of, around. 12/27. 14/6.
um siþir adv. at last. 4/13.
undir prp. with acc. under. 6/16.
*ungr adj. young. superl. yngsti youngest. nsm 2/21.
upp adv. up; onward. 4/5. 4/6. 8/19.
uppi adv. up, raised up. 2/3. 10/4. See also *halda.
ut adv. out; over. 14/7. 14/25. 14/27. 14/27. See also *utgift.
utan1 prp. with acc. without; exempt from. 6/17. 6/19. 10/7.
utan2 conj. but; without, unless, apart from. 2/27. 4/2. 4/5. 8/17.
12/16. 14/14. 14/15. 14/22. 14/25.

Glossary79*utgift f. charge, expense. ap utgiftir 6/18.
vaita v. give. i 6/20.
*vald n. force, power; choice. ds valdi 14/24. as val 12/27.
*vantro f. ignorance of the true faith; mistaken belief. ds vantro
4/20.
*var1 poss. pron. our. dsn varu 4/16.
var2, vari, varin, varu1 see vara.
vara v. be, continue; mean. i 4/12. 12/26. 14/10. 3s ir 2/12. 4/14.
6/12. 12/20. 12/27. 14/17. 14/19. 3p iru 10/31. 12/6. 14/27. subj.
3s sei 12/17. pret. 3s var 2/2. 2/3. 6/1. 6/10. 8/18. 8/21. 8/27.
8/28. 10/4. 10/10. 10/16. 10/22. 14/4. pret. 3p varu 8/11. pret.
subj. 3s vari 4/10. 4/11. pret. subj. 3p varin 2/8.
varu2 see *var1.
varþa v. become, be; happen, arise, occur. i 2/13. 12/10. 12/15.
14/10. 3s varþr 12/12. 14/23. pret. 3s varþ 10/11. pret. 3p orþu 10/9.
*vatn n. watercourse. ds vatni 4/5.
*vaþi m. peril, danger. as vaþa 6/8.
vegr m. route, way; side. ns 10/16. as vegin 6/25. See also *Norvegr.
*venia v. accustom. pret. 3pp vendus 10/20.
*vereldi n. wergild. ap vereldi 6/8.
*veþur m. (yearling) ram. ap veþru 8/5.
*vi n. holy place. ap vi 4/18.
*vigia v. consecrate, dedicate. ip vigias 10/31. 12/1. pret. 3p vigþu
10/17. ptc. npn (o)vigþ 12/1.
*vigsl f. consecration, dedication. ds (alteris) vigsl 10/30. (kirkiu)
vigsl 10/29. gp (kirkiu) vigsla 10/28.
*vika f. week. ds viku 14/11. as viku 14/6. gp vikna 14/1.
vil, vildi, vildu see *vilia2.
*vili m. will. ds (sielfs) vilia 10/7.
vilia1 see *vili.
*vilia2 v. wish to, want to; be willing to, be prepared to. 3s vil
14/17. 2p vilin 6/8. 8/20. 3p vilia 14/1. 14/21. pret. 3s vildi 2/27.
4/10. 8/16. 8/19. pret. 3p vildu 2/25. pret. subj. 3s vildi 10/24.
ptc. npm (sielfs) viliandi 6/16.
viliandi, vilin see *vilia2.
*vintrtimi m. winter(time). as vintrtima 12/19.
visa v. with dat. send, command. i 4/10.
*vist f. food, provisions. ds vist 14/1.
*vita v. know. 2p vitin 6/7. 3p vita 12/11.

80

Guta saga*vittr m. winter; year. as vittr 12/25. Cf. *vintrtimi.
viþr prp. with acc. off; with; to, towards. 4/2. 6/5. 6/11. 10/20.
viþratta f. dispute, conﬂict. ns 4/12.
*viþr taka v. with dat. or with at and inﬁnitive receive, take over;take upon oneself, assume. See taka.
*viþr þorfa v. need (something), be in need. See *þorfa.
yﬁr prp. with acc. over. 6/23. 14/14. adv. over. 12/16. 12/17.
yngsti see *ungr.
*ypin adj. open. nsn ypit [14/30].
yr prp. with dat. out of. 2/9.
*yx f. axe. see *braiþyx.
þa1 adv. then, at that time; now; (as an introduction to a resultant
clause) so. 39 times.
þa2 see þann1.
þa en conj. when; (but) if. 6/6. 10/31. 14/2. 14/7. 14/10. 14/12.
14/27.
þaar, þaim, þair, þaira, þairi, þan1 see þann1.
þan2 conj. than. [4/9]. 6/4. 12/20. 14/15.
þann1 pers. (n. and pl.), dem. or rel. pron. it; they; that, that one,such; the following; which. nsm 2/1. 2/3. 4/9. 8/5. 8/15. nsf
þaun 8/26. 12/12. nsn þet 2/2. 2/4. 4/14. 6/12. 14/4. dsm þaim14/6. 14/27. dsf þairi 14/11. 14/12. dsn þy 4/6. 8/26. 12/5.
12/7. 14/4. 14/19. asm þan 4/17. 6/24. 8/16. 8/18. 8/23. 8/27.
10/16. 10/23. asf þa 8/2. 8/18. 8/20. asn þet 4/20. 8/1. 8/16. npm
þair 2/9. 2/19. 2/23. 2/24. 2/25. 2/26. 4/1. 4/2. 4/5. 4/7. 4/7. 4/7.
4/11. 4/15. 4/16. 4/19. 4/20. 4/23. 6/16. 6/20. 6/22. 6/24. 8/11.
10/6. 10/17. 10/20. 12/6. 12/7. 12/11. 12/22. 14/1. 14/11. 14/13.
14/13. 14/21. 14/26. npf þaar 12/10. npn þaun 2/6. 2/7. gp
þaira 4/12. 6/4. 10/18. dp þaim 2/15. 4/9. 4/10. 4/14. 4/15.
6/13. 10/12. 10/22. 10/23. apm þaim 2/23. 2/27. 2/28. 10/8.
þann2 dem. adj. the. nsm 2/20. 2/21.
þar adv. and conj. there, (in) the place (that), at the place (where);then, subsequently. 2/27. 4/1. 4/1. 4/3. 4/5. 4/7. 4/15. 6/22. 8/3.
8/14. 8/17. 8/18. 8/23. 8/27. 10/3. 12/12. 12/12. 12/18. þar ﬁrir
see byggia.
þau adv. however, nevertheless, still; furthermore, besides. 6/2.
8/11. 12/25. 14/3. 14/25.
þau et conj. although. 8/11. 12/24.

Glossary81þaun see þann1.
þegar (sum) conj. as soon as. 12/7.
þet see þann1.
þeþan adv. from there, thence. 2/28. 8/9. 10/16.
*þiauþ n. person, pl. people. as þiauþ 2/24.
þing n. assembly, thing. ns 14/7. ds þingi 14/19. as (gutnal)þing
6/22. np þing 4/22.
þissi dem. pron. and adj. this (same). nsm 2/5. nsf þissun 4/12.
nsn þitta 2/13. dsf þissi 8/21. asm þinna 2/10. 2/11. 6/14. dp
þissum 2/21.
*þorfa v. have to. *þorfa viþr need (something), be in need. pret.
subj. 3p (viþr) þorftin 6/20.
þrir num. three. nm 2/8. nf þriar 12/20. nn þry 14/27. dat. þrim2/22. 10/30. am þria 2/14. 2/19. af þriar 12/2. an þry 6/8.
10/29. 12/2. 12/3. 14/25.
þriþi num. third. nsm 2/18. nsf þriþi 10/11. dsn þriþia 12/8. asn
þriþia 6/9.
*þriþi huer num. every third. asn þriþia huert 10/24. huertþriþia 2/24. Cf. *annar huer.
þriþiungr m. third, riding; treding. ns 4/21. ds þriþiungi 10/5.
10/12. 12/11. 12/14. (miþal)þriþiungi 10/11. as þriþiung 2/20.
(miþal) þriþiung 2/20. ap þriþiunga 2/19. See Note.
þry see þrir.
þu pers. pron. sing. you. nom. 4/13. 4/15.
þuang1 n. necessity, duress. ns 12/16. as þuang 10/8.
þuang2 see *þuinga.
*þuinga v. force. pret. 3s þuang 10/8.
þula v. tolerate, endure. i 2/27. 8/16.
þy1 see þann1.
þy2 adv. for that reason, because. 8/17. þy et as conj. because,since; in order that. 4/23. 6/9. 6/16. 8/25. 10/13. 10/21. ‹þy› et
12/11. See also miþ.
*þykkia v. impersonal with dat. seem. pret. 3s þytti 2/9.

82

Guta saga

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES
Further details of the places and persons in this glossary are discussed,
where appropriate, in the notes. In the text a single variant of personal andplace names has been selected from those that occur in the manuscript. In
particular, the form Olaf(r) has been selected for the king of Norway. In
the translation, the nominative of each personal name has been used.
Nicknames have not been translated but are explained or discussed in thisIndex. Place-names have been given in modern Swedish form whereappropriate or in English or local form.

*Aistland n. Estonia. as Aistland 4/3.
*Akrgarn n. or f. Akergarn or Åkergarn, now called S:t Olofsholm.
A port on the east coast of Gotland, in the parish of Hellvi, in thenorthern third of the island. as Akrgarn 8/3. gs in compound
Akrgarna (kirkia) 8/9.
*Akubekkr m. Akebäck, a parish in the northern third of Gotland,
north of Vall and Roma parishes and to the east of the main roadbetween Visby and Roma. ds Akubek 8/15.
*Alfa f. Alva, a parish in the southern third of Gotland, between theparishes of Hemse and Havdhem. gs in compound Alfa (sokn) 6/4.
*Atlingabo n. Atlingbo, a parish in the middle third of Gotland. ds
Atlingabo 10/10.
Avair m. personal name. A farmer from Alva, sent to negotiatewith the Swedish king. ns 6/4.
bain n. leg, bone; adj. straight. See Strabain.
*bekkr m. beck, stream. See *Akubekkr.
Botair m. personal name. A farmer from Akebäck, who built theﬁrst church on Gotland. ns 8/15. ds Botairi 8/24.
Dagaiþi f. or n. Dagö, now belonging to Estonia, the fourth largest
island in the Baltic. ns 4/3.
Dyna f. river, the Western Dvina (German Düna, Latvian Daugava),
which ﬂows westwards to the Gulf of Riga. ns 4/6.
*Faroy f. Fårö, an island off the north-eastern coast of Gotland,
separated from it by a narrow sound. as Faroyna 4/1.
*Farþaim n. Fardhem, a parish in the southern third of Gotland. dsFarþaim 10/11. See also *haim.
*garn n. or f. I. yarn. II. gut. In place-names possibly meaning‘something stretched out’. See *Akrgarn.

Index of names

83

Graipr m. personal name. The second (or eldest) son of Hafþi, q. v.
ns 2/17. 2/19.
*Grikland n. Byzantine empire. gs Griklanz 4/7. as Grikland
10/17.
*grikr m. Byzantine (person). gp grika 4/8.
Gunﬁaun m. personal name. The youngest son of Hafþi, q. v. ns
2/18. 2/21.
Guti1 m. personal name. The eldest (or second) son of Hafþi, q. v.
ns 2/16. 2/20.
*guti2 m. Gotlander. np gutar 6/2. 6/3. 6/6. 6/16. 8/11. 10/5. 10/20.
12/21. 12/27. 14/2. 14/25. gp guta 6/12. dp gutum 6/20. 6/23.
12/24.
Gutland n. Gotland. ns 2/1. 10/14. gs Gutlanz 8/14. 10/15. 10/23.
10/25. ds Gutlandi 2/6. 2/19. 2/22. 8/29. 10/13. 12/20. 14/22. as
Gutland 2/2. 2/16. 6/1. 6/18. 10/28.
*Guþ m. God. gs guz 10/6.
Hafþi m. personal name. The ﬁrst settler on Gotland. ns 2/5. gsHafþa 2/5. ds Hafþa [2/10].
*haim n. home; in place-names, settlement. See *Farþaim, *Hainaim.
*Hainaim n. Hejnum, a parish in the northern third of Gotland.
ds 8/4.
Huitastierna f. personal name. ‘White Star’, the wife of Hafþi,q. v. ns 2/6.
*Hulmgarþr m. Novgorod in Russia; Holmgård. ds Hulmgarþi
8/10.
*Ierusalem n. Jerusalem. gs Ierusalem 10/16. 10/17.
*Ierslafr m. personal name. Jaroslav, Russian ruler in Kiev. gs
Ierslafs 8/10, see Note.
*kaupungr m. town, particularly a trading or market town. ds(Leon)kopungi 10/21. 10/24.
Kulasteþar m. (originally gs) Kulstäde, today a farm in Vall parish,
about three kilometres south of Akebäck church, in the middle
third of Gotland. ns 8/16. as Kulasteþar 8/17.
Likkair m. personal name. Landowner on Gotland, Botair’s fatherin-law, q. v. ns 8/22. 10/1.
*Linkaupungr m. Linköping, cathedral town in Östergötland. ds
Leonkopungi 10/21. 10/24.

84

Guta saga*Norvegr m. Norway. ds Norvegi 8/2.
Olafr m. personal name. St Olaf Haraldsson, king of Norway. ns
8/1. 8/3. 8/6. 8/10. gs Olafs 8/8.
Ormika m. personal name. Farmer from Hejnum parish. ns 8/3.
8/5. 8/7.
*oy f. island. See *Faroy.
*Petr m. personal name. St Peter. gs Petrs 8/28. 14/19.
*Petrs messa f. St Peter’s mass, 29th June. See *messa in Glossary.
*Ryzaland n. Russia. as Ryzaland 4/6 (here probably refers to theprincipality of Kiev). 10/17.
snielli weak m. adj. as personal nickname. clever, wise. ns [8/22].
sn‹i›elli 10/2. See *snieldr in Glossary.
*Stainkirkia f. Stenkyrka, parish in the northern third of Gotland.
as Stenkirkiu 8/23. 10/4. See also kirkia in Glossary.
stierna f. star. See Huitastierna.
Strabain m. personal nickname. Possibly ‘straw legs’ or ‘strawstraight’. ns 6/4. See also Avair.
suiar m. pl. Swedes. np 6/18. gp suia (kunung) 6/5. 6/11. 6/16.
suia (kunungi) 12/22. suia(riki) 6/17. suia(riki) 14/28. suia(rikis)
6/3. 6/13.
*Upsalir m. pl. Gamla Uppsala, about ﬁve kilometres north ofmodern Uppsala, the seat of the king of the Swedes (Svear). gp
Upsala 6/24.
*Vi n. the ancient holy place where Visby now stands. ds Vi 8/18. 8/25.
*Valborg f. personal name. St Walburga. gs in *Valborga messa
Walburga’s day, 1st May. 12/18. 12/19. See *messa in Glossary.
Þieluar m. personal name. The legendary discoverer of Gotland.
ns 2/1. 2/5.
*Þorsborg f. A fortiﬁcation, now called Torsburgen, in the parish
of Kräklingbo on its border with Ardre and Gammelgarn, in the
middle third of Gotland. as Þorsborg 2/26.

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