Road To Hel - Rune Web Vitki

38
FUNERAL CUSTOMS
destroy a dangerous corpse which otherwise would do harm to the living. In Eyrbyggja
Saga (XXXIV, LXIII) þórólfr Bæfifór leaves his grave-mound and comes out at night to
kill men and animals; his son first tries to quieten him by moving the body to a more
lonely grave, and when this proves unavailing it is finally dug up and burnt to ashes, and
the ashes thrown out to sea. In Grettis Saga (XXXIII) similar trouble is caused by the
dead Glamr; he is overcome by Grettir after a terrible wrestling match, and after his head
has been cut off the body is burned to cold ashes by Grettir and the householder whom he
has been tormenting. Oddr in Laxdæla Saga (XVII treats Hrappr in a similar way, and
after his ashes have been thrown out to sea we are told that no one has any further trouble
with him. In Flóamanna Saga (XIII) the body of a dead woman who had been a witch in
her time proves restless on the way to burial, until when the bearers are unable to carry
her any farther they build a pyre and burn the remains on the spot. We can be sure that
this custom did not die out with heathenism. In the same saga a district in Greenland was
haunted by a number of people who had died from a mysterious plague, and Þorgils,
although a Christian, resorted to the usual remedy and had the corpses dug up and
burned—’and from that time there was no harm done by their walking’ (XXII). The same
method was used in Europe up to the eighteenth century and probably later to dispose of
vampires. 1
Thus the division of grave-customs made by Snorri, the burning of the dead and the
burial in howe, is found also in Old Norse literature. The burning of the dead is found
recorded only of certain kings of Sweden, some of the gods, and certain characters in the
poems. Burial in howe is the oniy custom remembered in the sagas of Iceland, and the
records of the Norwegian kings seem similarly to be without any memory of cremation of
the dead, although we know from archaeological evidence that it was practised until late
into heathen times. However, the fact that cremation died out early in the west coastal
region of Norway and never reached Iceland at all, according to our present knowledge,
may well account for the emphasis on howe-laying in the prose literature which we
possess. The speech of the orator at the Frosta Thing in Hákonar Saga Góða (XV)
admittedly refers to an age of burning before that of burial, but this is probably an
interpolation by Snorri himself since it accords so
1 E.g. from Greece: de Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant (Lyons, 1717),
1, p. 1581 f.