The Saga of Vanadís, Völva and Valkyrja

Auður invited everyone to the wedding and people came from all over the country
to celebrate with Ólafur and Álfdís. Auður was an old woman by that time, and people
remarked that she looked incredibly strong and powerful as she walked to her room after
the first evening’s feasting. She called her grandson to her bed and asked him to continue
the feast for three days and nights, but that her time had come to leave. She died and was
buried on the shore, where the waves of the Great Mother could caress her body.
Auður is said to have raised a cross on a hill near her farm. That hill and those
nearby are called Krosshólar (Cross-Hills), and it is said that her descendants, - who
returned to the old pagan faith for the next century -, developed a strong belief in those
hills. Hills have continued to have magical powers in the Islandic folk beliefs, and the
mind of modern people. They are the homes of the álfar, as well as the sacred breasts of
earth. The hills of my country, with the small bushes of birch and willow, made the
perfect environment for a dreamer, and it was lying in the grass on those hills, shaded by
the leaves of the birch that I dreamt my dreams of having birds’ wings to fly. That was
where I came closest to feeling the breast of the Goddess in my culture.
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