Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/416

 400 Custom and Belief in Icelandic Sagas,

sacrifice to the Disir which is mentioned occasionally in the sagas, was a sacrifice to spiritual powers of a vague kind, not yet grown into individual deities ; female, and representing in some way the underworld of the dead. Their sex is a mark of antiquity ; that and their relation to the dead and the underworld being fully accounted for by the mystical character attaching to the offices performed by women, and the fear of them, among savages generally. The Disablot has sometimes been described as connected with the worship of Freyja, and taking place at midwinter, but there is no saga-authority for this. There is no recorded case of a Disablot in Iceland, but there are cases in Norway :

1. Hebnskringla (Ynglinga Saga). King Adils was at

a Disablot ; and as he rode round the hall, his horse stumbled and fell, and he was thrown on his head, and his skull was split (mythical).

2. {Egil's Saga, 923.) King Eirik and Gunnhild came

to Atley, and Bard had prepared a feast for them,

and there was to be a Disablot. (The context

proves that this was in the autumn.)

We cannot decide whether there is any significance in

the fact that it was at the Winter-Nights' Feast that the

Di'sir killed Thidrandi. The Greek and Roman festivals

of the dead were in spring, to keep off evil influences

from the crops ; but on the other hand, the Christian

ones come not at seedtime but after harvest, and so far

as it goes, the evidence points to the same season for the

Scandinavian service of the dead.

III. Burial Customs and Hero-Cults. There are two beliefs about the state of the dead evident in the sagas, existing side by side, often appearing in the same instance, though mutually inconsistent. These are life in the howe or burial-mound, and the journey to Valhalla. It is natural that inconsistent notions should