Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/230

 222 many were wounded before they were separated. Thord gellir reconciled them, but, since neither of them would give way, the place was made unhallowed with blood of vengeance. (2. 12.) 8. Aud had her home at Cross-knolls, and there she had crosses set up, because she was baptised and a good believer. Her kinsfolk after that had great faith in the knolls. An altar (hörg) was raised there when sacrificing began: they believed, too, that they passed into the knolls at death. Thord gellir was led into them before he rose to honour, as is said in his saga. (2. 16.) 9. Thorhadd the old was temple-priest at Thrandheim in Mæri: he took the idea to go to Iceland, but first he took down, the temple and carried off with him the temple-earth and the pillars. He came to Stödvarfirth and laid the Mæri sanctuary on all the firth, and allowed nothing to be killed there except home-cattle. (4. 6.) 10. Thorir the voyager had a ship built for him in Sogn (in Norway), which was hallowed by Bishop Sigurd. From that ship come the beaks before the door at Miklagarth (in Axarfirth) which foretell the weather. (3. 19.) 11. Ketill, from the Hebrides, a Christian, lived at Kirkjubæ. Papar had been there before, and no heathen men could live there "Hildir wished to shift his homestead to Kirkby after Ketill's death, thinking that a heathen could live there, but when he came near to the farmyard enclosure, he fell down dead." (4. 11.)

—Closely connected with the foregoing are the passages referring to sacrificial and other religious ceremonies, denoted by blót and the verb blóta (with accusative = to worship or hallow; with dative = to sacrifice). A full account of the procedure at a great blót is given in the Hákonar Saga, c. 14. 18. When Hjörleif is murdered by his thralls, his friend Ingolf attributes it to the fact that he would never blóta, (1. 7.).

12. (Floki on his voyage to Iceland) resorted to a great religious ceremony (blót), and hallowed three ravens, which should show him the way, because seafarers had no loadstone at that