Landdísir
In
Icelandic folklore, landdísir (Old Norse "dísir of the land") are beings who live in landdísasteinar, specific stones located in Northwestern Iceland which were treated with reverence into the 18th and 19th centuries. The landdísir are not recorded in Old Norse sources, but belief in them is assumed from the name landdísasteinar.[1]
Theories
Gabriel Turville-Petre theorizes that "the female landdísir, dwelling in their rocks, were probably not far removed from the masculine elves." Turville-Petre connects their veneration to the continental Scandinavian practice of the Dísablót (the sacrifice to the dísir), the Disting (thing of the dísir), and various Scandinavian place names involving the dísir where worship may have occurred. Turville-Petre concludes that "the landdísir of the Ísafjörður were dead women ancestors of the people who lived there. They had come to be venerated, being goddesses at once of death, fertility, and rebirth."[2]
See also
- Adgilis Deda, a Georgian divinity with a comparable function
Notes
References
- Simek, Rudolf (2007) translated by Angela Hall. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. ISBN 0-85991-513-1
- Turville-Petre, Gabriel (1963). "A Note on the Landdísir" as collected in Brown, Peter (1963). Early English and Norse Studies: Presented to Hugh Smith in Honour of His Sixtieth Birthday. London.