3: The Icelandic word loðinn means “hairy” or “shaggy.”
1: The windows in old dwellings in Iceland were usually round openings in the ceiling, fitted with frames stretched with transparent membranes (sheep or calves’ bladders, or fish skin).
2: Mardöll is one of the names of the Norse goddess Freyja, who was associated with love, beauty, fertility, war, and death.
3: Kolbakur is quoting verse 70 from the Old Norse Hávamál (Sayings of the High One), a collection of gnomic verses from the Viking age, preserved as part of the Poetic Edda.
4: Hávamál, verse 71.
1: White Christ (Icelandic: Hvítakristr) was, in saga-age Iceland, a common name for Jesus Christ, derived perhaps from the white robes that Christians wore for baptism.
1: A reference to an Icelandic legend about a farmer who receives cows in reward from a merman whom he accidentally fishes up from the sea one day; from one of these cows, a greet breed descended – all grey, and called “sea-cows.”
2: Irish for Jesus.
1: Lús in Icelandic means “louse.”
2: The stars of Orion’s belt.
1: Hlórriði is one of the names of the Norse god Þórr, who drove a chariot pulled by two goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr.
2: The constellation Pleiades. In Iceland, time during winters was reckoned by its position above the horizon (here “midmorning” means 6 AM).
1: Hávamál, verse 71.
1: The Holy Roman Empire.
1: Stones that were imbued with the magical power to help alleviate the pains of labor.
1: Prior to besieging Canterbury in 1011, the Viking fleet docked in Greenwich, on the Thames, and returned there with the captives from Canterbury.
1: A “tooth-fee” (Icelandic: tannfé) is a gift given to a child when he cuts his first tooth. The practice continues in Iceland today.
1: A type of provisional baptism involving being marked with the cross.
1: Olaf Tryggvason steadfastly (and often violently) promoted Christianity in Norway and elsewhere in Scandinavia (including Iceland).
2: Munvegar (literally, “paths of joy”), is associated with the realm of the Norn Urðr in the Viking Egill Skallagrímsson’s poetic lament for his dead son, Sonatorrek.
3: Hávamál, verse 1.
1: In Old Norse society, a níðingr – truce-breaker, traitor, coward – was the most contemptible form of villain.
1: In stanza 38 of the Old Icelandic Eddic poem Völsungakviða in forna (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II (The Second Lay of Helgi Hundingsbane)), the hero is described as a stag slung with dew.
2: “The Wolf” refers to the monstrous wolf Fenrir of Old Norse mythology, destined to devour the god Óðinn after breaking free from his chain forged by dwarves from these three elements (as well as a woman’s beard, a mountain’s roots, and a bear’s sinews), which are impossible to break.
1: In Icelandic, “eager for killing.”
2: Hávamál, verse 114.
1: A derisive Norse nickname for Icelanders, who commonly used suet and tallow from their herds of sheep.
1: A kenning for the mind.
1: From the Saga of Olaf the Saint.
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Wayward Heroes Page 34