Landvættir (
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
: ;
Modern Icelandic: ; "land
wights") are spirits of the land in
Norse mythology
Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern peri ...
and
Germanic neopaganism. They protect and promote the flourishing of the specific places where they live, which can be as small as a rock or a corner of a field or as large as a section of a country.
The nature of landvættir
Some scholars have suggested that landvættir are
chthonic in nature, spirits of the dead, but others have interpreted them as nature spirits, since they sometimes live in land that has never been populated.
Hilda Ellis Davidson argued that stories such as that of Goat-Björn imply that they were already there when the settlers arrived in Iceland. Goat-Björn was offered a partnership by a "rock-dweller" (''bergbúi'') and thereafter prospered. People with second sight saw "all the land-spirits" following him to the
thing
Thing or The Thing may refer to:
Philosophy
* An object
* Broadly, an entity
* Thing-in-itself (or ''noumenon''), the reality that underlies perceptions, a term coined by Immanuel Kant
* Thing theory, a branch of critical theory that focus ...
and following his brothers hunting and fishing. They told of people worshiping and receiving advice from spirits living in waterfalls, woods, and rocks.
Jörmundur Ingi Hansen, former High Priest of the
Ásatrúarfélagið, said that landvættir are "spirits and they in some way control the safety of the land, the fertility of the land, and so on." According to him, they are "tied to a spot in the landscape, to a huge rock, to a mountain, or to a specially beautiful place" and that place can be recognized by being more beautiful than "just a few yards away."
The belief in local landvættir lives on in Iceland, with many farms having rocks that are not mowed closely and on which children are not allowed to play. When construction was about to start on
Keflavík air base, the Icelandic foreman dreamed that a woman came to him asking to delay moving a boulder to give her family time to move out. He did so for two weeks over American objections until she came to him in another dream telling him the landvættir were all out.
Other terms are sometimes used in the texts for the spirits, such as ''bergbúi'', ''ármaðr'', and ''spámaðr'', but there is one mention of pre-Christian Icelanders bringing offerings specifically to ''landvættir''. In a section of
Hauksbók, a Christian bishop rails against "foolish women" who take food out to rocks and hollows to feed the landvættir in hopes of being blessed with a prosperous household.
Wealth and weal of the land
One version of the Icelandic
Book of Settlement
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arra ...
says that the ancient law of Iceland forbade having a dragon-prow in place on one's ship in harbor or coming in to land "with gaping mouth or yawning snout" because the landvættir would be frightened away.
In
Egils saga,
Egil Skallagrímsson
Egil or Egill is a masculine given name derived from Old Norse. It may refer to:
Characters
*Egil (Hymiskvida), farmer in the poem ''Hymiskvida''
*Egil, brother of Volund, hero of Völundarkviða and the Thidreks saga
*Egil One-Hand, hero from the ...
set up a
nithing pole to agitate the landvættir in Norway so that they would "go astray . . . until they have driven King Eric and Queen Gunnhild" out of the country. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards translate ''landvættir'' as "guardian spirits" in this passage.
The four landvættir of Iceland
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its ...
is protected by four great guardians who are known as the four ''landvættir''.
According to the Saga of King Olaf Tryggvason in
Heimskringla
''Heimskringla'' () is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorre Sturlason (1178/79–1241) 1230. The name ''Heimskringla'' was first used in the 17th century, derive ...
, King
Harald Bluetooth Gormsson of Denmark, intending to invade Iceland, had a wizard send his spirit out in the form of a whale to scout it out for points of vulnerability. Swimming westwards around the northern coast, the wizard saw that all the hillsides and hollows were full of landvættir, "some large and some small." He swam up
Vopnafjörður, intending to go ashore, but a great
dragon came flying down the valley toward him, followed by many snakes, insects, and lizards, all spitting poison at him. So he went back and continued around the coast westward to
Eyjafjörður, where he again swam inland. This time he was met by a great bird, so big that its wings touched the hillsides on either side, with many other birds large and small following it. Retreating again and continuing west and south, he swam into
Breiðafjörður. There he was met by a huge
bull
A bull is an intact (i.e., not castrated) adult male of the species '' Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e., cows), bulls have long been an important symbol in many religions,
incl ...
, bellowing horribly, with many landvættir following it. He retreated again, continued south around
Reykjanes, and tried to come ashore at
Vikarsskeið, but there he encountered a mountain giant (''bergrisi''), his head higher than the hill-tops, with an iron staff in his hand and followed by many other giants (''
jötnar''). He continued along the south coast but saw nowhere else where a
longship
Longships were a type of specialised Scandinavian warships that have a long history in Scandinavia, with their existence being archaeologically proven and documented from at least the fourth century BC. Originally invented and used by the Nors ...
could put in, "nothing but sands and wasteland and high waves crashing on the shore."

The four landvættir are traditionally regarded as the protectors of the
four quarters of Iceland: the dragon (''Dreki'') in the east, the
eagle
Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, j ...
(''Gammur'') in the north, the bull (''Griðungur'') in the west, and the giant (''Bergrisi'') in the south.
A simple and elegant parallelism can be made with respect to the four air radar stations of the
Iceland Air Defence System:
* H-1 Miðnesheiði: the Bull Griðungur
* H-2A
Langanes: the Dragon Dreki
* H3:
Höfn: the Gigant Bergrisi
* H-4A
Bolungarvík: the Eagle Gammur
The four landvættir of Iceland are depicted on the
Icelandic coat of arms, on the obverse of the
Icelandic króna coins, and the team crest of Iceland's national football teams.
See also
*
Adgilis Deda, a
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to t ...
n divinity with a comparable function
*
Genius loci
*
Kami
are the deities, divinities, spirits, phenomena or "holy powers", that are venerated in the Shinto religion. They can be elements of the landscape, forces of nature, or beings and the qualities that these beings express; they can also be the ...
, Japanese divinities with similar properties
*
Landdísir
In Norse mythology and later 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 cent ...
, female spirits of the land attested as venerated in Iceland
*
Tuatha Dé Danann
*
Tutelary deity
A tutelary () (also tutelar) is a deity or a spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of "tutelary" expresses the concept of safety a ...
*
Vættir
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Landvaettir
Creatures in Norse mythology
Tutelary deities
Nature spirits
Chthonic beings