Purity and Danger in Earliest Iceland: Excrement, Blood, Sacred Space, and Society in Eyrbyggja saga

This article analyses an episode from the late thirteenth-century Eyrbyggja saga using Mary Douglas’s theories concerning correlations between purity and pollution beliefs and forms of socio-political organization. The episode involves the foundation by Þórólfr Mostrarskegg, a migrant from Norway, of Iceland’s first þing, described as a cultic site as well as legal assembly. To safeguard the þing’s sanctity, Þórólfr designates a small island as a Dritsker, or ‘Waste-Skerry’, to which attendees must wade in order to defecate. The saga further describes the Þórsnessþing’s relocation and reorganization after the original site is contaminated when other early settlers refuse to use Dritsker and blood is spilled on the assembly grounds. While scholars have tended to dismiss this story as an example of the trivial matters that could instigate feud in early Iceland, excrement and blood are here treated as crucial elements of a myth of origins for Icelandic society, in which attempts to construct the body politic play out through efforts to police and to resist policing of bodily orifices and waste. This article also considers the context of the saga’s production and its relationship to other texts, so as to speculate about its producers’ and audience’s interests in the themes analysed.