Auðr the Deep-Minded: Building a New Household

Then Unn said: "Bjorn and Helgi, my brothers, and all my other kindred and friends, I call witnesses to this, that this dwelling with all its belongings that you now see before you, I give into the hands of mykinsman, Olaf, to own and to manage." After that Unn stood up and said she would go to the bower where she was wont to sleep, but bade every one have for pastime whatever was most to his mind, and that ale should be the cheer of the common folk.

Poetic account: an Icelandic saga tells of a woman who rebuilds her family’s fortunes after a war in Scotland, and it is a literary account of a household, not a record of worship.

In Laxdæla saga the woman is called Unn the Deep-minded, the name used in this translation. Her son Thorstein is killed in Caithness and her father has died, and she decides she has no future there. She has a ship built in secret in a wood, loads it with great wealth, and sails with the kinsfolk who are left. In Iceland she takes land and has a house built that comes to be called Hvamm. She then divides her land among her followers. She frees a man of high birth named Erp, who had been held as a thrall, and gives him land, and she gives another freedman, Hundi, a valley of his own. At the wedding feast of her grandson Olaf “Feilan” she gives him the house and everything in it. She retires to her bed, and the next morning she is found sitting up, dead.

What is recorded: a war in Scotland, a secret ship, a settlement at Hvamm, land given to her followers including freed people, a feast at which she gives her house to her grandson, and her death the same night. The saga says she was laid in a ship inside a burial mound with much treasure, and the funeral was held together with the wedding.

What is not recorded: any god or rite in her household, and anything in the page text that confirms the saga’s dates or deeds from outside the saga. The saga is the only account read for this entry, so it is not compared with other traditions about Auðr, which may differ in details such as her faith and burial.