Yggdrasil · Humankind

Ólafr Geirstaðaálfr

A king of Vestfold, buried in a mound at Geirstaðir, later remembered as the “elf of Geirstaðir”.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Laing’s translation

“Gudrod, Halfdan’s son, succeeded. … He was married to Alfhild, a daughter of King Alfarin of Alfheim … Their son Olaf was afterwards called Geirstad-Alf.”

“King Olaf had his main residence at Geirstad. There he died of a disease in his foot, and was laid under a mound at Geirstad.”

Myth and literature

What the sources say

Ynglinga saga makes Olaf the son of Gudrod the Hunter and Alfhild, and the brother of Halfdan, a son of Gudrod’s later marriage to Aasa. When Gudrod dies, the brothers divide the kingdom and Olaf takes the eastern part. He lives at Geirstad, dies of a foot disease and is laid in a mound there. The saga gives him the by-name Geirstad-Alf but does not explain it.

The longer story of his mound belongs to a different text, Óláfs þáttr Geirstaðaálfs, preserved in Flateyjarbók. In that tale Olaf dreams of a black bull and has a great mound built for himself. Later he appears in a dream to Hrani, who takes a sword, a belt and a ring from the mound for Åsta, wife of Harald Grenske. The belt eases her labour and the sword and ring go to her newborn son, who is to be named Olaf: the future St. Olaf.

Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

The by-name is usually read as “elf of Geirstaðir”. A reference article on the king says that after his death he was worshipped as an “elf” and sacrificed to in a famine, but it also says “elf” should not be read too literally. What that worship consisted of is not described here.

The word álfr in his name sits beside other uses of the word, such as the mythological elves of Alfheim and the human kings of the region Álfheimr (see Álfheimr, the land between the rivers). The sources do not connect these uses. His mother Alfhild was the daughter of the king of that region.

Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

The king’s genealogy, residence, death and burial are in Ynglinga saga, chapters 53 and 54 in Laing’s numbering, which also quotes verses by Thjodolf. His later cult and the story of the mound are in Óláfs þáttr Geirstaðaálfs, in Flateyjarbók, a codex of the late fourteenth century.

Whether the Gokstad ship burial in Vestfold is his mound is a hypothesis, not an established fact. A reference article says a link between him and the ship burial is unproven and that Geirstaðir has also been proposed at Gjerstad in Agder. The Gokstad burial itself is dated by tree rings: the ship to the last decade of the ninth century and the burial to the first decade of the tenth, according to the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. That dating comes from archaeology and is a separate matter from the king’s place in the saga chronology. The museum’s page says the grave held a man’s incomplete remains and does not name him.