Land-wights (landvættir) and barrow-wights (Iceland, medieval; England, 1934)
Record: the document says itPattern: documents line upLens: our readingOpen: not yet provenCode: a stated code
Year: 1934 · Places: Europe
SUMMARYLand-wights (landvættir) and barrow-wights (Iceland, medieval; England, 1934) [Connections: Masonic color line, asylums, castles, wight, Nov 5, 2026]
RECORDLandvættir are "spirits of the land in Old Nordic religion" ("land wights"). Iceland's early law code (Úlfljótslǫg, in the 1898 translation) says "men should not take ships to sea with carved figure heads upon their sterns... lest the guardian feys of the land should be scared thereat." Heimskringla tells how "King Harald told a warlock to hie to Iceland in some altered shape." The warlock found the land guarded by "a large dragon" in the east, "a great bird" in the north, "a large bull" in the west and "a huge bergrisi [mountain giant] with an iron staff" in the south. These four appear on Iceland's coat of arms. "Barrow-wight" is a modern coinage: Tolkien called it an "invented name." It first appeared in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (Oxford Magazine, 15 February 1934), modeled on the Old Norse haugbúar ("mound-dwellers") of Grettis saga
PATTERNIn Norse usage, a wight is a guardian bound to a land or a burial mound. The undead "barrow-wight" is a 20th-century literary invention
LENS (WW9)In the old North, the wights were the guardians of the land, the spirits of the place
CODELand-guardian wights match WW9's "land's own names" principle: the spirit belongs to the land, not to a color
OPENRead the Old Norse original of Landnámabók/Úlfljótslǫg for the word used (landvættir)