{"id":"HELGI1979-001","label":"Ormr swings his beam like a hreytispeldi","people_or_site":"Icelanders (Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar)","country_current":"Iceland","historic_region":"Rangárvellir, south Iceland (Ormr Stórólfsson's home district); belief unlocalised","macroregion":"Europe / Northern Europe","local_name":"hreytispeldi","source_term":"hreytispeldi; 'bull-roarer' (Helgi; Faulkes)","source_language":"Icelandic / English","object_description":"A thin wooden slat swung around the body on a cord.","function_summary":"A children's toy in fourteenth-century Iceland, known from a saga simile.","attestation_type":"historical_text","source_key":"helgi1979_hreytispeldi","source_type":"scholarly_article","source_url":"https://gripla.arnastofnun.is/index.php/gripla/article/download/481/368","page_or_plate":"Helgi 1979 pp. 224-225; Faulkes 2011 pp. 34-36, 101","map_confidence":"low_medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Stórólfshvoll / Hvolsvöllur in Rangárvellir, Ormr Stórólfsson's home, where Faulkes (pp. 34-36) places the tale's traditions; the saga scene itself is set in Trøndelag, Norway, and the folk belief has no recorded locality.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"In the fourteenth-century Icelandic tale of Ormr Stórólfsson, Earl Eiríkr sends sixty men against Ormr, who has no weapon but a wooden beam. He swings it around himself like a hreytispeldi, so that no one dares come near. The word means a flung slat, and the Icelandic philologist Helgi Guðmundsson identified it as the bullroarer: a thin strip of wood whirled on a cord, which the saga's audience evidently knew as a boys' toy. Anthony Faulkes, editing the tale, judged that the bullroarer reading fits the scene exactly.","pull_quote":"Ormr hafde ekki uopna nema asinn ok ueifde honum vm sig sem hreytispelldi","pull_quote_translation":"Ormr had no weapon but the beam, and swung it around himself like a hreytispeldi.","pull_quote_cite":"Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar, Flateyjarbók I (1860), p. 532, quoted in Helgi Guðmundsson, 'Hreytispeldi,' Gripla 3 (1979), p. 224.","term_gloss":"hreytispeldi: 'flung slat', from hreyta 'to throw, fling' and speldi 'small slat of wood'.","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Helgi Guðmundsson, 'Hreytispeldi,' Gripla 3 (1979), pp. 224-225","url":"https://gripla.arnastofnun.is/index.php/gripla/article/download/481/368"},{"citation":"Anthony Faulkes (ed.), Two Icelandic Stories: Hreiðars þáttr, Orms þáttr, 2nd ed. (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011), pp. 34-36, 101"}],"source_citations":"Helgi Guðmundsson, 'Hreytispeldi,' Gripla 3 (1979), pp. 224-225; Anthony Faulkes (ed.), Two Icelandic Stories: Hreiðars þáttr, Orms þáttr, 2nd ed. (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011), pp. 34-36, 101","source_display":"Helgi Guðmundsson, 'Hreytispeldi,' Gripla 3 (1979), pp. 224-225; Anthony Faulkes (ed.), Two Icelandic Stories: Hreiðars þáttr, Orms þáttr, 2nd ed. (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011), pp. 34-36, 101","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"A thin wooden slat swung around the body on a cord.","function_display":"A children's toy in fourteenth-century Iceland, known from a saga simile.","confidence_display":"low to medium","attestation_label":"historical text","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"icelanders","display_name":"Ormr swings his beam like a hreytispeldi","image":{"full":"assets/objects/pd_plates/haddon1898_fig38_british_bullroarers.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/pd_plates/haddon1898_fig38_british_bullroarers_thumb.jpg","alt":"Haddon’s plate of nine numbered British bull-roarer designs, drawn upright in varied shapes: plain, broad, rounded and saw-toothed blades, several with cords attached.","credit":"A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man (1898), fig. 38","license":"Public domain (published 1898)","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/b21444584/page/n322/mode/1up","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Haddon's full plate of bullroarers from the British Islands","pool_id":"auto-pd_plates--haddon1898_fig38_british_bullroarers","auto_assigned":true,"last_modified":"2026-10-19"},"slug":"helgi1979-001-icelanders-orms-attr-storolfssonar-icelandic-folk-belief"}