Namn och bygd 2022

Namn och bygd 2022 – Tidskrift för nordisk namnforskning

Eva Nyman (ed.), Staffan Nyström (ed.), Inge Særheim (ed.)
Series Namn och bygd, 110

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  • Published 2023
  • Issn 0077-2704
  • Namn och bygd, 110
  • Type Paperback
  • 216 pages
  • Swedish

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The Guta Lag’s injunctions against pagan worship: The term stafgarþr from the perspectives of taxonomy, legalese, and poetic diction

Abstract

The term stafgarþr (pl. stafgarþar), as it figures in the Laws of the Gotlanders, refers to earlier farmsteads at which natural topographical features could be combined with buildings, earlier house foundations, and the erection of stretches of palisade so as to form a sacralized enclosure and thereby move ontologically from real everyday houses, barns, byres, and fences to a sacred, inwardly focused site, on the model of other natural and earlier favored cult sites such as hills, woods, and marshes.

Keywords

Pre-Christian Scandinavian religion; Gotland; cult sites; place names; farm names

DOI Original publication