Dísir

Summary

The dísir, singular dís, are women not of human kind in the myths and sagas of the North, who follow a person and his family, guard him, know what will befall him, and leave him when his death draws near. Cleasby–Vigfusson says the word means "sister" in the oldest poems and a woman in general in poetry, and in the sagas a guardian spirit who follows every man from his birth and leaves him only in the hour of death. A sacrifice was held for them called the dísablót.

Snorri mentions this sacrifice in Ynglinga saga at the death of Aðils, king of the Swedes. Aðils loved fine horses. He was at Uppsala for the dísablót and rode his horse round the hall of the dísir; the horse stumbled and fell, the king was thrown forward, his head struck a stone, his skull broke and his brains lay on the stone. So he died, and he was buried in a mound at Uppsala.

The clearest account of them is the Tale of Þiðrandi and Þórhallr in Flateyjarbók. Hallr of Síða in Iceland had a son named Þiðrandi, the finest and best-loved of young men, and his friend Þórhallr was a man who saw hidden things. Hallr held a feast at the Winter Nights, the beginning of winter, and Þórhallr told the guests: let no one go out tonight, and pay no heed to anything that knocks at the door. When people were asleep there was a knock at the door three times. Þiðrandi got up and said: it is a disgrace for us all to lie as if asleep when guests have come; he took his sword and went out, and saw no one. Then he heard riders coming from the north and saw nine women in black clothes with drawn swords in their hands, and riders from the south, nine women in bright clothes on white horses. He wanted to go back in and tell the others, but the women in black reached him first and attacked him, and he defended himself bravely. At dawn, in moonlight and frost, he was found wounded; he told them what had happened and died that morning. Hallr asked Þórhallr what it meant, and he said: I think these women were none other than the fetches of your kin. I expect a new faith is coming to this land, and your dísir who have followed the old faith knew beforehand that their kin would cast them off; they would not part from you without taking their due, and took this young man; the better dísir wanted to help him but did not come in time.

In poetry the dísir appear before a death. In the Greenlandic Atlamál Glaumvör, wife of Gunnarr, dreams on the night before her husband sets out for Atli: "I thought dead women came here tonight, scarcely adorned; they wished to choose you, to call you swiftly to their benches; I say your dísir have failed you." At the end of Grímnismál Odin says to King Geirröðr, just before the king falls on his sword: "the dísir are hostile; now you may see Odin." And their help is asked in childbirth: in Sigrdrífumál the valkyrie says the runes of help are cut on the palms and the dísir asked to help the woman in labour.

The idea the stories of the dísir turn on is that a person does not walk alone: with him go women of his family and not of his world, who come at his birth, guard him as long as he honours them, and know his death before he does, so that they leave him or take him. The family feeds them at one of the year's feasts as it feeds its guests, and when the feast is cut off they take their share with their own hands.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read this word. Dís is d and s. We read it as ḥads: Lane says ḥads is opinion and conjecture, qālahu bi-l-ḥads is to say a thing by intuition, ḥads is "an occult mode of judging", and taḥaddasa al-akhbār is to seek to learn tidings without others knowing. The initial ḥ drops outside the Semitic languages, and leaves its trace in the West Germanic form of the word, Old Saxon idis, with a vowel at the front where the ḥ stood. This is what the dísir do in the stories: they know beforehand, as Þórhallr said they knew of the change of faith before it came.

Linguistic Root

Kroonen sets up Germanic *dīsi-, "lady, fairy, goddess", and calls it "an etymologically problematic word". He notes that some have compared Old Church Slavonic děva, "lady", from an Indo-European root meaning to suckle, and that the Elfdalian dialect of Swedish has a verb dīsa, "to suckle"; then he says that linking dís with the West Germanic *edis-, that is ides and idis, is possible but would make the word non-Indo-European in origin.

So the reading covers the whole word: d is d, s is s, and the long í is a vowel. It also joins the two forms, if they are one word: idis with a vowel at the front where the ḥ stood, dís without it. The sense of ḥads in Arabic is knowledge that comes before proof and the hidden seeking of tidings, which is the work of the dísir in the death stories. The limit of the reading is that ḥads in Arabic is an act of knowing, not a woman who knows; that the Germanic word means woman and lady before it means a knowing spirit; and that the link between dís and idis is itself not secure in Kroonen.

Key Mythic Narratives

The Norns who come to the newborn

In Gylfaginning Snorri says that the three Norns at Urðr's well shape the lives of men, and that "there are other norns who come to every child that is born to shape its life", some of the gods, some of the elves and some of the dwarves, and that "good norns of good descent shape a good life". This is close to what Þórhallr says of the better dísir and the dísir in black.

"The dísir urged me on"

In Hamðismál Hamðir, after he and his brother have killed their brother Erpr on the road to King Jörmunrekkr, says: if Erpr were alive the king's head would be off; "the dísir urged me on" to the killing. Here the dísir drive a man to the deed by which he perishes.

Symbolic Reading

The Norse rereading essay reads the three Norns as a picture of the recording of history: past, present and future. The dísir are closer to the house than the Norns: each family has its own, they are named by its people, and they claim their share of its feast. So the story of Þiðrandi records the history of one family on the night its faith changed: the old spirits take the last of what is theirs from the house before they leave it.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The Greek Moirai come to a person at birth and allot his share, as the norns come to every child born in Gylfaginning and the dísir are asked for help in childbirth. The pictures differ: the Moirai are three and one of them spins the thread of life, while the dísir are a company that follows a particular family and rides with swords.

At Rome the small household gods, the Lares, guard a particular family and its hearth generation after generation, are fed in the house, and the household Lar gives or withholds according to the honour he receives. The dísir are likewise the spirits of a family, fed at its feast, who give or take.

In the Avesta's Farvardin Yasht the spirits of the righteous, the Fravashis, come to the houses during the ten nights at the end of the year, going about and asking: "Who will praise us? Who will offer us a sacrifice? Who will receive us with meat and clothes in his hand?", and when they are honoured they bless the house with flocks, men and horses. In the North the dísir come to Hallr's house at the Winter Nights, the start of the winter half-year, and take their due when they do not find what they used to receive.

The dísablót at the beginning of winter is one of the feasts of the North's farming year; the dísir in black bear swords as do the valkyries who choose the slain; and their nearest kin are the fylgja and hamingja, the spirit that follows a man and the luck of his family, so that Þórhallr calls them by both names at once.