Einar Pálsson

The fertility mythology became part of a local ritual landscape in each main valley of Iceland, - the same geographical unit as that of the Sagas.

With time this localized mythology merged to a varying degree with historical characters and their actions, to become the material for the Saga writers centuries later.

The burning of Njáll at Bergþórshvoll was a conflagration marking the end of the pagan (and Celtic Christian) world and the advent of the new Roman Catholic era.

Kári, the wind and time (equivalent to Kairos), who escaped the ordeal like a phoenix, was converted into the Holy Spirit etc.

Because it was a mirror image of heavenly order and acted as a time reckoning system the most natural geometry was a circle, symbolic of the horizon and the zodiac.

The dimensions of the system were standardised and measured by the ancients, conforming to a progression of numbers that harmonized distance and time.

Prominent features like hills, rocks and river mouths, aligning with the spokes, were used as landmarks to fix the wheel-shaped cosmogram to the landscape.

The (originally) 36 goðar (the priest-chieftains of the free state) represent the heavenly circle and constituted a king in a mythological sense.

A few studies have been made of allegories in the Old Norse literature since then (e.g. Ciklamini 1984,[3] Tulinius 2004 for Egils saga[4] and Einarsson for Rauðúlfs þáttr[5][6]).