Helgafell, Snæfellsnes, Iceland
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Helgafell ("holy mountain") is a small mountain on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula of Iceland. The mountain is 73 metres (240 ft) high. A temple in honor of Thor (Þór) was built there by Þórólfr Mostrarskegg, the first settler of the area. His biography is described in literary form with fictional and mythical elements in Eyrbyggja saga.
Helgafell also appears in the Laxdæla saga as the location where the heroine Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir last lived and is supposedly where she is buried. At Helgafell was an Augustinian monastery, which was a well-known seat of learning, from 1184 until the Reformation in 1550. This monastery was moved from Flatey island to Helgafell. There has been a church here since the adoption of Christianity in Iceland in the year 1000. The current church beneath Mt. Helgafell was built in 1903. 
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Mt. Helgafell is mentioned in the 33rd chapter of Landnáma - the Book of Settlement: Þórólfur (mostrarskegg) settled land from Stafá river to Þórsá river and called it Þórsnes peninsula. He so highly revered a mountain that stood on the peninsula, which he called Mt. Helgafell, that no man should look in its direction unwashed.
And it was so sacred that nothing should be killed on the mountain, neither livestock nor men. And he believed that when he and his kinsmen died they would go inside the mountain. Eyrbyggja Saga, which is an excellent Icelandic Saga, takes place in West-Iceland and tells us that Þorsteinn þorskabítur, the son of the settler Þórólfur mostrarskegg, was the first one to live at Helgafell. His sons were Börkur digri (the stout) and Þorgrímur. |
