In the Beginning

In the beginning, God's spirit hovered over the water, but then Gutasagan essentially takes over and continues:

"Gutland hitti fyrsti maþr þan sum þieluar hit. þa war gutland so eluist at þet daghum sanc Oc natum war uppj. En þann maþr quam fyrsti eldi a land Oc siþan sanc þet aldri."

To clarify, there's no mention of Tjelvar in the Bible, of course. The passage above means:

Gutland was first discovered by a man named Tjelvar. At that time, Gutland was so enchanted that it would sink during the day and rise at night. When Tjelvar brought the first fire to the land, it never sank again.

This is the grand opening of Gutasagan, an appendix to the Gutalagen, which was written down in the early 13th century. This introduction is sometimes called a "landnam," or land-taking, in the style of Icelandic tradition. However, it's worth questioning whether this Icelandic term should be applied to Gutnish history, given that the Icelandic "landnam" began around 10,000 years later. Moreover, Icelandic history and sagas are so deeply intertwined with other historical writings that they stand on their own.

So, Gotland's history doesn’t begin in obscurity or distant mists. The man who discovered Gotland was named Tjelvar, and it was his descendants who populated the island. We should also mention that when Carl Linnaeus traveled through Gotland in 1741, he observed something interesting along the road between Boge and Gothem on the eastern part of the island:

"Tjällvar's Islet and Tjällvar's Bay lay beside our road. This islet was large, slightly elevated, and connected to the mainland, though one could see that it had once been an island. This Tjällvar's Islet is said to have been named after a man named Thielward, who, before Christ’s birth, landed here and took possession of Gotland, if the historians with good memories are to be believed."

In Boge parish, there is a beautiful and noteworthy ship setting known as Tjelvar's Grave. It’s unlikely that the original Tjelvar is buried there, but it could well be the Thielward mentioned above who landed on Tjällvar's Islet.