Note to Anon Gát 1III
[6] buðlung Dana ‘king of Danes’: I.e. Skjǫldungr (so Skj B), one of the Skjǫldungar, the Danish royal dynasty. Tradition traces the line back to Óðinn. A skjǫldungr is also a sheldrake or shelduck, Tadorna tadorna, named among the heiti for birds in Þul Fugla 3/8. SnE 1848 gives the solution kráka ‘crow’, perhaps, although the homonym is not exact, in reference to Hrólfr kraki ‘Pole-ladder’, a legendary Danish king. It is not clear where this solution is taken from, as 743ˣ is not annotated here and 1562ˣ gives hœnir, i.e. hœnur ‘hens’ (Fritzner: hœna). Hœnir was one of the Æsir (see e.g. Simek 1993, 156), and some scholars have suggested he may have been able to take the form of a bird (e.g. Turville-Petre 1964, 141-2 and 142 n. 34; see Note to Þjóð Haustl 4/2), but there is no reason he should be particularly associated with the Danes.
References
- Bibliography
- Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
- SnE 1848 = Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1848. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, eða Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál og Háttatal. Reykjavík: Prentsmiðja landsins.
- Turville-Petre, Gabriel. 1964. Myth and Religion of the North. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
- Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
- Simek, Rudolf. 1993. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Trans. Angela Hall. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
- Internal references
- Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Fugla heiti 3’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 954.
- Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, Haustlǫng 4’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 437.