Note to Anon (Ragn) 4VIII (Ragn 34)
[2] stinn hlýr ‘the sturdy prows’: Olsen (Ragn 1906-8) notes that hlýr n. can mean ‘cheek’ as well as the ‘side (of a prow)’ (cf. Jesch 2001a, 147), thus sustaining in the present instance the idea of the ship as an animate being. The eds of CPB are exceptional among previous eds in taking the <a> following stinn in the ms. not as a prep. but as the m. acc. pl. ending of a cpd adj. hlýrstinnr ‘strong-prowed’, and seeing it as agreeing here (hlýrstinna) with hesta in the previous line. This further involves taking renna ‘speed through’ (so CPB) as transitive rather than intransitive (with brim as its direct object), used in the same way as ganga ‘traverse’ in Ragn 5/7 (cf. NS §96).
References
- Bibliography
- Jesch, Judith. 2001a. Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse. Woodbridge: Boydell.
- CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
- NS = Nygaard, Marius. 1906. Norrøn syntax. Kristiania (Oslo): Aschehoug. Rpt. 1966.
- Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
- Internal references
- Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 35 (Anonymous Lausavísur, Lausavísur from Ragnars saga loðbrókar 5)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 692.