[1] dróttins munka ‘of the lord of monks [= God]’: Meissner (Meissner 369) comments that early kennings for God or Christ such as this, konungr Róms ‘king of Rome’ (Eil Frag 1/3, 4) and gramr Jórðánar ‘prince of the Jordan’ (Sigv ErfÓl 28/2I) register a sense of the strangeness (das fremdartige) of the idea of the Christian god, which however soon phases out.
References
- Bibliography
- Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
- Internal references
- Jana Krüger (ed.) 2017, ‘Eilífr Goðrúnarson, Fragment 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 127.
- Judith Jesch (ed.) 2012, ‘Sigvatr Þórðarson, Erfidrápa Óláfs helga 28’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 697.