[8] mannbaldr (m. acc. sg.) ‘the outstanding man’: Lit. perhaps ‘human hero’ or ‘hero of a man’, as also in SnSt Ht 36/6III. Baldr is here taken as a common noun cognate with OE bealdor ‘hero, lord’ (cf. AEW: baldr 2), and the usage may be influenced by OE (see Kock, NN §787; Hofmann 1955, 76, 94). By contrast Finnur Jónsson (Skj B; LP: mann-Baldr) assumes that this is the name of the god, giving mann-Baldr with the sense ‘a Baldr among men’.
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.
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
- LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
- Hofmann, Dietrich. 1955. Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen der Wikingerzeit. BA 14. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
- Internal references
- Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 36’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1143.