Note to Anon Pl 7^VII

[7-8]: Cf. the wording of the C text síndist honum hann þar kominn í hiartarmind þeirri ‘he [God] appeared to him to have come there in the form of the hart’ (Louis-Jensen 1998, cxxii). The alliterating á hamri ‘on a cliff’ (l. 6) reflects the demands of the poetic form and is based on the location of Plácitus’s vision on a mountain (mons) in the Lat. text (cf. the A version’s fjall). The symbolic significance of the hart was particularly appropriate to the legend of the Christian convert Plácitus and would have been well understood by the poet and audience of Pl. On the one hand, the hart panting for cooling streams mentioned in Ps. XLII.1 was understood to represent the soul saved through baptism, and, on the other, the hart who tramples a serpent was understood as a type of Christ overcoming Satan according to the Physiologus. If 673b was originally part of a compilation together with 673a, there would have been a thematic connection between Pl and the Physiologus text in 673a, which includes the hart among the animals whose allegorical meaning is expounded (Halldórr Hermansson 1938, 20).

References

1. Bibliography
2. Louis-Jensen, Jonna, ed. 1998. ‘Plácitus drápa’. In Tucker 1998, 89-130.
3. Internal references
4. 2022, ‘ Anonymous, Króka-Refs saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 1186-1190. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=39> (accessed 19 May 2024)
5. Jonna Louis-Jensen and Tarrin Wills 2007, ‘ Anonymous, Plácitusdrápa’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 179-220. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1039> (accessed 19 May 2024)