Note to Arn Frag 1III
[All]: On the Christian content of this striking helmingr, see Edwards (1982-3, 40-1). The helmingr is in hrynhent metre but so unlike Arnórr’s HrynII for Magnús góði ‘the Good’ that it seems improbable that it belongs there (so also Fidjestøl 1982, 128; SnE 1998, I, 181 allows for the possibility). It could instead come from an erfidrápa ‘memorial drápa’ which according to Laxdœla saga (ÍF 5, 229) Arnórr composed for the chieftain Gellir Þorkelsson, telling of his building of a church at Helgafell. Guðbrandur Vigfússon (CPB II, 184) suggested that Arnórr’s hrynhent fragment depicted ‘a painting or hangings on which the Last Judgement is figured’, and if so the poem may have belonged to the ekphrasis or picture-describing genre, just as Úlfr Uggason’s Húsdrápa (ÚlfrU Húsdr, c. 985) describes scenes on the walls of the grand new homestead built by Óláfr pái ‘Peacock’ at Hjarðarholt. On the source poem in the context of skaldic ekphrasis, see Clunies Ross (2006b, 235), and on the significance of the reference to it in Laxdœla saga, see Guðrún Nordal (2001, 131).
References
- Bibliography
- Edwards, Diana C. 1982-3. ‘Christian and Pagan References in Eleventh-Century Norse Poetry: The Case of Arnórr Jarlaskáld’. SBVS 21, 34-53.
- Fidjestøl, Bjarne. 1982. Det norrøne fyrstediktet. Universitet i Bergen Nordisk institutts skriftserie 11. Øvre Ervik: Alvheim & Eide.
- Guðrún Nordal. 2001. Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press.
- 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.
- SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
- ÍF 5 = Laxdœla saga. Ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson. 1934.
- Clunies Ross, Margaret. 2006b. ‘The Cultural Politics of the Skaldic Ekphrasis Poem’. In Evans et al. 2006, 227-40.
- Internal references
- 2022, ‘ Anonymous, Laxdœla 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. 1199-1203. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=11> (accessed 2 May 2024)
- Diana Whaley 2009, ‘ Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, Hrynhenda, Magnússdrápa’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 181-206. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1101> (accessed 2 May 2024)
- Edith Marold with the assistance of Vivian Busch, Jana Krüger, Ann-Dörte Kyas and Katharina Seidel, translated from German by John Foulks 2017, ‘ Úlfr Uggason, Húsdrápa’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 402. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1492> (accessed 2 May 2024)