Note to Eil Þdr 8^III

[7-8] til svíra salþaks ‘to the neck of the roof of the earth [SKY]’: Salþaks lit. ‘of the hall-roof’. Here the world is conceived as a building as in Vsp 4/5-8 (NK 1): sól scein sunnan | á salar steina, | þá var grund gróin | grœnom lauki ‘the sun shone from the south on the stones of the hall (i.e. the earth), then the ground was grown with green leek’ (cf. Kiil 1956, 118; Davidson 1983, 598; see also Note to Rv Lv 34/1). On the sky conceptualised as a roof, cf. Meissner 104. Svíra cannot be connected with megin ‘strength’ (l. 8) (Sveinbjörn Egilsson 1851, 8) or Þorns (l. 6) (Finnur Jónsson 1900b, 384; Skj B), because either construction would leave the dangling prep. til ‘to’ and divide l. 7 into three parts (see NN §450; Reichardt 1948, 353). Svíra is difficult to interpret; in the phrase til svíra salþaks ‘to the neck of the roof of the earth’, it can perhaps be explained in light of the fact that buildings could be thought of as living beings; cf. house-kennings whose base-words are names for animals (Meissner 430). It may also have to do with the idea of the cosmos as a living being; cf. the explanation in the Prologue to SnE (SnE 2005, 1-2) of how people came to believe in an earth goddess.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. 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.
5. NK = Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn (1899), eds. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. 2 vols. I: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Winter.
6. Davidson, Daphne L. 1983. ‘Earl Hákon and his Poets’. D. Phil. thesis. Oxford.
7. SnE 2005 = Snorri Sturluson. 2005. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2nd edn. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
8. Finnur Jónsson. 1900b. ‘Þórsdrápa Eilífs Goðrúnarsonar’. Oversigt over det Kgl. Danske videnskabernes selskabs forhandlinger 1900, 369-410.
9. Kiil, Vilhelm. 1956. ‘Eilífr Goðrúnarson’s Þórsdrápa’. ANF 71, 89-167.
10. Reichardt, Konstantin. 1948. ‘Die Thórsdrápa des Eilífr Goðrúnarson: Textinterpretation’. PMLA 63, 329-91.
11. Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 1851. Tvö brot af Haustlaung og Þórsdrápa. Reykjavík: Prentað á kostnað skólasjóðsins.
12. Internal references
13. Edith Marold 2017, ‘Snorra Edda (Prologue, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál)’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols [check printed volume for citation].
14. Not published: do not cite ()
15. Judith Jesch (ed.) 2017, ‘Rǫgnvaldr jarl Kali Kolsson, Lausavísur 34’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 343.