Note to Anon Krm 20^VIII

[7] í Álasundi ‘in Álasund’: Three possible locations are canvassed here, depending on which of the ms. readings is favoured, viz. Yell Sound in the Shetland Islands, Ålesund in Norway, and the island of Islay in the Inner Hebrides. The Shetland and Hebrides locations would be consistent with the fact that the places mentioned in this part of Krm (sts 11-19; 21, 24) seem to be in the British Isles, and this edn favours identification with Yell Sound. (a) Álasund has been identified with Jalasund, i.e. Yell Sound, the name of the strait running between the islands of Yell and Mainland in the Shetland Isles (recorded in 1512 as Jælaswndh i Hiæltandh ‘Yell Sound in Shetland’; Indrebø 1929, 165). Álasund could be seen as a misspelling or possibly as a Norse form reflecting the loss of initial [j], in Old Norse but not in other Germanic languages, by c. 600 AD, and giving rise to cognates such as ON/ModIcel. ár, ModGer. Jahr ‘year’ (see ANG §231 Anm. 2; LP: Álasund, citing CVC (CVC: I, B. III)). The name Jala f. is recorded in Þul Eyja 4/8^III as an island-name, and Jali m. in Þul Fjarða 1/1^III as a fjord-name (see also ÍO: 2 Jala for the identification of these names with Yell and Yell Sound, respectively). (b) Álasund could possibly refer to the harbour town of Ålesund in Møre and Romsdal, western Norway. In the entry for Ålesund in Sandnes and Stemshaug (1997, 512), the unrecorded Old Norse form of this name is reconstructed as *Álasund, and the first element in the name is explained as gen. pl. of áll ‘eel’, but no early forms are given – whether because Álasund in the present stanza form was not taken into account, or because it was not believed to refer to Ålesund. (c) Mss R702ˣ, LR and R693ˣ record the form ‘Ilasundi’, a reading chosen only by CPB among earlier eds. ON Íl f. is recorded as the name of the island of Islay in the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland; see Bkrepp Magndr 8/3^II, Sturl Hrafn 7/7^II and Þul Eyja 5/1^III. The name is of uncertain, possibly Celtic origin (see ÍO: Íl). While gen. sg. Ílar- might have been expected as the first element in Ílasund, there can be little difficulty in identifying the name as the Sound of Islay, the narrow strait between Islay and the island of Jura to its east.

References

1. Bibliography
2. 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.
3. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
4. ANG = Noreen, Adolf. 1923. Altnordische Grammatik I: Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter Berücksichtigung des Urnordischen. 4th edn. Halle: Niemeyer. 1st edn. 1884. 5th unrev. edn. 1970. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
5. 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.
6. ÍO = Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon. 1989. Íslensk orðsifjabók. Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans.
7. Indrebø, Gustav. 1929. Stadnamn fraa Oslofjorden. Skrifter utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo II. Hist.-filos. kl. 1928. No. 5. Oslo: Dybwad.
8. LR = Worm 1636.
9. Internal references
10. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar in sérstaka’ in Guðrún Nordal (ed.), Poetry on Icelandic History. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 4. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=42> (accessed 5 May 2024)
11. Rory McTurk 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Krákumál’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 706. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1020> (accessed 5 May 2024)
12. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Eyja heiti 5’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 979.
13. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Eyja heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 972. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3247> (accessed 5 May 2024)
14. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Fjarða heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 982. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3248> (accessed 5 May 2024)