Note to Bragi Rdr 6III
[5-8]: These lines are difficult and a number of possible interpretations have been proposed. The basic sense of the helmingr is that the Goths, at Jǫrmunrekkr’s direction, repay (launa) Hamðir and Sǫrli for their attack upon their leader. (a) The interpretation adopted here follows most closely the view of Marold (1983, 73-5; cf. Finnur Jónsson 1930-1, 265-6) as being the best in terms of its attention to poetic syntax and the normal rules of kenning formation. Birki bláserkjar ‘birch-branch of the dark shirt (i.e. mail-shirt)’ is taken to belong to a pattern of sword-kenning in which the base-word is a twig or reed, or occasionally a specific tree species (cf. Meissner 152). (b) In Skj B Finnur Jónsson construed the second element of the cpd ballfagr (l. 6) as belonging to gǫtu and understood the presence of a kenning fagrgata bláserkjar birkis (see LP: fagrgata), sverdets lyse vej ‘the sword’s shining path [WOUND]’. He then understood a rather awkward intercalary clause comprising ennihǫgg ball ok eggjar (ll. 6, 7) with the verb ball ‘resounded’ (from bella) having a coordinate subject, pandehug rungede og sværdene lød ‘forehead blows rang and swords resounded’. (c) Kock (NN §§215, 2002) also took ennihǫgg ok eggjar together, understanding them as a coordinate object of launa ‘repay’, and in this he was followed by Faulkes (SnE 1998, II, 266, 343). For this interpretation to work, the noun hǫgg ‘blows’ must be understood with both enni- and eggjar-, as a kind of hendiadys, to give the following prose word order: ok allir launa sonum Jónakrs ballfǫgr (or bǫlfǫgr) ennihǫgg ok eggjar[hǫgg] birkis bláserkjar ‘and all repay the sons of Jónakr [= Hamðir and Sǫrli] for the powerfully shining (or ‘evilly shining’) forehead- and sword-blade blows of the birches of the dark shirt [WARRIORS = Hamðir and Sǫrli]’. The sense of the kenning birkis bláserkjar in this interpretation is unusual, and depends upon birki being understood as a collective noun ‘birches’, which can therefore stand for a group, or in this case, a pair, of warriors. In the interpretation proposed by Marold and adopted above birki is understood as an abstraction ‘something birch-like’ and so ‘birch branch/twig’ and the kenning birki bláserkjar ‘birch branch of the dark shirt (i.e. mail-shirt)’ may then be understood as a kenning for a sword.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
- Marold, Edith. 1983. Kenningkunst: Ein Beitrag zu einer Poetik der Skaldendichtung. Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker, new ser. 80. Berlin: de Gruyter.
- Finnur Jónsson. 1930-1. ‘Brage skjald’. APS 5, 237-86.