Note to Sveinn Norðrdr 2^III

[2] ljótir synir Fornjóts ‘the ugly sons of Fornjótr <giant> [WINDS]’: Fornjótr appears in a number of Old Norse sources as a giant, apparently a personification of weather phenomena. His son or sons are the winds (see Notes to Þul Jǫtna I 3/5, Þul Elds 1/3-4 and Þul Veðra 1/8). Snorri Sturluson calls him the brother of Ægir and of fire (SnE 1998, I, 39). In Þjóð Yt 21/5, 7^I glóðfjalgr sonr Fornjóts ‘the ember-hot son of Fornjótr’ is clearly a kenning for ‘fire’. The notion of a family of hostile giants, the offspring of a mythical king Fornjótr, an inhabitant of the most northerly parts of the Scandinavian peninsula, who produced bad weather on land and sea and other dangerous things like fire seems to have been traditional in early Scandinavia, but it was adopted and embellished by learned historiographers and appears in works that trace the ancestry of several ruling families of Norwegian origin, notably the jarls of Orkney. Cf. ÍF 34, 3-7 and Flat 1860-8, I, 21 and 219-20. For studies of the prose uses of this myth, see Clunies Ross (1983), Meulengracht Sørensen (1993b) and Rowe (2005, 316-36).

References

1. Bibliography
2. Flat 1860-8 = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and C. R. Unger, eds. 1860-8. Flateyjarbók. En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler. 3 vols. Christiania (Oslo): Malling.
3. ÍF 34 = Orkneyinga saga. Ed. Finnbogi Guðmundsson. 1965.
4. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
5. Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben. 1993b. ‘The Sea, the Flame and the Wind: The Legendary Ancestors of the Earls of Orkney’. In Batey et al. 1993, 212-21. Rpt. in Meulengracht Sørensen 2001, 221-30.
6. Rowe, Elizabeth Ashman. 2005. The Development of Flateyjarbók: Iceland and the Norwegian Dynastic Crisis of 1389. VC 15. [Odense]: University Press of Southern Denmark.
7. Clunies Ross, Margaret. 1983. ‘Snorri Sturluson’s Use of the Norse Origin-Legend of the Sons of Fornjótr in his Edda’. ANF 98, 47-66.
8. Internal references
10. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Jǫtna heiti I 3’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 710.
11. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Veðra heiti 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 918.
12. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Elds heiti 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 921.
13. Edith Marold (ed.) 2012, ‘Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, Ynglingatal 21’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 46.