Note to Sturl Hryn 12II
[4] dregnum hlunni ‘worn slipway’: Ships were launched out to sea on a wooden slipway and were pulled up the same way to be stored on land for the winter. The weight of the ships as they were being pulled on the slipway wore down the wooden planks and the rubbing generated heat, causing sparks to fly from under the ships, according to LP: draga 11. That interpretation is partly supported by ONP: draga 26 præt. part.: dreginn ‘weakened, worn out’. By using the p. p. dreginn Sturla plays with the two meanings, ‘pulled’ and ‘worn’. Kock rejected the latter interpretation. He construed the couplet as eldi hrauð fyr æsiköldum meið unnar dregnum ór hlunnum ‘fire poured from the terribly cold tree of the wave dragged from the slipway’ (NN §§1106, 1914D).
References
- Bibliography
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- 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.
- ONP = Degnbol, Helle et al., eds. 1989-. A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose / Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. 1-. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission.