[7] gifta ‘blessedness’: Here, as usual in late skaldic poetry (and in much prose devoted to the missionary kings), this word has specifically Christian connotations and means ‘grace, blessing from God’ (see Baetke 1951, 47-54; Lange 1958a, 50-2); the objections raised by Hallberg (1973) to this interpretation are not pertinent to the skaldic material.
References
- Bibliography
- Lange, Wolfgang. 1958a. Studien zur christlichen Dichtung der Nordgermanen 1000-1200. Palaestra 222. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
- Baetke, Walter. 1951. Christliches Lehngut in der Sagareligion: Das Svoldr-Problem. Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Phil.-Hist. Kl. 98 (6). Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
- Hallberg, Peter. 1973. ‘The Concept of gipta-gæfa-hamingja in Old Norse Literature’. In Foote et al. 1973, 143-83.