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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to EValg Lv 1I

[5-6] af gǫmlu þokulandi Gandvíkr ‘from the ancient mist-land of Gandvík’: This is difficult to identify, not least because af ‘from’ could point either to the land from which Haraldr Gormsson is expected, or to the place from which the speaker is awaiting him. Gandvík (here gen. sg. Gandvíkr) normally refers to the White Sea, possibly because ‘magic staff or object’ is among the meanings of gandr m., and the Saami had a reputation for sorcery (LP, CVC: Gandvík). The þokuland ‘mist-land’ of Gandvík would therefore presumably be Norway (Fms 12, 289 suggests Finnmark standing for Norway), from where the Icelanders expect an attack by Haraldr. However, LP: Gandvík takes the ‘mist-land’ of Gandvík as Iceland (so also Fms 12, 237), suggesting that Gandvík in this instance denotes the Arctic Ocean in general. Ólafur Halldórsson (Jvs 1969, 211) also takes this as a reference to Iceland, and emends af ‘from’ to ‘to, against’. He suggests (ibid., 211 n.) that þoku could be an error for þekju ‘thatch, roof’, and that the roof of Gandvík is ‘ice’.

References

  1. Bibliography
  2. Fms = Sveinbjörn Egilsson et al., eds. 1825-37. Fornmanna sögur eptir gömlum handritum útgefnar að tilhlutun hins norræna fornfræða fèlags. 12 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
  3. 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.
  4. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
  5. Jvs 1969 = Ólafur Halldórsson, ed. 1969a. Jómsvíkinga saga. AM 291 4to. Reykjavík: Prentsmiðja Jóns Helgasonar HF.

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