Note to Án Lv 3^VIII (Án 3)

[5-6] af hlenni ennigeira uxa ‘from the resounding sea (?) of the forehead-spears of oxen [HORNS > DRINK]’: Ennigeirar uxa ‘the forehead-spears of oxen’ is clearly a kenning for drinking horns, and it is presumed that hlenni must here denote some kind of liquid, in order to produce a kenning for alcoholic drink similar to Egill Lv 6/3-4^V (Eg 10) ýring atgeira ýrar ‘moisture of the spears of the [female] aurochs’ (cf. ÍF 2, 110 n.). In the construction drekkum ... af ... hlenni the form hlenni must be dat. sg. The only Old Norse word with the stem hlenn- is hlenni ‘robber, thief’, but the dat. sg. of this word is hlenna and in any case it does not fit the context. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) offers no explanation of the word here (cf. LP: hlenni; Skj B). Kock suggests that there may be an etymological connection between the word hlenni here and such Old English words as hlyn (m. ‘sound, noise, din’; NN §1484). Since many Old Norse words whose etymological meaning is ‘noise, din’ are used to denote the sea or a wave, Kock suggests that hlenni ennigeira uxa is a kenning for drink of the type ‘resounding sea/wave of the drinking horn’ (cf. Meissner 432). Hughes (1972, 221 n. 36) emends hlenni to hlemi, which he appears to interpret as a word meaning ‘noise’ (1972, 46). The word hlenni remains obscure, but the meaning of the kenning and the passage as a whole is clear.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. ÍF 2 = Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar. Ed. Sigurður Nordal. 1933.
7. Hughes, Shaun F. D. 1972. ‘Áns rímur bogsveigis: Two Nineteenth Century Icelandic Metrical Romances. Edited from Manuscripts ÍB. 38, 8vo and Lbs. 2466, 8vo of the Landsbókasafn Íslands’. Ph.D. thesis. University of Washington…
8. Internal references
9. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2022, ‘Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar 10 (Egill Skallagrímsson, Lausavísur 6)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 181.