ǪrvOdd Ævdr 18VIII (Ǫrv 88)
Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Ǫrvar-Odds saga 88 (Ǫrvar-Oddr, Ævidrápa 18)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 901.
Slógum tjöldum, en sumir fóru
björnu at veiða, þeir er boga kunnu.
Réðum í eyju upp at kynda
bál brenniligt; stóð björn fyrir.
Slógum tjöldum, en sumir fóru at veiða björnu, þeir er kunnu boga. Réðum at kynda brenniligt bál upp í eyju; björn stóð fyrir.
We pitched tents, and some went to hunt bears, those who could handle bows. We lit a blazing bonfire up on the island; a bear stood in front of it.
Mss: 343a(80v), 471(94v), 173ˣ(61vb) (Ǫrv)
Readings: [4] er: við 173ˣ; kunnu: kunnum 173ˣ [5] Réðum: ‘rridum’ 471 [8] stóð: so 471, 173ˣ, ok stóð 343a
Editions: Skj AII, 309, Skj BII, 328, Skald II, 175; Ǫrv 1888, 200, FSGJ 2, 345-6.
Notes: [All]: This stanza and the following sts 89-90 have a tenuous relationship to a passage in the prose text (Ǫrv 1888, 40-5) which tells how Oddr shoots a large bear in a forest (skógarbjǫrn einn mikinn), flays it, and puts a spike through its mouth, then places it on a cliff facing towards the mainland. This action disturbs the giants living in the area and they mass against Oddr and his men, who they regard as children because of their small size. Oddr fends off an attack by a giantess by standing behind the bear, having placed glowing embers in its mouth, and then shoots at the woman with his arrows, Gusisnautar. The prose narrative employs motifs which may show some knowledge of Saami and Finnic rituals connected with the bear and bear hunts (cf. DuBois 1999, 48; Tolley 2009, I, 559-63).
References
- Bibliography
- Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
- Ǫrv 1888 = Boer, R. C., ed. 1888. Ǫrvar-Odds saga. Leiden: Brill.
- DuBois, Thomas A. 1999. Nordic Religions in the Viking Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Tolley, Clive. 2009. Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic. FF Communications 144, No. 296-7. 2 parts. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica.
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