Þul Á 4III/7 — Drǫfn ‘Drammenselva’
Rǫgn, Hrǫnn ok raun, Raumelfr, hnipul,
hnǫpul, hjalmunlá, Humra, Vína,
Víl, Vín, vella, valin, semð, salin,
Nepr, Drǫfn, strauma, Nis, mynt, gnapa.
Rǫgn, Hrǫnn ok raun, Raumelfr, hnipul, hnǫpul, hjalmunlá, Humra, Vína, Víl, Vín, vella, valin, semð, salin, Nepr, Drǫfn, strauma, Nis, mynt, gnapa.
Rǫgn, Hrǫnn and ordeal, Glomma, seizer, grasper, rudder-wave, Humber, Dvina, Víl, Vín, boiling one, chosen one, calm, salin, Dnieper, Drammenselva, torrent, Nissan, mouthed one, leaning one.
readings
[7] Drǫfn: ‘[…]’ B, ‘drǫfn’ 744ˣ
notes
[7] Drǫfn (f.) ‘Drammenselva’: The river that flows through the town of Drammen in Buskerud, Norway. This is also the name of a wave, one of Ægir’s daughters, and a heiti for ‘sea’ (Þul Sjóvar 4/5; cf. also Hrǫnn ‘wave’, l. 1 and uðr ‘wave’, st. 3/5 above). The fact that Drǫfn is immediately preceded by Nepr ‘the Dnieper’ may suggest, however, that the compiler of this þula could have taken both names from a source which mentioned the death and burial place of Þorvaldr inn víðfǫrli ‘the Wide-travelled’ (ÞvíðfIV) in Russia. According to Kristni saga ch. 13 (Hb 1892-6, 144), Þorvaldr travelled to eastern Koenugarðr (Kiev) along the Nepr (Dnieper) and died in a monastery a short way from Pallteskja (Polotsk). The saga refers to a stanza by Brandr inn víðfǫrli (Brandr LvIV), according to which Þorvaldr was buried there i há fialli vpp i Drafni ‘on a high mountain up in Drafn’, where Drafn must be either the name of a river or of a lake. Relating the same events, Þorvalds þáttr víðfǫrla (ÓT 1958-61, I, 300) states that Þorvaldr’s body is buried in Russia in a monastery located vndir haa biargi er heitir Draufn ‘beneath a high cliff called Drǫfn’, which must stem from a misinterpretation of Brandr’s stanza or of some other source that contained the same name. It has been argued that the hydronym Drafn/Drǫfn might go back to certain Slavonic place names found in the Polotsk region, such as the lakes Driv’ato, Drisv’aty and Der’bo (see Jackson 2001, 136-40).