Eilífr Goðrúnarson (Eil)
10th century; volume 3; ed. Edith Marold;
1. Þórsdrápa (Þdr) - 23
2. Hákonar drápa jarls (Hákdr) - 0
3. Fragment (Frag) - 1
Skj info: Eilífr Goðrúnarson, Islandsk skjald, omkr. 1000. (AI, 148-52, BI, 139-44). Skj poems:
1. Et digt om Hakon jarl
2. Þórsdrápa
3. Af et kristeligt digt Hardly anything is known about the life of Eilífr Goðrúnarson (Eil). According to Skáldatal (SnE 1848-87, III, 256, 266, 280), he was active as a skald at the court of Hákon jarl Sigurðarson in Norway around the end of the tenth century. Some scholars have argued that a word-play in a stanza preserved in Skm (SnE) conceals the name of Hákon jarl, thus confirming the information of Skáldatal, but the present edition, following Lie (1976, 399) is sceptical of that hypothesis (see Þdr 23, Note to [All]). Eilífr’s only surviving works are the long poem Þórsdrápa (Eil Þdr, 23 stanzas) and one fragment of a Christian poem (Eil Frag).
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Þórsdrápa —
Eil ÞdrIII
Edith Marold with the assistance of Vivian Busch, Jana Krüger, Ann-Dörte Kyas and Katharina Seidel, translated from German by John Foulks 2017, ‘ Eilífr Goðrúnarson, Þórsdrápa’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 68. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1170> (accessed 1 July 2022)
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Skj: Eilífr Goðrúnarson: 2. Þórsdrápa (AI, 148-52, BI, 139-44); stanzas (if different): 4 |
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SkP info: III, 83 | |
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| 4 — Eil Þdr 4III
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Cite as: Edith Marold (ed.) 2017, ‘Eilífr Goðrúnarson, Þórsdrápa 4’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 83.
context: TGT attributes this stanza to Eilífr Goðrúnarson and cites it as an example of a kind of barbarismus, in particular, the lengthening of a short vowel to achieve correct aðalhending on ól and hóla (l. 4). Ólafr comments on the stanza as follows (TGT 1927, 44): Hann kallar torráðin ól vǫndol ok gerir langa þessa samstǫfu ol til þess at hendingar sé jafnhávar ‘He calls difficult ól vǫndol and lengthens the syllable ol so that the hendingar are equally long’. The meaning of neither ól nor vǫndol is known, and so far only guesses have been made about the interpretation of the stanza and also about Óláfr’s commentary (TGT 1884, 169-73; TGT 1927, 91-2; LP: ól, torráðinn). It seems that he assumed tmesis of vǫnd (l. 1) and ‑ol (l. 6), and he lengthened ol to form aðalhending with hóla ‘hills’ in the cadence. His commentary is difficult to explain, because it contains the word ol twice, and that is not corroborated by the stanza. It seems as though he thought that torráðin ól (l. 4) is synonymous with vǫndol (ll. 1, 4), with vǫnd understood as n. pl. or f. sg. of the adj. vandr ‘difficult’. It is likely that Óláfr did not understand the original stanza.
notes: Finnur Jónsson (Skj A; TGT 1927, 44; LP: ól, torráðinn) believed that the stanza ought to be attributed to Eilífr kúlnasveinn rather than to Eilífr Goðrúnarson. However, since the stanza fits well with the rest of Þdr (see Introduction above), the present edn adopts the attribution in TGT, which states explicitly that it was composed by Eilífr Goðrúnarson.
texts: ‹TGT 9›,
‹TGT 58 [4-4]›,
‹Gramm 11›,
‹Gramm 60› editions: Skj Eilífr kúlnasveinn: 2. Lausavísa(?) (AI, 573; BI, 566); Skald 274, NN §1216; SnE 1848-87, II, 102-3, 406, 416, 509, TGT 1884, 65, 169-73, TGT 1927, 44, 63, 91-2.
sources
| AM 242 fol (W) |
101, 15 - 101, 16 |
(TGT) |
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| AM 757 a 4° (B) |
2v, 14 - 2v, 15 |
(TGT) |
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| AM 748 I b 4° (A*) |
3v, 24 - 3v, 25 |
(TGT) |
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| AM 748 I b 4° (A*) |
5v, 31 - 5v, 32 [4-4] |
(TGT) |
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| AM 744 4°x (744x) |
9r, 10 - 9r, 13 |
(TGT) |
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| AM 761 a 4°x (761ax) |
82v, 2 - 82v, 5 |
(Skáldatal) |
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