Cite as: Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Ǫrvar-Odds saga 84 (Ǫrvar-Oddr, Ævidrápa 14)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 898.
Skjótt nam kynda í skóg þykkum
eld brennanda uppi á landi. |
Svá við lopti létum leika
hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar. |
Skjótt nam kynda brennanda eld í þykkum skóg uppi á landi. Svá létum {hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar} leika við lopti.
Quickly I kindled burning fire in a thick wood up in the countryside. So we [I] caused {the towering and red howling hound of wood} [FIRE] to play against the sky.
Mss: 343a(80v), 471(94v), 173ˣ(61va) (Ǫrv)
Readings: [2] skóg: skógi 173ˣ [3, 4] eld brennanda uppi á landi: hávan uppi hrottgarm viðar 471, eld brennandi upp á landi 173ˣ [5, 6] Svá við lopti létum leika: eld brennanda uppi á landi 471, svá at við lopti létum leika 173ˣ [7, 8] hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar: svá með lopti létum leika 471, hávan heldr hrottgarm viðar 173ˣ
Editions: Skj: Anonyme digte og vers [XIII], E. 10. Vers af Fornaldarsagaer: Af Ǫrvar-Oddssaga IX 14: AII, 308, BII, 327, Skald II, 175; Ǫrv 1888, 200, FSGJ 2, 344.
Notes: [All]: In order to attract his companions’ attention and discover the location of their missing ships, Oddr goes to a wood, climbs up a tall tree, and sets fire to its upper branches (í limum uppi) so that flames quickly rose high into the air (stóð logi í lopti uppi). This acts as a signal to the ships to return to the shore where all the men are reunited (Ǫrv 1888, 36-7). This stanza follows the wording of the prose quite closely. — [All]: The order of lines in 471 differs considerably from 343a and 173ˣ, although the actual wording does not diverge significantly. — [5-6]: Line 6 has double alliteration. Skj B and Skald reverse the ms. order of ll. 5-6 in order to regularise the alliteration, and also reverse the order of words in l. 5 to svá lopti við. — [7-8] hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar ‘the towering and red howling hound of wood [FIRE]’: With Skj B and Skald, but not Ǫrv 1888, which has hrótgarm ‘roof-hound’, the mss’ ‘hrot(t) garm’ is understood as a cpd noun whose first element is judged (cf. LP: hrotgarmr) to be the otherwise unrecorded hrot ‘howling’, assumed to be related to the verb hrjóta ‘fall, fly, snore, make a rough sound’. A very similar pair of lines occurs in a variant to Helr 10/4 (NK 221 and notes; Kommentar VI, 550-1) in Norn, hávan brenna | hrottgarm viðar. The context is the burning of Brynhildr’s hall. The element hrott- is otherwise unrecorded and is difficult to relate to hrjóta, but several ms. spellings of this cpd, including the present instance, have the double <t>. The fire-kenning hár hrótgarmr ‘the towering roof-hound’ occurs in Þjóð Sex 21/8II, and it is possible that hrótgarmr ‘roof-hound’ may have been intended as the base-word of the kenning here also. For fire-kennings with ‘hound, dog’ as base-word, see Meissner 101.
