Cite as: Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Máríuflokkr 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 507.

Knáttu mǫrg á mergjar mjǫðkarms furu hvarma hirðsamnaðar himna hrynregn sali dynja. Knáttu mǫrg á mergjar mjǫðkarms furu hvarma hirðsamnaðar himna hrynregn sali dynja. Mǫrg hrynregn hvarma furu mjǫðkarms knáttu dynja á sali mergjar himna hirðsamnaðar.

text prose order   {Many streaming rains of eyelids} [TEARS] {of the fir-tree of the mead-vessel} [WOMAN = Mary] gushed onto {the halls of marrow} [LIMBS] {of the convener {of the retinue of the heavens}}. [(lit. ‘heavens’ retinue-convener’) ANGELS > = Christ]

context: This helmingr and the next stanza are cited without intervening prose to illustrate that tears and weeping can be paraphrased as ‘hail, rain, drops, showers, waterfalls of the eyes, cheeks, forehead, eyelids’.

notes: The helmingr, which describes Mary’s lament next to the body of Christ, recalls such later Marian poems as Anon Mgr^VII, although the diction of Mfl is very different from that of Mgr. The present poem is called flokkr, which means it must have been a long poem without a refrain (stef).

texts: ‹SnEW 20›, ‹SnE 726›

editions: Skj Anonyme digte og vers [XII]: G [4]. Máríuflokkr 1 (AI, 627; BI, 634); Skald I, 308; SnE 1848-87, II, 500, III, 181.

sources

AM 242 fol (W)

169, 20 - 169, 21

(SnE)