Note to ǪrvOdd Ævdr 14^VIII (Ǫrv 84)

[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 21/8^II, 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.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
5. LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
6. NK = Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn (1899), eds. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. 2 vols. I: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Winter.
7. Kommentar = See, Klaus von et al. 1997-2012. Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda. 7 vols. Heidelberg: Winter.
8. Ǫrv 1888 = Boer, R. C., ed. 1888. Ǫrvar-Odds saga. Leiden: Brill.
9. Internal references
10. Not published: do not cite ()
11. Not published: do not cite ()
12. Diana Whaley (ed.) 2009, ‘Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, Sexstefja 21’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 135-6.