Cookies on our website

We use cookies on this website, mainly to provide a secure browsing experience but also to collect statistics on how the website is used. You can find out more about the cookies we set, the information we store and how we use it on the cookies page.

Continue

skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Menu Search

Anon Bjark 1III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Bjarkamál in fornu 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. 497.

Anonymous PoemsBjarkamál in fornu
12

text and translation

Dagrs upp kominn;         dynja hana fjaðrar;
máls vílmǫgum         at vinna erfiði.
Vaki æ ok vaki,         vina hǫfuð,
allir inir œztu         Aðils of sinnar.

Dagrs upp kominn; fjaðrar hana dynja; máls {vílmǫgum} at vinna erfiði. Vaki æ ok vaki, hǫfuð vina, allir inir œztu of sinnar Aðils.
 
‘Day has broken; the rooster’s feathers rustle; it is time for the sons of toil [SERVANTS] to get to work. Wake now and wake, friends, all the noblest companions of Aðils. ’

notes and context

King Óláfr awakens early while his men are still asleep and asks for his skald, Þormóðr, who is close by. The king asks Þormóðr to recite a poem to them (‘Tel þú oss kvæði nǫkkut’ ÍF 27, 361). The skald sits up and recites sts 1 and 2 very loudly so that the whole army can hear him. The two stanzas are said to be the beginning (upphaf) of Bjarkamál in fornu.

The stanza is somewhat similar to lines near the opening of the Old English heroic fragment The Fight at Finnsburg, ll. 10-12 (Beowulf 2008, 283): Ac onwacniġeað nū, | wīġend mīne, | habbað ēowre linda, | hicgeaþ on ellen, | winnað on orde, | wesað on mōde! ‘But awaken now, my warriors, take hold of your shields, think of valour, fight in the vanguard, be courageous!’. — The stanza’s first helmingr evokes the sounds and activities of domesticity, with roosters crowing and servants starting the day’s work, while the second helmingr changes the focus to the warrior band who are still at rest and are urged by the speaker to get up and prepare for battle.

readings

sources

Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.

editions and texts

Skj: Anonyme digte og vers [X], II. A. Bjarkamál en fornu 1: AI, 180, BI, 170, Skald I, 91, FF §25; Hkr 1893-1901, II, 463, ÍF 27, 361 (ÓHHkr ch. 208); ÓH 1941, I, 547, Flat 1860-8, II, 343; ÍF 6, 262-3 (Fbr ch. 24).

341
Hkr 342 (II 141)
343
31
Fbr 32 (ch. 27)
33
601
Flat 602
603
140
ÓHHkr 141 (II 141)
142
147
ÓH 148 (144)
149
Close

Log in

This service is only available to members of the relevant projects, and to purchasers of the skaldic volumes published by Brepols.
This service uses cookies. By logging in you agree to the use of cookies on your browser.

Close

Stanza/chapter/text segment

Use the buttons at the top of the page to navigate between stanzas in a poem.

Information tab

Interactive tab

The text and translation are given here, with buttons to toggle whether the text is shown in the verse order or prose word order. Clicking on indiviudal words gives dictionary links, variant readings, kennings and notes, where relevant.

Full text tab

This is the text of the edition in a similar format to how the edition appears in the printed volumes.

Chapter/text segment

This view is also used for chapters and other text segments. Not all the headings shown are relevant to such sections.