Note to SnSt Ht 15III
[1-2] grímu gjaldseiðs grundar ‘in the helmet of the compensation-pollack of the field [SERPENT = Fáfnir]’: The kenning refers to the dragon Fáfnir and his œgishjálmr ‘helmet of terror’ (see Note to ESk Frag 2/1), but the significance of the first element of the cpd gjaldseiðr ‘compensation-pollack’ is not transparent (see LP: gjaldrseiðr; NN §3260B; SnE 2007, 52, 114). ‘Pollack of the field’ is in itself a kenning for ‘snake’ and Faulkes (SnE 2007, 114) suggests ‘fish of money of ground or fish of the ground where money is buried; fish whose ground is gold’ as possible explanations for the puzzling first element of the cpd. It is more likely that gjald ‘compensation’ refers to the fact that the gold on which Fáfnir lay was the compensation (gjald) for his brother, Otr, which Fáfnir had obtained by killing his own father (see Reg; SnE 1998, I, 45-7; Note to st. 41/2 below; see also Marold 1998).
References
- Bibliography
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- 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.
- SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
- SnE 2007 = Snorri Sturluson. 2007. Edda: Háttatal. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2nd edn. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
- Marold, Edith. 1998a. ‘Die Augen des Herrschers’. In Meier 1998, 7-29.
- Internal references
- Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Einarr Skúlason, Fragments 2’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 153.
- Not published: do not cite ()