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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to Þul Óðins 5III

[6] Geirǫlnir: Perhaps ‘spear-feeder’, from geirr m. ‘spear’ and the strong verb ala ‘nourish, feed’. Falk (1924, 13), however, suggests that the name could have developed from *Geirǫnlir (with metathesis), which in turn may have been derived from the name of a valkyrie, Geirǫnul, where ‑ǫnul is a nominal derivation from the verb *ana (cf. ModIcel. ana ‘rush on’), hence lit. ‘one rushing on with a spear’. This is also a heiti for ‘goat’ (see Note to Þul Hafrs 1/2), but it is not otherwise used in poetry.

References

  1. Bibliography
  2. Falk, Hjalmar. 1924. Odensheite. Skrifter utg. av Videnskapsselskapet i Kristiania. II. Hist.-filos. kl. 1924, 10. Kristiania (Oslo): Dybwad.
  3. Internal references
  4. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Hafrs heiti 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. 893.

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