Note to Anon (LaufE) 3^III

[2] serkland ‘shirt-land [WOMAN]’: (a) According to the commentary, this must be part of a kenning for ‘woman’. As a geographical name, Serkland means ‘land of the Saracens (Serkir)’, referring to North Africa, the Arab sector of Asia Minor, Syria (see Note to Hharð Lv 10/7^II). Although terms for ‘land’ occur frequently as base-words in woman-kennings, geographical names per se are extremely rare as base-words (see Meissner 409-10; indeed, two of the three examples listed there are from Skj B’s interpretation of the present stanza). However, the Old Norse cpd serkland means ‘shirt-land’, which can be construed as kenning for ‘woman’ (Meissner 415-16), and that interpretation has been adopted here. A serkr ‘shirt’ was a type of undergarment, with or without sleeves, that was worn by men as well as by women (Fritzner: serkr). (b) Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) emends svanna ‘of women’ (l. 1) to sunnu ‘of the sun’ and Sólmarkar lit. ‘of Sólmǫrk’ (l. 3) to sílmarkar ‘of the herring-land’ and takes Serkland in its geographical sense: Serkland sunnu sílmarkar ‘the Saracen-land of the sun of the herring-land [SEA > GOLD > WOMAN]’. (c) Kock (Skald; NN §1235) construes serkland ‘shirt-land’ as a kenning for ‘body’, which would give sigrunnit serkland svanna kømr grandi at mér ‘the conquered body of the woman causes me grief’. However attractive that reading is, it is not supported by the prose context, and, moreover, body-kennings of the type ‘shirt-land’ are not attested in the corpus of skaldic poetry (see Meissner 126).

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. 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.
6. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
7. Internal references
8. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2009, ‘Haraldr harðráði Sigurðarson, Lausavísur 10’ 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. 51-2.