[2, 3] sefi; sjafni ‘mind; love’: These words are listed among the hugar heiti in Skm (SnE 1998, I, 108): Hugr heitir sefi ok *sjafni ‘Thought is called mind (sefi) and love (sjafni)’. Whereas sefi m. is attested in poetry (LP: 1. sefi), sjafni m. does not occur elsewhere in Old Norse poetry, but it is used in the rímur (Finnur Jónsson 1926-8: sjafni). Sjafni (< *sefnan) and sefi could be etymologically related (so ÍO: sjafni). According to Hesselman (1912, 58), sjafni may be a neologism from Sjǫfn f., the name of a goddess (see Þul Ásynja 2/2 and Note there). The proximity of sefi and sjafni is corroborated by the fact that, as Beck (1988a, 138) states, sefi ‘alternates with hugr in contexts that reflect upon the experience of love and the pain of love’.
References
- Bibliography
- 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.
- Finnur Jónsson. 1926-8. Ordbog til de af samfund til udg. af gml. nord. litteratur udgivne Rímur samt til de af Dr. O. Jiriczek udgivne Bósarímur. SUGNL 51. Copenhagen: Jørgensen.
- ÍO = Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon. 1989. Íslensk orðsifjabók. Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans.
- SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
- Beck, Heinrich. 1988a. ‘Heroic Lay and Heroic Language’. SS 60, 137-46.
- Hesselman, Bengt. 1912. Västnordiska studier I: Om brytningen. Skrifter utgivna af Kungliga Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala 14:2. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.
- Internal references
- (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=112> (accessed 26 April 2024)
- Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Ásynja heiti 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. 765.