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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to Gsind Hákdr 3I

[3] frelsi vals ok Vinða ‘sanctuaries against slaughter and the Wends’: (a) The f. pl. noun frelsi (often ‘freedom’) is taken here to mean ‘sanctuary, refuge’ (so LP (1860): frelsi and Finnur Jónsson, Note to [All], interpretation (b), above) and construed as taking the double gen., vals ‘of slaughter’ and Vinda ‘of the Wends’, forming a phrase meaning that these areas became safe after Hákon took over. (b) Interpreting vals as gen. sg. of valr ‘falcon’ and vinda as gen. pl. of vindr ‘wind’ would give ‘freedom of the falcon and of the winds’, which could conceivably be a poetic description of a tract of sea and/or land, but its reference would be elusive and it would be unparalleled in skaldic poetry.

References

  1. Bibliography
  2. LP (1860) = Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1860. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis. Copenhagen: Societas Regia antiquariorum septentrionalium.

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