Note to Anon (SnE) 10^III

[1, 2, 3, 4] h*eggi mála Eldis steðja áar ‘to the cherry-tree of the speeches of the Eldir <mythical servant> of the anvil of the river [STONE > GIANT > GOLD > MAN]’: The emendation of the mss’ eldi m. dat. sg. ‘for the fire’ or Eldi m. acc. or dat. sg. of Eldir is in keeping with earlier eds. Mála Eldis steðja áar ‘of the speeches of the Eldir of the anvil of the river’ is clearly a kenning for ‘gold’ (for this myth, see Note to Anon Bjark 5/8). Eldir was one of the servants of the sea-giant Ægir (see Lok 1-5 and prose, NK 96-7). The base-word of this man-kenning is more problematic. All mss have hreggi n. dat. sg. ‘storm’, which is retained by Faulkes (SnE 1998). Hregg ‘storm’ is unprecedented as a base-word in a man-kenning, however, not only because ‘storm of gold’ makes little sense (Faulkes, SnE 1998, II, 317 provides the translation ‘destroyer, enemy of gold’, i.e. ‘generous man’), but also because the noun is n. and not m. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B, followed by Kock in Skald) tentatively emends to hnøggvi (m. dat. sg. of hnøggvir), which Finnur (LP: hnøggvir) translates as som støder, rykker bort, uddeler ‘one who shoves, snatches away, distributes’. Hnøggvir is a hap. leg., however, and also a poor candidate for a base-word in a kenning for ‘generous man’, because other nouns derived from the verb hnøggva ‘shove, push separate sby from sth., stumble’, such as hnøggvi ‘parsimony’ and hnøggvingr ‘one who is parsimonious’, have the opposite meaning to ‘generous’. The present emendation heggi, m. dat. sg. of heggr ‘bird-cherry tree’ (see Þul Viðar 2/1), is less intrusive, and heggr is attested as a base-word in a kenning for ‘warrior’ in Gsind Hákdr 3/2^I.

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. 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.
5. NK = Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn (1899), eds. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. 2 vols. I: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Winter.
6. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
7. Internal references
8. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Bjarkamál in fornu 5’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 502.
9. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Viðar 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. 882.
10. Not published: do not cite ()
11. Russell Poole (ed.) 2012, ‘Guthormr sindri, Hákonardrápa 3’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 161.