Note to Hallv Knútdr 3III
[1] Fljóta ‘Fljót’: For discussion of this place-name, which is pl. in form, see Townend (1998, 77-9), where it is suggested that it may be an Old Norse name for the River Humber. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC, s. a. 1016, recte 1015) records that when Knútr launched his attack on England in 1015 his fleet touched land at Sandwich in Kent, before heading west along the south coast. However, when Knútr’s father Sveinn Haraldsson launched his earlier attack in 1013 (in the company of his son), the Chronicle (ASC, s. a. 1013) records that Sveinn and Knútr took their ship-based army into the mouth of the Humber, and then up the River Trent to Gainsborough, at which point command of the fleet was placed in Knútr’s hands. If one takes Fljót to refer to the Humber (or indeed if it is simply a common pl. noun ‘rivers’, referring to the Humber and Trent), then these opening stanzas of Hallvarðr’s poem may just as well refer to the attack of 1013 as to that of 1015.
References
- Bibliography
- ASC [Anglo-Saxon Chronicle] = Plummer, Charles and John Earle, eds. 1892-9. Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1952.
- Townend, Matthew. 1998. English Place-Names in Skaldic Verse. English Place-Name Society extra ser. 1. Nottingham: English Place-Name Society.