Note to Skúli Lv 1^III

[4] gránserks ‘of the grey-shirt’: The only other skaldic attestation of this cpd is in the mailshirt-kenning gránserkr Hamðis ‘grey shirt of Hamðir’ (Anon Krm 17/10^VIII). Earlier eds take gránserkr as an adj., gránserkr Máni ‘grey-shirted Máni’, which LP: gránserkr explains as ifört grå særk … om månens gråblege udseende ‘dressed in a grey shirt … of the pale grey appearance of the moon’. The noun serkr ‘shirt’ is not otherwise attested as an adj. (neither as a simplex nor as a second element in compounds; the relevant adj. is gráserkjaðr ‘grey-shirted’, cf. Grott 13/8), and in Gamlkan Has 18/2^VII élserkr ‘storm-shirt’ is a kenning for ‘sky’. All mss other than R have gránsetr m. ‘grey-seat, ‑home’ (or gránsetrs gen. ‘of the grey-seat’), which can be construed as another kenning for ‘sky’ (gránsetrs Mána ‘of the grey-seat of Máni’). Possibly the unusual solar imagery of the helmingr led to scribal replacement of the unexpected serkr m. ‘shirt’ with a word common in sky-kennings (setr sólar ‘seat of the sun’, etc.) as well as in words like sólsetr, dagsetr ‘sunset’.

References

1. Bibliography
2. 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.
3. Internal references
4. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Krákumál 17’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 751.
5. Not published: do not cite ()
6. Katrina Attwood (ed.) 2007, ‘Gamli kanóki, Harmsól 18’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 89.