Note to Bjǫrn Lv 1^VIII (Frið 9)

[All]: This is the only runhent stanza in Frið, though the end-rhyme of ll. 1-2 is not exact. The text is very difficult to make sense of in the A redaction mss, and not very easy in the others. It is clear that a great deal of scribal corruption has affected the stanza’s transmission, with the consequence that there are a number of possible interpretations of the various readings in both redactions. Because the A mss are particularly hard to understand, readings from the B mss have been selected in ll. 1 and 2. Even so, the interpretation offered here is tentative. Line 7 is particularly difficult to understand. Kock (NN §1474) suggests a possible parallel between this stanza and Krm 20, in which some of the same vocabulary occurs (ekkja ‘woman’, laug ‘bath’), and where a contrast is drawn between men fighting in battle and a woman bringing basins of warm water. The present stanza (in the reading offered here) seems to suggest that the bitter struggle at sea that Friðþjófr and his men now encounter has made them unattractive to the women back home, and this is consistent with Bjǫrn’s expressed scepticism in the prose text of both redactions.

References

1. Bibliography
2. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. Internal references
4. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Friðþjófs saga ins frœkna’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 190. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=8> (accessed 26 April 2024)
5. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Krákumál 20’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 757.