Note to Bjarni Frag 4^III

[1, 3, 4] œgir mœtihjóls mergheims ‘frightener of the meeting-wheel of the marrow-world [BONE > TORTURE-WHEEL > EXECUTIONER]’: Jón Helgason (1966a, 179) interpreted mœtihjól mergheims ‘the wheel meeting/opposing the bone’ as a kenning for ‘shield’ and the frightener who made use of the shield as ‘man’. This interpretation of the kenning is unconvincing; Meissner 166-76 does not list any examples of shield-kennings with bones or other body parts as determinants. The interpretation of the kenning in the present edn is based on the medieval practice of breaking people on a wheel, where the criminal’s bones were broken by striking a wheel or a hammer against his limbs (see also Anon (FoGT) 17, Note to [All]). Mœtihjól mergheims ‘the meeting-wheel of the marrow-world [BONE]’, then, is an entirely suitable kenning for ‘wheel of torture’, which, combined with the base-word œgir ‘frightener’, forms an equally fitting expression for ‘executioner’. The present interpretation is supported by Frag 5 below, in which a woman releases a tormented man ‘from above’.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
3. Jón Helgason. 1966a. ‘Verse aus der Laufás-Edda’. In Rudolph et al. 1966, 175-80.
4. Internal references
5. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 17’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 590.