Note to Hjþ Lv 2VIII (HjǪ 3)
[All]: This stanza follows a familiar pattern in an encounter between a fornaldarsaga hero and a supernatural figure (cf. Ket 3-7). The hero demands to know who his or her antagonist is, and in the process describes the stranger’s physical appearance. In most such encounters, the Otherworld figure is hostile, but in this case the creature, Vargeisa, who names herself in the following stanza, is friendly to Hjálmþér. In the prose text she is termed a finngálkn (or, the pre-1200 form, finngalkn), a noun that usually refers to a fabulous monster of disparate parts, part-animal and part-human (cf. ONP: finngalkn), whether classical, like the centaur, or indigenous. This is certainly the understanding of the prose text, which envisages a combination of human and horse. The stanza seems to envisage a different combination, of elephant (fíll, l. 4) and something bird-like, if the verbs flanar ok flöktar ‘flits and flutters about’ are any guide (see Note to l. 3 below).
References
- Bibliography
- ONP = Degnbol, Helle et al., eds. 1989-. A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose / Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. 1-. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission.
- Internal references
- 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ketils saga hœngs’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 548. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=71> (accessed 26 April 2024)