Note to KrákÁsl Lv 1VIII (Ragn 2)
[5-8]: Kráka-Áslaug refers here to only two of the three conditions under which Ragnarr, in the prose of the saga, has given orders for her to visit him; she omits mention of ‘neither fed nor unfed’ (see Context, above, and Ragn 1906-8, 124-5; the omission is signalled by italics in CPB’s translation: ‘I have smelt but at a leek’). The motifs in Ragn of the three conditions, and of Kráka-Áslaug’s use of a dog in fulfilling the third of them, may reflect a combination of two folktale-types, on the one hand AT no. 875, ‘the clever peasant girl’, and for the motif of a dog as a companion, AT no. 981, ‘wisdom of hidden old man saves kingdom’. See further de Vries (1928b, 14-29, 176-232), and McTurk (1991a, 204‑11).
References
- Bibliography
- CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
- McTurk, Rory. 1991a. Studies in Ragnars saga loðbrókar and Its Major Scandinavian Analogues. Medium Ævum Monographs new ser. 15. Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediæval Languages and Literature.
- Vries, Jan de. 1928a. ‘Die westnordische Tradition der Sage von Ragnar Lodbrók’. ZDP 53, 257-302.
- Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
- AT = Aarne, Antti. 1961. The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography. Antti Aarne’s Verzeichnis der Märchentypen (FF Communications 3, 1910), trans. and enlarged by Stith Thompson. 2nd rev. ed. FF Communications 75, no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientarum Fennica.
- Internal references
- 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ragnars saga loðbrókar’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 616. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=81> (accessed 26 April 2024)