Note to Rloð Lv 4^VIII (Ragn 8)

[All]: On the interpretation of this stanza offered here, see more fully McTurk (2012a). Here it is not so much the individual words as their syntactic interrelation that presents problems. As the present ed. understands it, the stanza is offering an explanation of the nickname ormr-í-auga ‘Snake-in-eye’ for Ragnarr’s son Sigurðr in terms of a piercing gaze inherited from his maternal grandfather Sigurðr Fáfnisbani. Modern suggestions as to the nickname’s explanation are: that it refers to the eye-condition known as nystagmus (Reichborn-Kjennerud 1923, 26); that it reflects the myth recorded in SnE (SnE 1998, I, 4-5) of Óðinn crawling in the form of a serpent through a narrow, eye-like opening in order to win the poetic mead (McTurk 1991b, 358-9; 2006, 685); that it reflects the archaeologically attested practice of placing images of snakes over the eyeholes on masks fitted to helmets of a kind found predominantly in Sweden and dating from the Vendel period (c. 550-800) (Marold 1998a); and that it points to the warlike characteristics of its bearer through its association with Óðinn specifically as a god of war, not least because the adj. ormfránn ‘glittering like a snake’ is applied to the eyes of prominent warriors in Old Norse poetry, and some of the names applied to Óðinn (Sváfnir, Ófnir, Grímr) are also poetic words for ‘snake’ (see Lassen 2003, 39-42, and the entries for those names in LP).

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. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
4. Marold, Edith. 1998a. ‘Die Augen des Herrschers’. In Meier 1998, 7-29.
5. Lassen, Annette. 2003. Øjet og blindheden i norrøn litteratur og mytologi. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculum Forlag, Københavns Universitet.
6. McTurk, Rory. 2012a. ‘An Eye for an Eye and a Snake for a Snake: Stanza 8 of Ragnars saga’. In Jackson et al. 2012, 111-21.
7. Reichborn-Kjennerud, Ingjald. 1923. ‘Lægerådene i den eldre Edda’. MM, 1-57.
8. McTurk, Rory. 1991b. ‘Loðbróka og Gunnlöð: frá frjósemisdýrkun til víkingaveldis’. Skírnir 165, 343-59.
9. Internal references
10. Edith Marold 2017, ‘Snorra Edda (Prologue, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál)’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols [check printed volume for citation].