Note to Rloð Lv 5^VIII (Ragn 9)

[7-8]: The prose immediately preceding this stanza in 1824b, Ragn 1906-8, 136 (and apparently also in 147, Ragn 1906-8, 181), describes Ragnarr taking a gold finger-ring (gull) from his hand and giving it to his newborn son as a naming gift (ath nafnnfesti). When he proffers the ring, his hand comes into contact with the boy’s back (kemr vid bak sveininum), and Ragnarr interprets this as meaning that the child wishes to reject the ring (enn þat virdir Ragnar sva, sem han villde hata gullinu). This looks like a somewhat awkward attempt to explain the reference here to Sigurðr ‘hating’ a ring, which the X and Y redactors of the saga (as preserved respectively in 147 and 1824b) may not have understood. What seems to be implied is that Ragnarr’s son Sigurðr is in prospect a noble chieftain, who wins valuable rings in battle and ‘hates’ them in the sense of breaking them up in order to distribute them to his followers, in the manner of a hringbroti m. ‘ring-breaker’ (LP: hringbroti), i.e. a generous man. See LP: hata and hati ‘hater’ 1.

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. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.