Note to EirRagn Lv 4^VIII (Ragn 14)

[7, 8] marga fylli egðis ‘many a full meal of the wolf [CORPSE]’: The ms. reading ‘ekils’ (gen. sg. of *ekill ‘driver’?) has been emended to Ekkils (from Ekkill, name of a sea-king, Þul Sækonunga 2/3^III) by earlier eds, except for CPB, Skj B and Skald. Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 205) regards Ekkils as a subjective gen. (NS §124), combining with marga fylli (l. 8) to give the sense ‘many a full meal of (i.e. provided by) Ekkill’, but this is unconvincing, given the connection of sea-king names with kennings for ships and the sea rather than, as seems probable here, with the activities of ravens in connection with carnage. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) emends ‘ekils’ to ýti, dat. sg. of ýtir ‘pusher’, taking it as dat. object of launar (l. 7) with hrafn (l. 5) as subject, thus: ‘it (the raven) rewards the pusher of the wave-horse [SHIP > SEAFARER] (i.e. me, Eiríkr) poorly for many a full meal’. Kock (Skald) supplies eggi, dat. sg. of the unrecorded *eggir ‘egger on, encourager’ in place of ýti, otherwise letting it have the same meaning and place in the sentence as Finnur. The present ed. proposes the emendation of ‘ekils’ to egðis ‘of the eagle’ (see Þul Ara 1/5^III) or ‘of the wolf’ (see Þul Vargs 1/9^III), cf. LP: egðir 2. The latter meaning is probably preferable in the context, given the heavy emphasis in this stanza on a bird of battle in the form of a raven. Thus: ‘the falcon of wounds [RAVEN] will be paying a poor reward for many a full meal of the wolf [CORPSE]’. The many corpses are to be understood as having been served up by Eiríkr, the speaker of the stanza, as food for beasts of battle in the course of his warlike career. 

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. NS = Nygaard, Marius. 1906. Norrøn syntax. Kristiania (Oslo): Aschehoug. Rpt. 1966.
7. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
8. Internal references
9. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Sækonunga heiti 2’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 680.
10. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Vargs heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 902. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3216> (accessed 1 May 2024)
11. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ara heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 949. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3240> (accessed 1 May 2024)