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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to KrákÁsl Lv 5VIII (Ragn 15)

[8] hlunnroð ‘a roller-reddening’: This translation reflects the explanation of the term given under LP: hlunnroð, i.e. the reddening with blood of a launching roller that could occur when someone was killed by accident as a result of happening to be in front of a ship when it was pushed on rollers out to sea. Blood is not actually mentioned in the prose passage to which this stanza ostensibly refers (or indeed in the LP entry), though the spilling of blood seems to be implied. The passage in question, occurring near the beginning of ch. 10 of Ragn, in which Ragn 11-22 are quoted, offers an explanation of the word hlunnroð, indicating that it was a term with which the saga writer did not expect his audience to be familiar. The passage is (Ragn 1906-8, 137): Nu verdr þat, at skip Agnars skauzt af lunne, ok vard þar madr fyrir, ok fęʀ sa bana, ok kaulludu þeir þat hlunrod ‘What now occurred was that Agnarr’s ship started from its launching-roller, and a man happened to be in the way, and he met his death; and they called that a roller-reddening’. Vigfusson and Powell, who translate ‘sacrificial-launch’ here (CPB II, 349), see this kind of killing (in CPB I, 410) as part of a blood-sprinkling consecration ritual carried out at the launching of a new ship or when the ship was setting out on an important voyage. Falk (1912, 28-9), on the other hand, relates the ‑roð element in hlunnroð not to ON rjóða ‘redden’, but rather to a Norwegian dialect word rod, meaning ‘slippage’, and to the ‑roð element in ON flóttaroð ‘scattering of troops in flight’, seeing hlunnroð as referring to the accidental slipping away of one or more rollers under a ship, which might well have fatal results. Dillmann (2009) has since called into question both Falk’s view and the idea that hlunnroð in this instance has to do with sacrifice. 

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. 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.
  4. Falk, Hjalmar. 1912. Altnordisches Seewesen. Wörter und Sachen 4. Heidelberg: Winter.
  5. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
  6. Dillmann, François-Xavier. 2009. ‘Des sacrifices humains lors du lancement des navires dans la Scandinavie ancienne? Remarques sur le composé norrois hlunnroð’. In Heizmann et al. 2009, 367-91.
  7. Internal references
  8. 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 28 March 2024)
  9. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 11 (Eiríkr Ragnarsson, Lausavísur 1)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 648.

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