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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to Sigoa Lv 1VIII (Ragn 19)

[8] Eysteinn konungr ‘King Eysteinn’: In RagnSon and the X version of Ragn, preserved in Hb and 147 respectively, Eysteinn is given the byname beli, which appears in the 147 and Hb readings of this line. (The byname does not appear in the Y version of Ragn, preserved in 1824b, however.) Its origin and meaning are uncertain. It may be related to the giant name Beli which is in turn related to the verb belja ‘bellow’, or possibly to the noun belgr, meaning ‘animal-skin’ or ‘skin bag’ (Lidén 1928, 361-4; McTurk 1991a, 114-17). All previous eds apart from those of CPB (who have Eysteinn Beli) and Finnur Jónsson in Hb 1892-6 (as opposed to Skj B) adopt the 1824b reading here. Eysteinn beli is listed in Skáldatal (SnE 1848-87 III, 251-2, 259-60, 270-1), along with Ragnarr loðbrók and Bjǫrn at Haugi, as a patron of the C9th poet Bragi Boddason, to whom the poem Ragnarsdrápa (Bragi RdrIII) is attributed. Given Snorri Sturluson’s association of this poem with Ragnarr loðbrók (SnE 1998 I, 72-3), and Bragi’s sobriquet inn gamli ‘the Old’, applied to him by Snorri and in Skáldatal (see McTurk 2003, 112-13), and indicating that in C13th Iceland Bragi was regarded as a figure of the distant past, it is of some interest to find the nickname beli applied to Eysteinn in Hb (early C14th) and in 147 (c. 1450) in connection with Ragnarr loðbrók, raising the question of whether this Eysteinn’s connection with Bragi as well as with Ragnarr was common knowledge in late medieval Iceland.

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. SnE 1848-87 = Snorri Sturluson. 1848-87. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Edda Snorronis Sturlaei. Ed. Jón Sigurðsson et al. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Legatum Arnamagnaeanum. Rpt. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1966.
  4. 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.
  5. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
  6. Hb 1892-6 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1892-6. Hauksbók udgiven efter de Arnamagnæanske håndskrifter no. 371, 544 og 675, 4° samt forskellige papirshåndskrifter. Copenhagen: Det kongelige nordiske oldskrift-selskab.
  7. Lidén, Evald. 1928. ‘Gullvarta. – Síbilia’. In Brøndum-Nielsen et al. 1928, 358-64.
  8. 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.
  9. McTurk, Rory. 2003. ‘Ragnarsdrápa’. In RGA, 24, 112-17.
  10. Internal references
  11. 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 19 March 2024)
  12. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ragnars sona þáttr’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 777. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=85> (accessed 19 March 2024)
  13. Not published: do not cite (RloðVIII)
  14. Margaret Clunies Ross 2017, ‘ Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Ragnarsdrápa’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 27. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1130> (accessed 19 March 2024)
  15. Not published: do not cite ()

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