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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to Ormr Woman 5III

[3-4]: It is not fully clear how to construe the potential kenning elements in these two lines. (a) This edn follows Kock (NN §898), who construes dauðs ‘of the dead’ (l. 3) as an adj. describing Dvalins in l. 4 (cf. SnE 1998), yielding a kenning of the ‘drink of the dwarfs’ = ‘poetry’ type. When Dvalinn is described as ‘dead’, the poet may be influenced by a linkage in the mythology between dwarfs and the dead (see Reichborn-Kjennerud 1934a, 282; Holtsmark 1989, 77). (b) Earlier solutions hinged on taking dauðs outside the parenthesis, though this would make for aberrant word order by skaldic norms. In CPB II, 322 dauðs is apparently combined with sal ‘hall’ (l. 4) to yield the meaning ‘grave’, which in and of itself is contextually superior to ‘hall’ (since the speaker would more naturally wish for his and the woman’s body to be placed in a common grave rather than in one hall) but cannot be sustained in terms of kenning usage and word order. (c) In Skj B, here following SnE 1848-87, III, it is instead combined with mitt, with translation mit afsjælede legeme ‘my dead body’, but the syntax of this is unclear and the problem of word order persists. (d) If Dvalins could instead be construed with sal the result would be a kenning for ‘stone’ or ‘mountain’, since the dwarfs characteristically dwell there (see Note to st. 6/2 below). The legend of king Sveigðir shows that human beings could be envisaged as disappearing into such ‘stones’ never to reappear (see Þjóð Yt 2I Note to [All]), as if into the grave, which would yield an appropriate wish on the part of the speaker. But that, unless we presuppose apo koinou of Dvalins between the parenthesis and the subordinate clause, would entail accepting drykk dauðs ‘drink of a dead [one]’ as a kenning for ‘poetry’. Such a combination would be unparalleled in kenning usage. On the other hand, given the equally aberrant kenning kerlaug drauga ‘the cup-liquid of the undead [POETRY]’ in Hhárf Snædr 1/4I and the occurrence of Dvalins in a second unparalleled kenning, greip Dvalins ‘the grasp of Dvalinn <dwarf> [MOUTH]’, in Hhárf Snædr 1/5I, it could be that the original Snæfríðardrápa contained much play upon the motifs of the dead, the undead and dwarfs, incorporating some free handling of traditional kenning templates. To this extent, the possibility of a poetry-kenning drykk dauðs should be kept in consideration.

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
  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. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
  7. Reichborn-Kjennerud, Ingjald. 1934a. ‘Den gamle dvergetro’. In Rooth 1934, 278-88.
  8. Holtsmark, Anne. 1989. Norrøn mytologi. Tru og myter i vikingtida. 2nd edn. Oslo: Norske samlaget.
  9. Internal references
  10. Russell Poole (ed.) 2012, ‘Haraldr hárfagri Hálfdanarson, Snæfríðardrápa 1’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 68.
  11. Edith Marold (ed.) 2012, ‘Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, Ynglingatal 2’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 10.

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