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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to Sigv Frag 2III

[3] knǫrr rastar ‘the ship of the league [HORSE]’: This is a seemingly unique pattern of kenning (cf. Meissner 111), though it has skaldic logic on its side since it simply inverts the common metaphor of ‘horse of the sea’ for ‘ship’. Rǫst f. presumably has its common meaning ‘league, measurement of distance on land’ here (cf. LP: 1. rǫst), but it also means ‘sea-current’ (LP: 2. rǫst); and it occurs among ship-heiti in Þul Skipa 2/5. It therefore seems that the skald has given a further twist to the kenning, allowing possible maritime associations to linger in the determinant as well as the base-word. This might appear to be chance or even incompetence, except that the same happens with the land-kenning that follows.

References

  1. Bibliography
  2. Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
  3. 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.
  4. Internal references
  5. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Skipa 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. 863.

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