Note to Sigv Frag 2III
[4] vǫrr rádýris ‘the wake of the roe-deer [LAND]’: Vǫrr m. is ‘oar-stroke, wake’, hence ‘sea’ (LP: 2. vǫrr). Here it forms a land-kenning belonging to a rare but recognised pattern (see Meissner 87) in which the base-word refers to sea and the determinant to a land-animal, inverting the more common conceit of the sea as the land of sea-creatures. As a further complication, the determinant rá, taken as normalised rô f., could be the word for ‘sailyard’ and hence rôdýri ‘sailyard-animal’ could be a kenning for ‘ship’. Thus the underlying image is comparable with knǫrr rastar ‘ship of the league [HORSE]’ (l. 3), and the two kennings form a harmonised metaphorical scheme, but both with a slight twist back in a maritime direction. For a similar kenning, see Eil Þdr 6/4 ver gaupu ‘sea of the lynx [MOUNTAINS]’.
References
- Bibliography
- 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.
- 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.
- Internal references
- Edith Marold (ed.) 2017, ‘Eilífr Goðrúnarson, Þórsdrápa 6’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 87.