Note to Gizsv Frag 1III
[2] blakk flagðs ‘the steed of the troll-woman [WOLF]’: Flakk in most mss provides alliteration and rhyme but leaves l. 2 short by one syllable, and does not match known Old Norse vocabulary, since flakk n. ‘wandering, vagrancy’ is recorded in Modern Icelandic but not in Old Norse, though the verb flakka ‘wander (as a vagrant)’ is. (a) Emendation seems to be unavoidable, and the syntax and sense, including ok ‘and’, suggest that what is required is a phrase denoting a beast of battle with svan Hlakkar ‘the swan of Hlǫkk <valkyrie> [RAVEN/EAGLE]’ as the joint object to gleðr ‘gladdens’ (l. 1). Flagðs blakk ‘troll-woman’s steed’, suggested in Nj 1875-89, II, 305-8, is adopted in Skj B, this edn and elsewhere. (b) Konráð Gíslason (Nj 1875-89, II, 306-7) rejects a claim of Sveinbjörn Egilsson that flakkr, here and in a variant reading flaks for fáks in Þhorn Gldr 3/3I, could be a word for ‘wolf’. Flakk is retained in CPB II, 166, with the translation ‘roving wolf’. (c) The C reading fleinblakk is metrically satisfactory but its meaning would be the nonsensical ‘arrow-steed’.
References
- Bibliography
- Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
- Nj 1875-89 = Konráð Gíslason and Eiríkur Jónsson. 1875-89. Njála: Udgivet efter gamle håndskrifter. Íslendingasögur udgivne efter gamle haandskrifter af Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldskrift-selskab 4. Copenhagen: Thiele.
- 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.
- Internal references
- Edith Marold (ed.) 2012, ‘Þorbjǫrn hornklofi, Glymdrápa 3’ 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. 81.
- R. D. Fulk (ed.) 2022, ‘Njáls saga 18 (Skarpheðinn Njálsson, Lausavísur 3)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1243.