Note to Anon (Ragn) 5^VIII (Ragn 35)

[6-8]: These lines raise the question of whether undum in l. 6 is to be taken as the 1st pers. pl. pret. indic. of vinda ‘wind’ or of una ‘enjoy’, and the related question of how ms. ‘mollu’ in l. 7 is to be understood. Given the seafaring context of the preceding lines, it might be thought that undum, pret. of vinda, is here being used in a nautical sense, meaning either ‘we hoisted’ or ‘we weighed’, and that the reference is either to hoisting a sail with a windlass (at vinda segl) or to weighing anchor (at vinda upp akkeri). As for ms. ‘mollu’, this might be read as möllu, dat. sg. of malla (= mella) f. ‘loop, (small) ring’ (Fritzner IV: malla; Falk 1914b, 98-9), used here instrumentally with reference either to the hole at the masthead through which the halyard is secured in the process of hoisting the sail (Christensen 1979, 190) or to the ring joining the anchor to its cable (Brøgger and Shetelig 1951, 98, 135). It is unlikely, however, that the lines refer to anchor-weighing if the meaning of l. 5 is indeed that the ship or fleet in question was lying at anchor; and the idea of hoisting the sail is hardly consistent with the phrase fyrir rauðum stafni ‘before (i.e. ahead of) the red prow’, as Anne Holtsmark (1946, 64) points out. Reading undum here as pret. of vinda in these senses also raises the question of how the remainder of the half-stanza is to be interpreted. The present ed. therefore prefers to follow Kock (NN §1468) in taking fyrir landi as meaning ‘close to shore, offshore’; undum as 1st pers. pl. pret. of una ‘enjoy, take pleasure in’, and hallar … hrafns ‘hall of the raven [CRAG]’ (cf. hǫll gallópnis ‘hall of the shrill-crier <eagle> [MOUNTAIN]’, Eil Þdr 3/6, 7^III) as a simple kenning for ‘crag’. The present ed. also follows Kock in taking ms. ‘mollu’ as the object of undum (though with the spelling möllu as opposed to Kock’s mellu), and in taking ms. ‘rika’ as an adj. qualifying it. Kock is surely wrong, however, in simply normalising to f. acc. sg. ríka here, since una would be expected to take a dat. object. Hence the emendation to f. dat. sg. ríkri ‘mighty’, agreeing with möllu, in the present edn. Malla ‘ring’, here in the dat. sg., möllu, may be translated in this instance as ‘enclosure’ (cf. the related weak verb mella ‘lock’, ÍO: 5 mella, found in Sigv Vestv 2/3^I), and the expression rík malla hallar hrafns ‘the mighty enclosure of the hall of the raven [CRAG > SEA]’ may be read as a tvíkent kenning for ‘sea’, with the sea thought of as enclosing the land (cf. Meissner 94-5). Retention of ms. ‘mollu’ (recognisable in 1824b as the labially mutated form of malla, see Olsen 1906-8, xv), leaves l. 7 short of one alliterating element linking it to the head-stave (hrafns) in l. 8, but the lack of one out of two alliterating elements in an odd line is not uncharacteristic of the Ragn stanzas as preserved in 1824b (see the Note to 16/5-6, above).

References

1. Bibliography
2. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. 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.
4. ÍO = Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon. 1989. Íslensk orðsifjabók. Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans.
5. Falk, Hjalmar. 1914b. Altnordische Waffenkunde. Videnskapsselskapets skrifter, II. Hist.-filos. kl. 1914, 6. Kristiania (Oslo): Dybwad.
6. Fritzner IV = Hødnebø, Finn. 1972. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog af Dr. Johan Fritzner: Rettelser og tillegg. Oslo, Bergen, Tromsø: Universitetsforlaget.
7. Olsen, Magnus, ed. 1906-8. Vǫlsunga saga ok Ragnars saga loðbrókar. SUGNL 36. Copenhagen: Møller.
8. Christensen, Arne Emil. 1979. ‘Viking Age Rigging, a Survey of Sources and Theories’. In McGrail 1979, 183-93.
9. Holtsmark, Anne. 1946. ‘Det norrøne ordet lúðr’. MM, 9-65. Rpt. in Holtsmark 1956b, 66-80.
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 26 April 2024)
12. Judith Jesch 2012, ‘ Sigvatr Þórðarson, Vestrfararvísur’ 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. 615. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1361> (accessed 26 April 2024)
13. Edith Marold (ed.) 2017, ‘Eilífr Goðrúnarson, Þórsdrápa 3’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 80.