Note to Anon (Ragn) 8VIII (Ragn 38)
[All]: Most previous commentators have seen this fornyrðislag stanza as not belonging originally to Ragn or together with the two stanzas that follow in the same metre. An exception is Poole (1991, 20-2), who argues that the three stanzas show ‘excellent narrative progression’ and that the second and third stanzas ‘cannot stand independent of the first’. A potential problem with this view is posed by the name-forms Heklingr (1824b), Hæklingr (possibly Hœklingr) (2845), which are unique to the immediate contexts in which they occur in these mss and cannot certainly be regarded (as Olsen, Ragn 1906-8, 221, believed they could) as byforms of Hœkingr (possibly Hækingr), which is recorded in a þula (Þul Sea-kings 1/3III) as a sea-king’s name; hœkingr is also recorded in Þul Sverða 7/7III as a heiti for ‘sword’ (in previous eds of this stanza, CPB is the only one to have the form Hœkings, without the <l>). If the forms with and without the <l> cannot be regarded as different forms of the same name, then the megir Heklings ‘sons (or kinsmen) of Heklingr’ of ll. 2-3 cannot necessarily be taken as a kenning for ‘seafarers, (sea)warriors’, and the possibility must be considered that Heklingr/Hæklingr is the name of a specific person, for all that the phrase heldr hundmargir ‘excessively numerous’ in 2845 strongly suggests a military force rather than the sons or descendants of one man. However, the prose context of the stanza in Hálf mentions a viking named Hæklingr who defeated King Ǫgvaldr in battle. If the name is that of a specific person, the stanza would seem to be out of place in Ragn, where no character of that name appears. While there is nothing else in the stanza itself that is particularly inconsistent with its occurrence in Ragn, and while the episode of which it forms part in H́álf has little connection with the remainder of that saga (Hálf 1981, 109), it seems on balance safest to regard the stanza as being more appropriately placed in Hálf than in Ragn. That said, it must further be noted that, as Seelow has shown (Hálf 1981, 164-5), the chapter of Hálf in which the stanza occurs is one of those that are unlikely to have formed part of that saga until Hálf acquired its final form in the C14th, though the episode containing the stanza may well have had an independent oral existence earlier. This means that if it was borrowed from Hálf into Ragn (where it occurs only in the Y-redaction, preserved in 1824b), the borrowing must have taken place after the time of the Y-redactor (second half of the C13th) and may even be the work of the scribe of 1824b (c.1400). Alternatively, the Y-redactor may have acquired it from a source other than Hálf.
References
- Bibliography
- 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.
- Poole, Russell. 1991. Viking Poems on War and Peace: A Study in Skaldic Narrative. Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations 8. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press.
- Hálf 1981 = Seelow, Hubert, ed. 1981. Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka. RSÁM 20. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar.
- Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
- Internal references
- 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 303. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=75> (accessed 26 April 2024)
- 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)
- Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Heiti for sea-kings 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 988.
- Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Sverða heiti 7’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 802.