Note to Anon (Ragn) 9^VIII (Ragn 39)

[4] synir Loðbróku ‘sons of Loðbróka’: Or ‘sons of [Ragnarr] loðbrók’ (see below). According to this stanza, these men set up the trémaðr, perhaps as part of a religious ritual. If Loðbróka is a goddess-name (see the next Note), it may refer here to the goddess herself, in which case her sons are to be understood not as sons in a literal sense, but rather as devotees of her cult (Wickham 1993, 516). It is more likely, however, and is assumed here, that it refers to a female devotee and namesake of the goddess (cf. Turville-Petre 1964, 219), and that the sons in question are her physical sons, participating with her in the cult. They may be identifiable with those C9th vikings whom C11th sources consider to have been sons of one Loðbrók, a figure possibly referred to as female in one of the Maeshowe runic inscriptions of the mid-C12th (see McTurk 1991b, 343 and the contrary views of Lukman 1976, 13, and Rowe 2012, 155-7; for the inscription, see Barnes 1994, 185-6). Among them were Ívarr and Sigurðr, both remembered as sons of Ragnarr in Ragn. Contemporary annalistic evidence shows that these two were kings, in Ireland and Denmark respectively, in the second half of the C9th (McTurk 1991a, 39-49). The evidence for Ragnarr as their father’s name is less well established than the name Loðbrók(a), considered here as their mother’s, but it is possible that their father was Reginheri, a high-ranking member of the court of the Danish king Horicus I, and the leader of a viking attack on Paris in 845; see Introduction above.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Barnes, Geraldine, Margaret Clunies Ross and Judy Quinn, eds. 1994. Old Norse Studies in the New World: A Collection of Essays to Celebrate the Jubilee of the Teaching of Old Norse at the University of Sydney 1943-93. Sydney: Department of English, University of Sydney.
3. Turville-Petre, Gabriel. 1964. Myth and Religion of the North. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
4. McTurk, Rory. 1991a. Studies in Ragnars saga loðbrókar and Its Major Scandinavian Analogues. Medium Ævum Monographs new ser. 15. Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediæval Languages and Literature.
5. Rowe, Elizabeth Ashman. 2012. Vikings in the West: The Legend of Ragnarr Loðbrók and his Sons. Studia Medievalia Septentrionalia 18. Vienna: Fassbaender.
6. Wickham, Chris. 1993. Review of Rory McTurk. 1991a. Studies in Ragnars saga loðbrókar and its Major Scandinavian Analogues. Medium Ævum Monographs new ser. 15. Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediæval Literature and Culture. SBVS 23, 515-17.
7. McTurk, Rory. 1991b. ‘Loðbróka og Gunnlöð: frá frjósemisdýrkun til víkingaveldis’. Skírnir 165, 343-59.
8. Lukman, Niels. 1976. ‘Ragnarr loðbrók, Sigifrid, and the Saints of Flanders’. MS 9, 7-50.
9. Internal references
10. 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)