Note to ÚlfrU Húsdr 2^III

[2] rein ‘land’: The word means ‘plot, narrow strip of land’ but has the broader sense ‘land’ in skaldic poetry (see LP: rein). As shown in the Note to ll. 1, 4 above, rein is the sole object of bregðr ‘he takes away’, and the meaning of the helmingr must be that Heimdallr takes land away from Loki. The fact that rein can refer to land that acts as a boundary marker between two parcels of land which nobody was allowed to destroy (Fritzner: rein) may be of interest, but one has to take into account that in the second helmingr this rein seems to be an island or a rock in the sea, the hafnýra ‘sea-kidney [STONE]’ (see Note to l.6). Furthermore, the fact that the two gods fight in the form of seals leads to the conclusion that this quarrel took place in or near the sea. This may corroborate Schier’s (1963) argument that the quarrel between Loki and Heimdallr over a strip of land may have originated in a cosmogonic myth in which both gods serve a divine creator, for (or together with) whom they raise the earth from the sea (cf. Vsp 4) and, in doing so, end up disputing a parcel of land. The story is familiar from a series of folk tales conforming to a mythological pattern found across Europe, Asia and North America. This explanation is supported by Snorri’s remark in Skm (SnE 1998, I, 19) that Úlfr Uggason’s poem portrays the gods fighting as seals, which would fit well with the myth of the raising up of the earth (Marold 2000b; 2000c). For other explanations of the stanza, see Introduction to st. 2 above.

References

1. Bibliography
2. 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.
3. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
4. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
5. Marold, Edith. 2000b. ‘Kosmogonische Mythen in der Húsdrápa des Úlfr Uggason’. In Dallapiazza et al. 2000, 281-92.
6. Internal references
7. (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=112> (accessed 26 April 2024)
9. Not published: do not cite ()