[All]: In this stanza, Hallar-Steinn compares the activity of composing poetry to that of a ship-builder smoothing wood with a plane; the poem (drápa) is a ship (stefknǫrr ‘refrain-ship’) and the beginning of the poem (upphaf) the bow(s) (brandar) of a ship (Clunies Ross 2005a, 38). Cf. also RvHbreiðm Hl 3/3, where framstafn ‘the prow’ refers to the beginning of the poem (see Kreutzer 1977, 255-7 on comparison of poems to ships in skaldic poetry, as well as Clunies Ross 2005a, 87).
References
- Bibliography
- Kreutzer, Gert. 1977. Die Dichtungslehre der Skalden: Poetologische Terminologie und Autorenkommentare als Grundlage einer Gattungspoetik. 2nd edn. Hochschulschriften: Literaturwissenschaft 1. Meisenheim am Glan: Hain.
- Clunies Ross, Margaret. 2005a. A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
- Internal references
- Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Rǫgnvaldr jarl and Hallr Þórarinsson, Háttalykill 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. 1011.