Note to Eil Þdr 9^III

[6] run*kykva ‘of the quickeners of the stream’: The first element of this cpd appears as runn- in all mss. This could be the stem form of runnr ‘tree, bush’, but that does not lead to a viable interpretation here, while run-, on the other hand, does. Run is attested in the sense ‘a shallow stone watercourse over which water may flow from one body of water into another’, ‘a small, narrow watercourse between two lakes’ in Old Norwegian (Fritzner, Heggstad et al. 2008: run), and in New Norwegian it means a ‘watercourse between two lakes’ (cf. also Faroese run ‘light surf’; AEW: run). Its determinant here is hauðrs skafls jarðar ‘of the land of the snow-drift of the earth [RIDGE > MOUNTAINS]’, with which it forms an expression for ‘river’. Kykva is taken as gen. pl. of an agent noun *kykvir ‘quickener’, from a factitive verb *kykva ‘quicken’ (from ON kvikr ‘alive’; Reichardt 1948, 357). The ‘quickeners of the stream’ are the giantesses, and their ‘tormentor’ (herðir nauðar) is Þórr. Finnur Jónsson (1900b, 386-7; Skj B; LP: rúmbyggvir) emended the mss’ runnkykva to rúmbyggva, which he takes as the base-word of a giant-kenning (see Note to ll. 5-8 above). Kock’s (NN §452) and Kiil’s (1956, 124) interpretations are highly speculative and will not be discussed here.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Finnur Jónsson. 1900b. ‘Þórsdrápa Eilífs Goðrúnarsonar’. Oversigt over det Kgl. Danske videnskabernes selskabs forhandlinger 1900, 369-410.
8. Reichardt, Konstantin. 1948. ‘Die Thórsdrápa des Eilífr Goðrúnarson: Textinterpretation’. PMLA 63, 329-91.