Note to Eil Þdr 18III
[5] ǫrþrasis ‘of the passionate lover’: In Old Norse this word is only attested here. The meaning of the cpd can be explained by its etymology and its use as a base-word in a giant-kenning. It is formed from the adj. ǫrr ‘swift’ or ‘generous’ and the agent noun þrasir, derived from the weak verb þrasa ‘race along’ (Þrasir is also a name of a dwarf in st. 19/4 and in Þul Dverga 4/8); hence the meaning of ǫrþrasir could be ‘the swift racing one’. In the present stanza, ǫrþrasir is the base-word in a giant-kenning and has a kenning for ‘giantess’ (drósar Hrímnis ‘of the lady of Hrímnir <giant>’) as a determinant; it is therefore likely that the whole kenning belongs to the kenning pattern ‘lover, husband etc. of a giantess’ (Meissner 256). Hence ǫrþrasir has been translated here as ‘passionate lover’ (cf. LP: ǫrþrasir).
References
- Bibliography
- Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
- 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.
- Internal references
- Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Dverga heiti 4’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 699.