Note to Anon Krm 5VIII
[3] hestum Heflis ‘the horses of Heflir <sea-king> [SHIPS]’: This makes sense as a ship-kenning, given that Heflir, listed by Björn Sigfússon (1934, 131, cf. 132) as a sea-king name, means ‘he who furls the sail’, cf. hefla ‘furl the sail’. It is apparently found as a kenning determinant only in the present instance, however (see LP: Heflir, hestr), and it is possible, as Björn suggests, that the 1824b reading here is a scribal blunder either for hestum hefils ‘horses of the clew-line [SHIPS]’ (the reading adopted in Wisén 1886-9, I and Finnur Jónsson 1893b) or for hestum Hemlis ‘horses of Hemlir <sea-king> [SHIPS]’, Hemlir being listed as a sea-king name in Þul Sækonunga 2/3III and meaning ‘he who pulls backward’, cf. hamla, ‘pull backwards, stern foremost’, hamla ‘oar-thong’, hömlumaðr ‘oarsman’ (so Björn Sigfússon 1934, 132). The latter reading (hestum Hemlis), which is adopted by Pfeiffer (1860), finds support in R702ˣ and 6ˣ. Hestum Heflis is adopted in all other previous eds, though in CPB heflis (sic) is given a lower case initial.
References
- Bibliography
- 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.
- CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
- Wisén, Theodor, ed. 1886-9. Carmina Norrœnæ: Ex reliquiis vetustioris norrœnæ poësis selecta, recognita, commentariis et glossario instructa. 2 vols. Lund: Ohlsson.
- Finnur Jónsson. 1893b. Carmina Norrœna: Rettet Tekst. Copenhagen: Nielsen & Lydiche.
- Pfeiffer, Friedrich. 1860. Altnordisches Lesebuch. Leipzig: T. O. Weigel.
- Björn Sigfússon. 1934. ‘Names of Sea-Kings (heiti sækonunga)’. MP 32, 125-42.
- Internal references
- Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Sækonunga heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 677. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3183> (accessed 26 April 2024)