Note to Anon Krm 12^VIII

[3] í Barðafirði ‘in Barðafjǫrðr’: This place has not been identified with certainty, though several suggestions have been made. (a) Rafn (1826, 118) refers to Johnstone’s (1782, 99) suggestion that Barðafjǫrðr here is Perth, situated on the banks of the river Tay, which flows into the Firth of Tay in eastern Scotland, just south of Dundee. The name may originate in a P-Celtic (possibly Pictish) word cognate with Welsh perth ‘wood, copse’ (Johnston 1934, 272; Nicolaisen 1976, 164), while -fjǫrðr would refer to the Firth of Tay. The identification with Perth would be consistent with the claim in Krm 24/9-10 that the speaker of the poem was active in Scotland’s fjords (though see the second Note to st. 24/10, below). (b) Langenfelt (1920, 84 n. 1) suggested an identification with the English village of Bardney on the river Witham, some nine miles east of Lincoln. In the Anglo-Saxon period Bardney (OE Bardanege, Bardan ea ‘Bearda’s island’; Ekwall 1960, 25) was ‘effectively an island’ in the fens overlooking the river (Leahy 2007, 122). That the Old Norse name for a place situated some thirty-five miles inland should end in ‑fjǫrðr is not so surprising given that the word can refer to an inland lake with a watercourse opening out into it (see Fritzner: fjörðr; cf. Olsen 1939b, 52 n. 61). (c) Less convincing, given that in this part of the poem (sts 11-21) most of the places mentioned seem to be in the British Isles, is the suggestion from Rafn (1826, 118, following Suhm et al. 1782-1828, I, 556), that the place in question is the Barð(a)fjǫrðr twice mentioned as the site of major events in Hák (Hák 1977-82, 26, 163). The place has not been certainly identified, but both contexts indicate that it was in Halland, then part of Denmark but now a province of south-western Sweden, just north of Skåne.

References

1. Bibliography
2. 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.
3. Hák 1977-82 = Mundt, Marina, ed. 1977. Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar etter Sth. 8 fol., AM 325VIII, 4° og AM 304, 4°. Oslo: Forlagsentralen. Suppl. by James E. Knirk, Rettelser til Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar etter Sth. 8 fol., AM 325VIII, 4° og AM 304, 4°. Norrøne tekster 2. Oslo: Norsk historisk kjeldeskrift-institutt, 1982.
4. Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1826. Krakas Maal eller Kvad om Kong Ragnar Lodbroks Krigsbedrifter og Heltedød efter en gammel Skindbog og flere hidtil ubenyttede Haandskrifter med dansk, latinsk og fransk oversættelse, forskjellige Læsemaader, samt kritiske og philologiske Anmærkninger. Copenhagen: Jens Hostrup Schultz; London: John and Arthur Arch.
5. Langenfelt, Gösta. 1920. Toponymics or Derivations from Local Names in English: Studies in Word-formation and Contributions to English Lexicography. Inaugural Dissertation. Uppsala: Appleberg.
6. Ekwall, Eilert. 1960. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. 4th edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
7. Johnston, James B. 1934. Place-names of Scotland. London: John Murray.
8. Leahy, Kevin. 2007. The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey. Stroud: Tempus.
9. Nicolaisen, W. F. H. 1976. Scottish Place-Names: Their Study and Significance. London: Batsford.
10. Suhm, P. F. et al. 1782-1828. Historie af Danmark. 14 vols. Copenhagen: Berling.
11. Olsen, Magnus. 1939b. ‘Norge’. In Olsen 1939a, 5-52.
12. Internal references
13. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=33> (accessed 24 April 2024)
14. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Krákumál 24’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 765.