Note to Anon Krm 12VIII
[9-10]: Ormr ‘snake, serpent’ is here taken as a weapon-heiti (cf. Rafn 1826; Pfeiffer 1860; Wisén 1886-9, II, 220; LP: ormr 2). Finnur Jónsson’s translation in Skj B: det edderhvasse sværd trængte (guld)prydet ind til blodet ‘the poison-sharp sword, decked (with gold), forced its way into the blood’ tries to avoid a half-kenning ormr ‘sword’ with a complicated and apparently unique interpretation of these lines, which is criticised by Kock (NN §1277). It involves taking ormr and unda, separated by the prep. til in l. 9, as forming together a kenning ormr unda ‘snake of wounds [SWORD]’; the p. p. drifinn ‘soaked, steeped’, as meaning ‘decked (with gold)’; and the prep. til in l. 9 as governing sveita, gen. sg. of sveiti ‘blood’, in l. 10. Kock’s evident understanding of the lines (he does not give a translation) is clearly to be preferred, and is followed here. That Finnur Jónsson subsequently abandoned the Skj B reading of these lines seems clear from LP: ormr 2 and drífa 6.
References
- Bibliography
- Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- 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.
- Wisén, Theodor, ed. 1886-9. Carmina Norrœnæ: Ex reliquiis vetustioris norrœnæ poësis selecta, recognita, commentariis et glossario instructa. 2 vols. Lund: Ohlsson.
- Pfeiffer, Friedrich. 1860. Altnordisches Lesebuch. Leipzig: T. O. Weigel.
- 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.