Cookies on our website

We use cookies on this website, mainly to provide a secure browsing experience but also to collect statistics on how the website is used. You can find out more about the cookies we set, the information we store and how we use it on the cookies page.

Continue

skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Menu Search

Note to Anon Krm 13VIII

[4] fyrir Hjaðningavági ‘off Hjaðningavágr’: According to LP: Hjaðningavágr, the location of this place, lit. ‘the bay of Heðinn’s followers’, is uncertain, men rimeligvis tænkt i vesten ‘but probably thought of as in the west’, which presumably means somewhere west of mainland Scandinavia, i.e. somewhere in the British Isles. The location in the present instance is almost certainly somewhere in the Orkneys, since according to one version of the legend of the Hjaðningavíg ‘the battle of Heðinn’s followers’, as related in Skm (SnE 1998, I, 72) (cf. st. 4, first Note to l. 2 and st. 10, Note to l. 7), it is to the Orkneys, and specifically to the island of Hoy (ON Háey), that Hǫgni pursues Heðinn, the abductor of his daughter Hildr, and where the everlasting fight between Hǫgni and Heðinn, instigated by Hildr, takes place. The frequency in Krm, always in a battle-context, of the noun hildr (sts 10/2, 13/3, 14/7, 21/4, 26/4), whether understood as a pers. n. or as a common noun meaning ‘battle’, the oblique reference to Hildr in the kenning kván Heðins ‘woman of Heðinn’ in st. 4/2, and the occurrence of the name Hǫgni in the armour-kenning in st. 10/7, all suggest that the legend of the Hjaðningavíg was known to the poet of Krm, and that it is indeed a location in the Orkneys that is envisaged here. Less likely is the apparent suggestion in CPB (CPB II, 342) of the Baltic island of Heðinsey (Hiddensee), another possible location of the everlasting battle, mentioned e.g. in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum (Saxo 2015, I, v. 9. 1, pp. 330-3), cf. Vǫls ch. 9 (Vǫls 1965, 15-16).

References

  1. Bibliography
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
  5. Vǫls 1965 = Finch, R. G., ed. and trans. 1965. The Saga of the Volsungs. London: Nelson.
  6. Vǫls = Vǫlsunga saga.
  7. Saxo 2015 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2015. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes. Trans. Peter Fisher. Oxford Medieval Texts. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
  8. Internal references
  9. (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=112> (accessed 29 March 2024)
  10. Rory McTurk 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Krákumál’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 706. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1020> (accessed 29 March 2024)
  11. Not published: do not cite ()

Close

Log in

This service is only available to members of the relevant projects, and to purchasers of the skaldic volumes published by Brepols.
This service uses cookies. By logging in you agree to the use of cookies on your browser.

Close