Note to Anon Krm 18VIII
[7-8] ófár asni Ægis ‘not a few asses of Ægir <sea-giant> [SHIPS]’: Lit. ‘un-few ass’ (sg.). The kenning is unusual in substituting an exotic reference to an ass as base-word, instead of the much more common ‘horse’ (cf. Meissner 208). The noun asni ‘ass’ occurs only in one other place in skaldic poetry, in GunnLeif Merl I 87/2. Olsen (1933a) (see Introduction) has argued that the poet’s use of asni here alludes, in combination with messa ‘mass, divine service’ in st. 11/7 and pálmr ‘palm-tree’ in st. 15/10, to Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, claiming that the battle mentioned in st. 11/5-7 took place on a Sunday. Such a concatenation of supposed allusions, in the absence of any internal textual support, is very dubious. On the sea-giant Ægir as a personification of the ocean, see Note to st. 2/9.
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.
- Olsen, Magnus. 1933a. ‘Fra Hávamál til Krákumál’. In Festskrift til Halvdan Koht på sekstiårs dagen 7de juli 1933. Oslo: Aschehoug, 93-102. Rpt. in Olsen 1938a, 234-44.
- Internal references
- Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Breta saga 155 (Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá I 87)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 122.