Note to Gamlkan Has 64VII
[2] Harmsól: Lit. ‘sorrow-sun’. The title of the poem draws together many of its central themes. Harmsól may be taken as a kenning for Christ, whose harmr ‘pain, injury’ is the subject of the poem’s central meditation, and who is apostrophised throughout the poem in kennings referring to his mastery of the weather and his lordship over the heavenly halls of the sun. At another level, the poem itself, as a public act of penance and a meditation on the grace of God, has acted as a ‘sun’, dissipating the clouds of the poet’s own harmr ‘sorrow’, his grief and shame at his own sinfulness. See further Paasche 1914a, 116-18.