Note to Anon Líkn 32VII
[6] dags reitar ‘of day’s furrow [SKY/HEAVEN]’: A somewhat unusual heaven-kenning; cf. dags land ‘day’s land’ Leið 24/8. Reitr (from ríta ‘to scratch, engrave, write’) ‘furrow’, by extension ‘cultivated land’, ‘a marked out space’. Alternatively the kenning can be read as ‘the space inscribed/marked out by the day’, or simply as ‘day’s land’. This is the first use of reitr as a base-word in a heaven-kenning (cf. Lil 11/4, 26/2). As ‘furrow’ or ‘cultivated land’ the noun accords well, however, with the agrarian imagery of the blómi ‘blossom’ (l. 8) watered (rained upon) by the dreyri ‘blood’ of Christ (cf. the use of such imagery as metaphor for inspiration in sts 4-5 and the recurrence of ár in the sense of ‘year’s abundance’; see Note to 5/5).
References
- Internal references
- Katrina Attwood (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Leiðarvísan 24’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 162-3.
- Martin Chase (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Lilja 11’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 573-5.