Note to Bragi Þórr 2^III

[All]: Both Skj and Skald place this helmingr after what is here st. 3, but equally good sense (in terms of the known myth) is created by the sequence adopted here, which also follows the order in which sts 2, 3 and 4 are cited in Skm. According to this reading, Þórr perceives his fishing line go taut against the side of the ship (Bragi uses litotes to describe this) as the World Serpent uncoils itself on the sea-floor, having swallowed Þórr’s baited hook, before the god raises his hammer (see st. 3) in readiness to strike his adversary’s head as it emerges from the waves. Other interpretations of the stanza are possible. Skj B understands Miðgarðsormr to unwind upon the sand after Þórr has pulled him up from the bottom da midgårdsormen efterhånden (ved optrækningen) slæbtes henad sandbunden ‘when the Midgard serpent gradually (in the course of being pulled up) was dragged towards the sandy bottom’, while Kock (NN §219), followed by Turville-Petre (1976, 5), combines lá vilgi slakr at sandi and rakðisk á Eynæfis ǫndri ‘[the fishing line] lay by no means slack upon the sand [when Jǫrmungandr] unwound himself upon Eynæfir’s ski’.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. Turville-Petre, Gabriel. 1976. Scaldic Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon.
6. Internal references
7. (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 24 April 2024)