Note to Bragi Rdr 1III
[2] hreingróit steini ‘bright-planted with colour’: Bragi’s shield-kenning (see Note to ll. 3, 4 below) is elaborated by means of this adjectival phrase, which qualifies blað ‘leaf’ (l. 4). There is a pun on the noun steinn, which means both ‘stone’ and ‘mineral colour, paint’ (cf. LP: steinn), and points both in the direction of the Hrungnir myth (see below) and towards the immediate object of the poet’s gaze, the brightly painted shield covered with images of myths and legends, which he is about to turn into literary capital. The sense of gróa (p. p. gróit) ‘grow, cover with growth’ nicely carries through the image of the shield as a leaf (blað) in a clever nýgerving that plays on the antithesis between the animate and inanimate poles of the kenning. On Bragi’s use of nýgervingar, see Marold (1993b, 297-9).