[2] karl í feldi ‘the man in the cloak’: This could be a veiled reference to Óðinn, who frequently appears in a cloak when in disguise (e.g. in Grí 1 and prose; NK 57) and is often referred to as karl ‘(old) man’ (see Hárb 2, Reg 18/5, NK 78, 178, and LP: karl 2). If so, the sense would be that the devil (or his avatar, the heathen god) causes the men’s drunken inability to perform the Christian ritual.
References
- Bibliography
- LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
- NK = Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn (1899), eds. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. 2 vols. I: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Winter.
- Internal references
- Not published: do not cite ()
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- Not published: do not cite ()