Note to ÞjóðA Sex 30^II

[4] hrægamms sævar ara ‘of the corpse-vulture of the sea of the eagle [BLOOD > RAVEN]’: The base-word greddir ‘feeder’ (see LP and references there) evidently forms a warrior-kenning, with a term for a beast of the battlefield in the gen. as determinant. (a) The construction assumed here is overloaded (so also Finnur Jónsson in Skj B, marking hrægamms ara as unexplained): -gamms sævar ara ‘of the vulture of the sea of the eagle [BLOOD > RAVEN]’ is an adequate determinant, leaving hræ- ‘corpse, carrion’ as unnecessary (cf. val- ‘slaughter-’ in st. 28/4). (b) Rather more tortuously, in terms of w. o., the determinant referring to a bird of the battlefield could be formed from hræ- and sævar ‘corpse-sea [BLOOD]’ plus either gamms ‘vulture’ or ara ‘eagle’, but the one not deployed in the kenning would be redundant. (c) Kock interprets the gen. sg. ara sævar ‘of eagle’s sea [BLOOD]’ as adjectival, ‘bloody’, hence ara sævar hrægamms greddir ‘the one who feeds the birds which feed on bloody corpses’ (NN §864). (d) To take sævar with stika grunn hvert, hence ‘stake every shallow of the sea’ does not help, since ara (or gamms) is still redundant.

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. 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.