[3] leiðiþír ‘the leading slave’: A hap. leg. cpd of uncertain meaning referring to Loki. Kock (NN §223) draws a parallel with OE lādteow, latteow ‘leader, guide, general’ (derived from lād ‘path’ plus þēow ‘slave, servant’), but there is no evidence that the Old Norse cpd could have this elevated sense, especially as the uncommon þírr ‘male slave’ seems to be equivalent to þræll or þjónn, both meaning ‘slave, servant’ (so SnE 1998, I, 106, 118, Þul Manna 10/7). Kock construes the cpd with læva to mean ‘the leader of crime [= Loki]’.
References
- Bibliography
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
- Internal references
- Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Manna heiti 10’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 785.