Note to Þjóð Haustl 17^III

[5-8]: There has been considerable debate among commentators about the syntax and identity of the kennings in this helmingr. One emendation, adopted by all eds, has been made for grammatical reasons, hǫrðum ‘hard’ (l. 5), to provide a m. dat. sg. adj. with of rúna ‘friend’ (l. 7), rather than the mss’ hǫrðu. Some eds (e.g. Skj B; SnE 1998) also emend all mss’ tíðr (l. 8) to tíðs ‘swift’ and construe it with hǫggs ‘blow’ (gen. after bíða ‘wait for’, l. 8). Here tíðr has been retained and taken as a m. nom. sg. adj. used predicatively with hraundrengr ‘rock-gentleman’ (l. 6), as suggested by Marold (1983, 173). The statement that the ‘rock-gentleman’ was not desirous of waiting long after that for Þórr’s coup de grace is nicely ironic. Another word that is difficult to place syntactically is fjǫllama (l. 8) and it is also difficult to ascertain this hap. leg. word’s lexical meaning. It is understood here as a cpd adj., meaning ‘much-battering’, qualifying hǫggs ‘blow’. Another view (cf. LP: fjǫrlami) is that the first element is fjǫr ‘life’, not fjǫl- ‘much’, and that the adj. means ‘life-crushing’. Skj B takes it with the kenning for Mjǫllnir, trolls trjónu fjǫllama, and glosses the whole phrase as den knusende hammer ‘the crushing hammer’. Other scholars (e.g. Wisén 1886-9, I, 11) have considered it a noun, meaning ‘life-laming’. The second element of the cpd, ‑lama, is strongly reminiscent of other descriptions of the crushing power of the mighty blows from Mjǫllnir directed at giants, in which the verb lemja ‘hit, batter, beat up’ is frequently used; cf. Vetrl Lv 1/2.

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. 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.
4. Wisén, Theodor, ed. 1886-9. Carmina Norrœnæ: Ex reliquiis vetustioris norrœnæ poësis selecta, recognita, commentariis et glossario instructa. 2 vols. Lund: Ohlsson.
5. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
6. Marold, Edith. 1983. Kenningkunst: Ein Beitrag zu einer Poetik der Skaldendichtung. Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker, new ser. 80. Berlin: de Gruyter.
7. Internal references
8. R. D. Fulk (ed.) 2017, ‘Vetrliði Sumarliðason, Lausavísa 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 425.