Note to Rv Lv 13II
[4] slíðrvǫnd ‘scabbard-wand’: LP translates this as frygtelig vånd ‘dreadful wand’ (similarly Poole 2006, 148). While this meaning of slíðr (as a compounding epithet) predominates in earlier poetry, the meaning ‘scabbard’ is better attested in the C12th, including several examples in Rǫgnvaldr’s own poetry (st. 17 below; RvHbreiðm Hl 18, 71, 74III), both as a simplex and in kennings. Admittedly, the resulting kenning is imperfect, as it contains an extra determinant, Svǫlnis Vára ‘Svǫlnir’s Várs’, and Poole’s solution remains a possibility.
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.
- Poole, Russell. 2006. ‘Some Southern Perspectives on Starcatherus’. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 2, 141-66.
- Internal references
- Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Rǫgnvaldr jarl and Hallr Þórarinsson, Háttalykill 18’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1026.