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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to Þhorn Harkv 23I

[7] spôn ‘wood-chip’: The exact nature of the entertainment is disputed. Kock (NN §1506) sees here an allusion to antics of the sort that he himself apparently had seen fire-eaters engage in: they would pass wood-shavings through (of) flames without setting them on fire (and see following Note). Accordingly, he rejects the collocation brennanda spôn ‘burning wood-shaving’ of Skj B (and here) and instead construes brennanda with eld ‘fire’. But the resulting syntax is uncharacteristic of the poem (Jón Helgason 1946, 141). Sigfús Blöndal (1927-8) would emend to brennandi spǫnn ‘burning pails’, in reference to bowls of scalding hot wine carried round the fire or (less convincingly in the Viking Age) to liquor flambé .

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. Jón Helgason. 1946. ‘Haraldskvæði’. Tímarit Máls og menningar, 131-46.
  5. Sigfús Blöndal. 1927-8. ‘Some Remarks on the Haraldskvæði 23’. APS 2, 59-65. Rpt. as ‘Nokkrar athugasemdir við Haraldskvæði’. Skírnir 103 (1929), 129-38.
  6. Internal references
  7. Not published: do not cite (RunVI)

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