Note to Ótt Hfl 2^I

[1-2] gunnar glóðbrjótanda ‘of the breaker of the ember of battle [(lit. ‘ember-breaker of battle’) SWORD > WARRIOR]’: The exact configuration of kennings is elusive here. The first citation in SnE draws attention to golls brjótandi or gollbrjótandi ‘gold-breaker’, a kenning for ‘generous man’. If this construal is correct, gunnar ‘of battle’ is not integral to the kenning but must loosely qualify either this, hence ‘generous man of battle’ referring to Óláfr, or else góðmennis ‘good men’, hence ‘good men of battle’, i.e. warriors. However, the construal may be incorrect (so Faulkes in SnE 1998, I, 190, II, 251), and the full kenning may be a kenning not for ‘generous man/ruler’ but rather for ‘warrior’: Óttarr’s idiom plays with the ‘generous man/ruler’ concept in passing, but embeds it and re-analyses it within the ‘warrior’ concept, creating a sword-kenning by combining either glóð ‘ember’ or goll(s) ‘gold’ with gunnar ‘battle’. The second citation in SnE has glóðbrjótandi ‘ember-breaker’, which forms an inverted warrior-kenning with gunnar, and this is preferred in this edn, as in Skj B and Skald. Goll(s) would not be a standard base-word for a sword-kenning. The closest comparandum would be gim (Meissner 150), and this is not a true parallel since its meaning in sword-kennings is ‘fire’ rather than ‘gem, jewel’.

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. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
5. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
6. Internal references
7. Edith Marold 2017, ‘Snorra Edda (Prologue, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál)’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols [check printed volume for citation].