Note to Gusi Lv 2^VIII (Ket 4)

[6] þrysvar fyr Þrumu ‘three times before Þruma’: The word Þrumu is usually interpreted here as the name of an island in Agder in southern Norway (cf. LP: 1. Þruma 1; Note to Þul Eyja 3/8^III). In mss 343a and 471 the place mentioned is identified in a prose remark (FSGJ 2, 161): þeir fundust fyrir Ófara-Þrumu ‘they [i.e. Ketill and Gusi] met near Ófara-Þruma’. In 471 the p. n. appears in the stanza as Þrumu firði ‘Þruma fjord’. In the reading í þrumu which appears in some mss (papp32ˣ, 109a IIˣ and 1006ˣ) the word þruma could be interpreted in another way, namely as a poetic designation for ‘battle’: as Finnur Jónsson notes (LP: 2. þruma), the common noun þruma means ‘thunder, noise’ and appears as a variant reading to the synonym þrima as a poetic designation for ‘battle’ in Þhorn Gldr 1/2^I. Since Ketill meets the Saami Gusi shortly after he leaves the home of Brúni north of Finnmark and returns to Brúni after he has killed Gusi, an island (or fjord) in southern Norway does not accord well with the geography of the saga (Ketill’s home is in Namdalen in Nord-Trøndelag).

References

1. Bibliography
2. 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.
3. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
4. Internal references
5. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Eyja heiti 3’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 976.
6. Edith Marold (ed.) 2012, ‘Þorbjǫrn hornklofi, Glymdrápa 1’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 75.