[2-3, 4] ramsvell ræfrs Róða ‘the strong ice-sheet of Róði’s <sea-king’s> roof [SHIELD > AXE/SWORD]’: Again an ambiguous kenning for a type of weapon (see Note to st. 1/2, 3 above), although the base-word, svell ‘ice-sheet’, usually occurs in kennings for ‘sword’ (LP: svell). Kock (NN §2793) suggests that this kenning denotes ‘silver’ and that þverr ‘diminishes’ (l. 1) means ‘melt’. A silver-kenning with the base-word svell qualified by a determinant ‘shield’ is highly irregular, however. For Róði, see Note to Þul Sea-kings l. 5. The kenning ræfr Róða ‘Róði’s roof’ is a conventional kenning for ‘shield’ in which ræfr ‘roof’ denotes a shield as ‘cover, overhead protection’ (see Meissner 170-1).
References
- Bibliography
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- 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.
- 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.
- Internal references
- Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Heiti for sea-kings’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 987. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1045> (accessed 28 March 2024)