Note to Án Lv 2^VIII (Án 2)

[All]: The stanza appears to express a conventional contrast familiar from love poetry, in which a speaker contrasts a natural phenomenon with his or her inner longing; cf. Skí 4 and the C13th Middle English song ‘Fowles in þe friþe’ ‘Birds in the wood’. Several scholars have considered the stanza may originally have been a love-poem spoken by a woman (Edd. Min. lxxxvii-viii; Läffler 1912, 7, 13, 61; Liestøl 1945, 85-92; Ólafur Halldórsson 1973, 80). However, this is not how it is interpreted in Án because there the stanza is spoken by a man, Án himself, about his longing for a þegn. In the context of the saga the word þegn ‘freeman, man’ could have several meanings: it might refer to the sword of that name owned by Án’s brother Þórir, but þegn is also a very common term for ‘man’ in poetry (cf. LP: þegn), and Án claims to be using the word to refer to his brother Þórir by his nickname, which is also þegn. In Án a discussion about the meaning of the stanza follows and highlights its homoerotic implications and the ambiguities of the word þegn within the saga (FSGJ 2, 378-9; cf. Hughes 1976, 199 n.; Läffler 1912, 8): Þórir mælti: ‘Eigi skaltu þess þurfa, því at ek mun gefa þér sverðit Þegn.’ Án segir: ‘Ekki þrey ek at þeim þegni.’ Ketill sagði þar: ‘Ek ætla, at þú þreyir at karlmanni nokkorum, ok viltu serða hann,’ ok gerðu þeir at þessu gys mikit ok dáraskap. ‘Eigi er svá,’ sagði Án, ‘ekki þrey ek at þeim þegni, ek þrey at Þóri þegn, bróður mínum, því at hann er svá grunnhygginn, at hann trúir konungi þessum, en ek veit, at hann mun honum at bana verða’ ‘Þórir spoke: “You shall not have need of that [i.e. to long for þegn], for I will give you the sword Þegn.” Án says: “I do not long for that þegn.” Then Ketill [one of the king’s retainers] said: “I think that you are yearning for some man, and you want to fuck him,” and they made much mockery and sport of this. “That is not so,” said Án, “I do not yearn for such a man, I suffer for my brother Þórir the follower [þegn] of the king, because he is so shallow-minded that he trusts this king, but I know that he [the king] will become his killer”’. Án’s foreboding proves true, for the king eventually kills Þórir with the latter’s own sword Þegn (FSGJ 2, 394).

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. Edd. Min. = Heusler, Andreas and Wilhelm Ranisch, eds. 1903. Eddica Minora: Dichtungen eddischer Art aus den Fornaldarsögur und anderen Prosawerken. Dortmund: Ruhfus. Rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
5. Hughes, Shaun F. D. 1976. ‘The Literary Antecedents of Áns saga bogsveigis’. MS 9, 196-235.
6. Läffler, Leopold Frederik. 1912. ‘En kärleksvisa i Áns saga bogsveigis’. Studier i nordisk filologi 3, 1-65.
7. Liestøl, Knut. 1945. ‘Til spørgsmålet om dei eldste islendske dansekvæde’. Arv 1, 69-101.
8. Ólafur Halldórsson. 1973. Áns rímur bogsveigis. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árnamagnússonar á Íslandi.
9. Internal references
10. (forthcoming), ‘ Anonymous, Áns saga bogsveigis’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=12> (accessed 26 April 2024)
11. Not published: do not cite ()