Note to Hildibrandr Lv 4^VIII (Ásm 4)

[1-2] inn svási sonr ‘the beloved son’: The poetic adj. sváss ‘agreeable, pleasant, gracious, dear’ occurs exclusively in eddic poetry (cf. LP: sváss); when applied to persons (family members, the gods) it means ‘dear, beloved, gracious’. It is cognate with Goth. swēs ‘own’, OE swǣs ‘dear, own’, OHG swās ‘dear’, Lat. suus ‘belonging to oneself, one’s own’ and a number of other Indo-European languages (cf. AEW: sváss). This phrase bears a striking similarity to the suâsat chind ‘beloved son, boy’ of Hildebrandslied l. 53a (cf. Halvorsen 1951, 14). The phrase sonr at höfði (l. 2) may indicate that this episode too was depicted on the father’s shield, as it is said to be in Saxo, meaning that the saga prose no longer understood the original story. Thus it may rather be a reference to the dead body of Hildibrandr’s son, lying beside his dying father. The lines in Saxo (Saxo 2015, I, vii. 9. 15, ll. 6-10, pp. 508-9) are medioxima nati | Illita conspicuo species celamine constat, | Cui manus hec cursum mete uitalis ademit. | Vnicus hic nobis heres erat, una paterni | Cura animi superoque datus solamine matri ‘there stands the likeness | of my son, whose course of life this hand brought to | its boundary. He was my only heir, the one | concern of his father’s mind, given by the gods | to comfort his mother.’

References

1. Bibliography
2. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
3. 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.
4. Halvorsen, Eyvind Fjeld. 1951. ‘On the Sources of the Ásmundarsaga kappabana’. Studia Norvegica 2, 1-57.
5. Saxo 2015 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2015. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes. Trans. Peter Fisher. Oxford Medieval Texts. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.