An exchange of verses between Bragi and a troll-woman — Bragi Troll^III

SnE records two stanzas of an exchange between the poet Bragi inn gamli ‘the Old’ and a troll-woman in Skm (SnE 1998, I, 83-4). They occur in a section detailing expressions for poetry without periphrasis (ókend setning skáldskapar). This context makes it clear that it was the second of the pair of stanzas (Bragi Troll) that was the target quotation, because it lists terms for a poet, and this is reflected by both the prose introduction (see Context) and the ms. witnesses to the verse, as only R and C (the latter in part, from l. 4) have the troll-woman’s stanza (Anon (SnE) 9), while R, Tˣ, U, A and C have Bragi’s. Nevertheless, both internal and contextual evidence indicates that the two must have formed a pair, in which Bragi’s stanza deliberately imitates the form and content of the troll-woman’s. Almqvist (1965-74, I, 28-34) has shown that this exchange is the earliest extant example of the kind of poetic duelling between malevolent supernatural beings and human poets that characterised so-called kraftskáld ‘power-skald’ in post-medieval Icelandic tradition. It is significant that such powers are attributed to the first known skald (see Lindow 2006 and cf. Bragi’s divinatory powers in Bragi Lv 1a^IV and Bragi Lv 1b^VIII), whether or not he was the composer of one or both of the stanzas. A similar encounter, though lacking a poetic dimension, occurs in a prose passage in the eddic HHj, in which the hero Heðinn goes home on his own out of a wood one Yule evening and encounters a troll-woman, who offers him her company (fylgð). Heðinn refuses this, and, in revenge, the troll-woman makes him (by magic presumably) vow his service to his own brother’s betrothed.

Both Bragi’s and the troll-woman’s stanzas are, appropriately to their status as travellers, in a form of tøglag ‘journey metre’. If authentic, they are likely to be the earliest attested examples of it (cf. SnE 2007, 29-30, 35, 87-8 and General Introduction to SkP §4, in SkP I for a survey of poetry in this measure). A similar, enumerative format, beginning X kalla mik, and listing a number of properties of a particular entity, occurs in Anon (FoGT) 12, and may suggest the format was traditional.

References

1. Bibliography
2. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
3. SkP = Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages. Turnhout: Brepols.
4. SkP I = Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Ed. Diana Whaley. 2012.
5. Almqvist, Bo. 1965-74. Norrön niddiktning: Traditionshistoriska studier i versmagi. I: Nid mot furstar. II: Nid mot missionärer: Senmedeltid nidtraditioner. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
6. SnE 2007 = Snorri Sturluson. 2007. Edda: Háttatal. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2nd edn. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
7. Lindow, John. 2006. ‘Narrative Worlds, Human Environments, and Poets: The Case of Bragi’. In Andrén et al. 2006, 21-5.
8. Internal references
9. 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].
10. (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=112> (accessed 25 April 2024)
11. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from Snorra Edda 9’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 519.
12. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 12’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 585.
13. Not published: do not cite (Bragi Lv 1a^IV)
14. Not published: do not cite ()
15. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka 78 (Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Lausavísur 1b)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 365.