Cookies on our website

We use cookies on this website, mainly to provide a secure browsing experience but also to collect statistics on how the website is used. You can find out more about the cookies we set, the information we store and how we use it on the cookies page.

Continue

skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Menu Search

Ólhv Frag 8III

Tarrin Wills (ed.) 2017, ‘Óláfr hvítaskáld Þórðarson, Fragments 8’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 308.

Óláfr hvítaskáld ÞórðarsonFragments
789

text and translation

Kjǫlr brunar kløkkr á fǫlvar
krapthár meginbárur.

Krapthár kløkkr kjǫlr brunar á fǫlvar meginbárur.
 
‘The high-planked, flexing keel speeds over the white large waves.

notes and context

Cited as an example of synecdoche, where a part is substituted for the whole (i.e. pars pro toto), here kjǫlr ‘keel’ for ‘ship’.

The example in Donatus (Holtz 1981, 669, from Aeneid I, 399) is puppesque tuae pubesque tuorum ‘your sterns and your youths’. In his commentary, Sedulius Scottus adds (CCCM 40B, 382), A puppibus enim naues significat ‘By “sterns” ships are meant’. Óláfr likewise comments (TGT 1927, 81): Hér er kjǫlr settr fyrir ǫllu því skipi ‘Here “keel” is used for the whole of that ship’. Donatus (loc. cit., from Aeneid I, 114-15) also has a second example, ingens a vertice pontus in puppim ferit ‘a huge sea strikes the stern from the top’. Ship parts are common examples of this type of synecdoche, but the similarity of the examples suggests influence of the Latin on the Old Norse couplet.

readings

sources

Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.

editions and texts

Skj: Anonyme digte og vers [XII], C. Vers om ubestemmelige personer og begivenheder 25: AI, 600, BI, 599, Skald I, 292, NN §2125n; SnE 1818, 330, SnE 1848, 196, SnE 1848-87, II, 170-1, 423, III, 150, TGT 1884, 28, 109, 226, TGT 1927, 81, 106.

Close

Log in

This service is only available to members of the relevant projects, and to purchasers of the skaldic volumes published by Brepols.
This service uses cookies. By logging in you agree to the use of cookies on your browser.

Close

Stanza/chapter/text segment

Use the buttons at the top of the page to navigate between stanzas in a poem.

Information tab

Interactive tab

The text and translation are given here, with buttons to toggle whether the text is shown in the verse order or prose word order. Clicking on indiviudal words gives dictionary links, variant readings, kennings and notes, where relevant.

Full text tab

This is the text of the edition in a similar format to how the edition appears in the printed volumes.

Chapter/text segment

This view is also used for chapters and other text segments. Not all the headings shown are relevant to such sections.