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

Anon (FoGT) 12III

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.

Anonymous LausavísurStanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise
111213

text and translation

Vatn kalla mig
— vil eg efla þig,
hoddveitir — frams
hauðrfjörnis grams:
eg hreinsa alt;
eg vermi kalt;
eg birti sjón;
eg bæti tjón.

Kalla mig vatn {frams grams {hauðrfjörnis}}; eg vil efla þig, {hoddveitir}: eg hreinsa alt; eg vermi kalt; eg birti sjón; eg bæti tjón.
 
‘I call myself water of the outstanding king of the earth-helmet [SKY/HEAVEN > = God (= Christ)]; I want to strengthen you, gold-giver [GENEROUS MAN]: I cleanse everything; I warm what is cold; I brighten vision; I repair loss.

notes and context

Stanza 12 illustrates the second kind of prosopopoeia, when something lifeless addresses something living. After the stanza the following explanation is given: her er sagt at ǫlmvsv giǫfín kalli sik vatn kristz, ok telr vpp dygðer sinar, eggiandi manninn til milldinnar, þviat sva sem vatnit slǫkver likamlegan elld, slikt hið sama slokkver ǫlmosan synda brvna ok þvær ꜳ þꜳ̋ leið sꜳ̋l, sem vatnit bv́kinn ‘here it is said that Alms-giving calls herself the water of Christ, and enumerates her virtues, urging the man to mercy, because, just as the water quenches bodily fire, in the same way alms quenches the fire of sins and washes the soul in that [same] way as the water [does] the body’.

The metre of this stanza is a variety of runhent ‘end-rhymed’, with tetrasyllabic lines (fornyrðislag Type E) rhyming in pairs.

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 [XIII], [C]. D. Religiøse og moraliserende vers af den 4. grammatiske afhandling 4: AII, 163-4, BII, 180, Skald II, 94, NN §2585; SnE 1848-87, II, 200-1, III, 156, FoGT 1884, 125, 254, FoGT 2004, 35, 63, 99, FoGT 2014, 10-11, 66-7.

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.