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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Arn Frag 7III

Diana Whaley (ed.) 2017, ‘Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, Fragments 7’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 9.

Arnórr jarlaskáld ÞórðarsonFragments
678

text and translation

Sumar hvern frekum erni

Hvern sumar frekum erni.
 
‘Every summer to the greedy eagle.

notes and context

The line is cited in TGT as an example of barbarismus; the flaw here involves stafaskipti ‘substitution of letters’. It is followed by the explanation that hvern replaces hvert in order to maintain the metre (see Note to l. 1).

Although certainty is impossible, the line is likely to be a remnant of a sentence portraying a warrior feeding the eagle each summer (by making carrion out of his enemies), with dat. sg. frekum erni ‘to the greedy eagle’ as an indirect object. Such a statement could refer to any of Arnórr’s patrons Rǫgnvaldr jarl Brúsason, Magnús góði ‘the Good’, Þorfinnr jarl Sigurðarson or Haraldr Sigurðarson, and could therefore have come from any of his extant dróttkvætt poems, respectively Arn RdrII, Arn MagndrII, Arn ÞorfdrII or Arn HardrII, or conceivably from the putative Blágagladrápa (see Note to Frag 3 [All]). Finnur Jónsson (SnE 1848-87, III, 572-3 and n. 5) tentatively lists the line as st. 8 of Arn HardrII (and prints it in Skj as st. 6 of the same poem), remarking that Snorri Sturluson’s description in Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar (HSigHkr ch. 33, ÍF 28, 112) of Haraldr harrying Denmark hvert sumar eptir annat ‘one summer after another’ could derive from this stanza. That is possible, but far from certain, especially since Snorri cites not from Arnórr at this point but from Stúfr Stúfdr 5/4II, which contains the phrase hvert ár ‘every year’.

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: Arnórr Þórðarson jarlaskáld, 6. Erfidrápa om kong Harald hårdråde 6: AI, 350, BI, 323, Skald I, 163; SnE 1848-87, II, 100-1, 406, 508, III, 137, TGT 1884, 14, 65, TGT 1927, 43, 91; Whaley 1998, 315.

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