Bjbp Jóms 25^I

Þar gekk framm í fólki
fránlyndr Búi sína
— þess kveða virða vissu
vánir — hart með sveina.
Ok geirviðir gerðu
grimma hǫggum rammir
— gengu þeir at gunni
geystir — vápna brestu.

Fránlyndr Búi gekk framm hart þar í fólki með sveina sína; kveða virða vissu vánir þess. Ok {geirviðir}, rammir hǫggum, gerðu grimma brestu vápna; þeir gengu geystir at gunni.

Keen-tempered Búi pressed forward strongly there in the battle with his followers; [people] say that men had expectations of this. And {the spear-trees} [WARRIORS], powerful with their blows, made fierce crashings of weapons; they went enraged into battle.

Mss: R(54r)

Readings: [2] sína: sínu R    [8] geystir: geysta R

Editions: Skj AII, 6, Skj BII, 6, Skald II, 4, NN §3245; Fms 11, 170, Fms 12, 244, Jvs 1879, 112-13.

Notes: [2] fránlyndr ‘keen-tempered’: Unique to Jóms, but cf. compounds such as fráneggr ‘with sharp edges’ or fráneygr ‘with keen, flashing eyes’ (see LP: fráneggr, fráneygr). — [2] sína (m. acc. pl.) ‘his’: (a) The poss. pron. is emended here, as in most eds, from ms. sínu so it agrees with the object of the clause, sveina ‘followers, youths’. (b) Sínu (n. dat. sg.) could alternatively be retained and taken with fólki ‘battle’ (which would then have its alternative sense ‘troop’), but this leaves sveina underspecified. (c) Kock (Skald and NN §3245) reads sýnu, n. dat. sg. of sýnn ‘visible, clear’, which he takes here and elsewhere as an adverbial ‘clearly, certainly’. — [3-4] vissu vánir ‘had expectations’: Vissu is a past inf. forming an acc. with inf. construction with m. acc. pl. virða ‘men’, hence kveða virða vissu vánir, lit. ‘(people) say men to have known expectations’. — [8] geystir (m. nom. pl.) ‘enraged’: Emendation from ms. geysta is necessary so that the adj. qualifies þeir ‘they’ in l. 7 (so CPB II, 305, followed in Skj B). Fms 11 retains geysta but glosses it with the m. nom. pl. óðir ‘raging, enraged’. Geystr is p. p. of geysa ‘rush, gush, make rush’, hence ‘forcefully impelled (physically or mentally), in forceful motion, powerful, enraged’ (see LP: 2. geysa).

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Fms = Sveinbjörn Egilsson et al., eds. 1825-37. Fornmanna sögur eptir gömlum handritum útgefnar að tilhlutun hins norræna fornfræða fèlags. 12 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
4. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
6. 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.
7. CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
8. Jvs 1879 = Petersens, Carl af, ed. 1879. Jómsvíkinga saga (efter Cod. AM. 510, 4:to) samt Jómsvíkinga drápa. Lund: Gleerup.
9. Internal references
10. Emily Lethbridge 2012, ‘ Bjarni byskup Kolbeinsson, Jómsvíkingadrápa’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 954. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1122> (accessed 25 April 2024)