Bragi Rdr 11^III

Ok fyr hǫnd í holmi
Hveðru brynju Viðris
fengeyðandi fljóða
fordæða nam ráða.
Allr gekk herr und hurðir
Hjarranda framm kyrrar
reiðr af Reifnis skeiði
ráðalfs af mar brôðum.

Ok {fengeyðandi fordæða fljóða} nam ráða í holmi fyr hǫnd {Viðris {Hveðru brynju}}. Allr herr {ráðalfs} gekk framm brôðum reiðr af {skeiði Reifnis}, af mar, und {kyrrar hurðir Hjarranda}.

And {the booty-destroying evil-doer among women} [= Hildr] took control on the island on behalf of {the Viðrir <= Óðinn> {of the Hveðra <troll-woman> of the mail-coat}} [AXE > WARRIOR = Hǫgni]. All the army {of the control-elf} [RULER = Hǫgni (?)] went forward quickly, enraged, from {the ground of Reifnir <sea-king>} [SEA], from the sea, beneath {unwavering hurdles of Hjarrandi <= Óðinn>} [SHIELDS].

Mss: R(35r), Tˣ(36r-v), W(79) (SnE)

Readings: [5] hurðir: so all others, ‘hvr[…]’ R    [7] af: at all    [8] ‑alfs: ‑alfr all;    af: so all others, of R

Editions: Skj AI, 3, Skj BI, 3, Skald I, 2, NN §§217, 2205E; SnE 1848-87, I, 438-9, III, 86, SnE 1931, 155, SnE 1998, I, 73.

Context: As for st. 8. However, in all three mss this stanza follows what is presented here as the refrain and numbered st. 12. The ms. ordering is odd, if the refrain was intended to conclude Bragi’s presentation of the Hildr legend, in parallel with the four stanzas plus refrain that Rdr devoted to the Jǫrmunrekkr legend. It is possible that Bragi’s narrative of the Hildr legend was longer than four stanzas.

Notes: [1-4]: In the first helmingr, it is stated that Hildr nam ráða ‘took control’ (l. 4) on the island where the fight took place; the issues here turn on whether she took control ‘on behalf of’ a particular warrior (so Skj B, also here) or ‘instead of’ a warrior (so SnE 1998, II, 123) and, in either case, of which warrior? In the present instance the warrior in question is presumed to have been her father Hǫgni, but a case could also be made for Heðinn. — [1] fyr hǫnd ‘on behalf of’: Understood here to take the gen. case of the person on whose behalf something is done (so SnE 1998, II, 327-8), represented by the kenning Viðris Hveðru brynju ‘the Viðrir <= Óðinn> of the Hveðra <troll-woman> of the mail-coat [BATTLE-AXE > WARRIOR]’. — [1] í holmi ‘on the island’: If Bragi knew the same version of the legend as Snorri, this must be the Orkney island of Hoy (ON Háey). Other versions of the legend also involve fighting on an island; cf. Saxo’s Hithinsø (Saxo 2005, I, 5. 9, 1, p. 342), probably Hiddensee off Rügen in the Baltic Sea. — [2] Hveðru brynju ‘of the Hveðra <troll-woman> of the mail-coat [AXE]’: The pers. n. Hveðra appears in Þul Trollkvenna 2/7. Kennings for ‘axe’ frequently use base-words for giantesses or troll-women (cf. Meissner 147-8). — [3-4] fengeyðandi fordæða fljóða ‘the booty-destroying evil-doer among women [= Hildr]’: Considered here to be a direct reference, via the hap. leg. adj. fengeyðandi ‘booty-destroying’, to Hildr’s practice of destroying the usual fengr ‘booty’ to be found on the field of battle, that is, dead men and their possessions, by reviving the fighters every evening. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B; LP: fengeyðandi) understands feng to be synonymous with gagn ‘victory (in battle)’, meaning that Hildr prevents both sides from winning the fight by reviving the dead. The noun fordæða has strong connotations of the kinds of sorcery thought to have been practised by women in early Scandinavia (cf. LP, Fritzner: fordæða). — [5-8]: There are several ways of construing this helmingr and ll. 7-8, in particular, are difficult, requiring two emendations. — [5, 8] allr herr ráðalfs ‘all the army of the control-elf [RULER = Hǫgni (?)]’: All mss’ ráðalfr (nom.) (l. 8)  has been emended to ráðalfs (gen.) and construed with ‘all the army’ (l. 5) to give a ruler-kenning whose referent is probably Hǫgni, the likely referent of the warrior-kenning in the first helmingr. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) emends to raðaralfs, deriving the first element of the cpd from rǫð ‘ship’, a noun only attested in Þul Skipa 2/7. Kock (cf. NN §217) also emends <r> to <s>, but understands the cpd noun as raðalfr ‘ship-elf’, ‘seafarer’, also deriving the first element from rǫð ‘ship’, but this is not possible because such a cpd would resolve in initial position and create a hypometrical line. — [5-6] und kyrrar hurðir Hjarranda ‘beneath unwavering hurdles of Hjarrandi <= Óðinn> [SHIELDS]’: Lit. ‘beneath quiet hurdles of Hjarrandi’. In itself this kenning is unexceptional, and there are several others of this type in the corpus, where a shield is referred to as a ‘door’ (or similar) of Óðinn (cf. Meissner 167). There is also no doubt that the name Hjarrandi occurs as an Óðinn-heiti (Þul Óðins 4/5). The difficulty is that in several versions of the Hildr legend a figure named Hjarrandi (or the cognate form in other languages, such as OE Heorrenda, MHG Hôrant) plays a role in the narrative. In Snorri’s prose, too, Heðinn is named Hjarrandason, but this may be a rationalisation of something he did not understand in Bragi’s poem. The most important Old Norse witness here is RvHbreiðm Hl 45-6 which uses the question-and-answer form greppaminni ‘poets’ reminder’ to refer to the Hildr legend. There (st. 46/4, 8) we find the question hverr eggjaði styrjar? ‘who instigated the strife?’ and the answer Hjarrandi réð gunni ‘Hjarrandi caused the battle’. It is uncertain whether this text supports the idea of a separate male figure who took a major role in stirring up the fighting or whether these statements allude to Óðinn’s (rather than Hildr’s) role in it. The fact that the pers. n. Hjarrandi must form part of a shield-kenning here and cannot therefore refer to another human participant in the fight strongly suggests that the idea of a separate figure named Hjarrandi, whether father to Heðinn or in some other role, is probably secondary to the legend, at least in its Scandinavian versions, and may have developed out of an original role for Óðinn alongside Hildr as inciter of hostility. While it would be possible grammatically for Hjarranda (l. 6) to be construed with allr herr ‘all the army’ (l. 5), that would leave the kenning base-words kyrrar hurðir ‘unwavering hurdles’ (ll. 5, 6) without a determinant. — [7] af skeiði Reifnis ‘from the ground of Reifnir <sea-king> [SEA]’: All mss read at (emended here, as in Skj and SnE 1998, to af). Kock (NN §217) tried to make sense of at Reifnis skeiði in the sense ‘close by the sea’, i.e. ‘along the shore’, but most eds have emended to af Reifnis skeiði ‘from the ground of Reifnir <sea-king> [SEA]’, which makes better sense with the idea of one army advancing from its ships towards the other. — [8]: Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) emended l. 8 to raðaralfs mari brôðum, deleting the second word af and changing mar to mari. Finnur took raðaralfs with allr herr ‘all the army’ (l. 5), as in Note to ll. 5, 8 above, in the sense søkrigerens hele hær ‘the sea-warrior’s whole army’ and then construed af skeiðibrôðum mari Reifnis as fra det hurtigløbende skib ‘from the fast-running ship’, understanding skeiðibrôðum (by tmesis from l. 7) as ‘swift in sailing’ and marr Reifnis ‘Reifnir’s <sea-king’s> horse’ as a ship-kenning.

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. SnE 1848-87 = Snorri Sturluson. 1848-87. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Edda Snorronis Sturlaei. Ed. Jón Sigurðsson et al. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Legatum Arnamagnaeanum. Rpt. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1966.
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. Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
7. 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.
8. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
9. SnE 1931 = Snorri Sturluson. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
10. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
11. Saxo 2005 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2005. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum / Danmarkshistorien. Trans. Peter Zeeberg. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Det danske sprog- og litteraturselskab & Gads forlag.
12. Internal references
13. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Trollkvenna heiti 2’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 725.
14. Margaret Clunies Ross 2017, ‘ Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Ragnarsdrápa’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 27. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1130> (accessed 6 May 2024)
15. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Óðins nǫfn 4’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 741.
16. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Skipa heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 861. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3208> (accessed 6 May 2024)
17. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Rǫgnvaldr jarl and Hallr Þórarinsson, Háttalykill 45’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1053.