Bragi Rdr 8^III

Ok ofþerris æða
ósk-Rôn at þat sínum
til fárhuga fœra
feðr veðr boga hugði,
þás hristi-Sif hringa
hals- in bǫls of fyllda
bar til byrjar drǫsla
-baug ørlygis draugi.

Ok {ósk-Rôn ofþerris æða} hugði fœra {veðr boga} til fárhuga feðr sínum at þat, þás {hristi-Sif hringa}, in bǫls of fyllda, bar halsbaug {draugi ørlygis} til {drǫsla byrjar}.

And {the desiring-Rán <goddess> of the excessive drying of veins} [VALKYRIE = Hildr] planned to bring {the storm of bows} [BATTLE] with hostile intentions against her father after that, when {the shaking-Sif <goddess> of rings} [VALKYRIE = Hildr], the one filled with malice, carried a neck-ring for {the tree-trunk of battle} [WARRIOR = Hǫgni] to {the steeds of the fair wind} [SHIPS].

Mss: R(34v), Tˣ(36r), W(79) (SnE)

Readings: [1] ofþerris: ‘vm þeris’ R, Tˣ, ‘um þerris’ W;    æða: so W, ‘ada’ R, ‘adan’ Tˣ    [3] fœra: fœri all    [4] veðr: om. Tˣ;    boga: so with ‘boða’ altered to ‘boga’ in scribal hand W, boða R, Tˣ    [6] in: so Tˣ, W, of R

Editions: Skj AI, 2, Skj BI, 2, Skald I, 1-2, NN §§1505, 2205B-D; SnE 1848-87, I, 436-7, III, 84, SnE 1931, 155, SnE 1998, I, 72-3.

Context: Rdr 8-12 are cited in Skm as a continuous sequence to illustrate why battle can be called Hjaðninga veðr eða él ‘weather or storm of the Hjaðningar’ and weapons Hjaðninga eldar eða vendir ‘fires or wands of the Hjaðningar’ (SnE 1998, I, 72-3). Before quoting Bragi’s stanzas, Snorri gives a prose account of the legend of the Hjaðningar, the followers of a king named Heðinn Hjarrandason, who abducted Hildr, daughter of King Hǫgni, when the latter was away from home. When he learnt of his loss, Hǫgni set off with his men in pursuit of Heðinn and Hildr, and found them on the island of Hoy (ON Háey) in the Orkneys. Hildr went to see her father and, in apparent atonement on Heðinn’s behalf, offered him a neck-ring (men), but also indicated that Heðinn was ready to fight. In effect, she was more enthusiastic about her father and abductor fighting than they were, and the conflict escalated to a day-long battle. At night Hildr revived all the dead by magic and the battle continued in this way day after day up to Ragnarǫk. Stanza 8 is preceded by the statement Eptir þessi sǫgu orti Bragi skáld í Ragnars drápu loðbrókar ‘Bragi the poet composed [stanzas] in the drápa of Ragnarr loðbrók based on this story’.

Notes: [All]: There are many variant versions of the legend of Hildr and the Hjaðningar in Old Norse, Old English and Middle High German, as well as in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum (Saxo 2005, I, 5, 8, 3 and 9, 1, pp. 338, 340-2). For a summary, see Clunies Ross (1973a, 110-31) and Marold (1990b). Bragi’s stanzas concentrate on the events leading up to the battle between Hǫgni and Heðinn and are focalised through his depiction of Hildr who acts, not to reconcile her father and lover, but to whet them and their men to bloody conflict. Her name (as a common noun) means ‘battle’ and she seems to embody a sexualised motivational force that leads men to fight one another, perhaps the same force that is also expressed through the conventional figure of the valkyrie. — [1] ofþerris ‘of the excessive drying’: A normalisation based on the likelihood that all mss’ um have substituted the later particle for earlier pleonastic of, though here of must in fact be the prefix of- ‘excessive, excessively’. — [1-2] ósk-Rôn ofþerris æða ‘the desiring-Rán <goddess> of the excessive drying of veins [VALKYRIE = Hildr]’: Bragi immediately establishes through this kenning Hildr’s destructive and predatory, almost cannibalistic, qualities. Óskmær ‘desire [i.e. ‘desired’ or ‘desiring’] maiden’ occurs as a term for a valkyrie (Oddrgr 16/3; LT: ósk-mær), and the similarity of the cpd ósk-Rôn strongly indicates Hildr’s role as a valkyrie (cf. Marold 1983, 103). Further, it compares Hildr to Rán (lit. ‘plunder’), wife of the sea-deity Ægir and a personification of the sea’s destructive power. The kenning suggests that Hildr wants to destroy all the men in her power by bleeding them dry with wounds. Kock (NN §2205B) makes the suggestion that this kenning alludes to Hildr as a curer, stemming the men’s bleeding wounds, but this seems improbable in the context of Bragi’s generally negative presentation of her. — [3] til fárhuga ‘with hostile intentions’: Cf. Am 88/2, the only other occurrence of this cpd. — [3] fœra ‘to bring’: With Finnur Jónsson (Skj B), all mss’ fœri has been emended to fœra ‘bring’, inf. with hugði ‘planned’ (l. 4). Kock (NN §1505) understands fœri as a noun ‘opportunity’, the object of hugði (and see following Note). — [4] veðr boga ‘the storm of bows [BATTLE]’: Kock (NN §1505) takes R, Tˣ’s reading boða as the second part of a cpd veðrboða ‘storm-offerer [WARRIOR = Heðinn]’ and construes it with til fárhuga (l. 3) to mean ‘for the storm-offerer’s hostile intent’. Marold (1983, 75) suggests emending veðr to veðs and understanding boði veðs ‘offerer of a pledge’ as a kenning for the atonement-seeking Heðinn. — [5] hristi-Sif hringa ‘the shaking-Sif <goddess> of rings [VALKYRIE = Hildr]’: The connotations of this kenning are complex. The rings in question could be ring-hilts on swords, or rings, whether neck-rings or arm-rings, as items of ornament, or both, as Marold (1983, 104) suggested. It is possible (see Note to st. 9/1) that there is a specific reference to the neck-ring that Hildr offers her father as atonement on Heðinn’s behalf. Bragi’s choice of the goddess-name Sif, wife of Þórr, which has the sense ‘kinship, affinity’ as a common noun, may be ironic here, for Hildr is concerned to break the ties of kinship. — [6, 8] halsbaug ‘a neck-ring’: By tmesis. If halsbaug is not regarded as a cpd, hals must be construed with hringa in the kenning hristi-Sif hringa ‘the shaking Sif of rings’ (so Kock NN §1505). The stem vowel of hals was not lengthened until c. 1200 (ANG §124.3). — [8] draugi ørlygis ‘the tree-trunk of battle [WARRIOR = Hǫgni]’: Bragi possibly plays ironically on the dual sense of draugr here, ‘tree-trunk’ and ‘ghost, revenant’, in that Hǫgni will soon have the latter status, along with all the other men in the Hildr legend.

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. ANG = Noreen, Adolf. 1923. Altnordische Grammatik I: Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter Berücksichtigung des Urnordischen. 4th edn. Halle: Niemeyer. 1st edn. 1884. 5th unrev. edn. 1970. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
7. LT = La Farge, Beatrice and John Tucker. 1992. Glossary to the Poetic Edda, based on Hans Kuhn’s Kurzes Wörterbuch. Skandinavistische Arbeiten 15. Heidelberg: Winter.
8. SnE 1931 = Snorri Sturluson. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
9. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
10. 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.
11. Marold, Edith. 1983. Kenningkunst: Ein Beitrag zu einer Poetik der Skaldendichtung. Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker, new ser. 80. Berlin: de Gruyter.
12. Clunies Ross, Margaret. 1973a. ‘An Edition of the Ragnarsdrápa of Bragi Boddason’. Diss. Oxford, UK…
13. Marold, Edith. 1990b. ‘Sagengestalt und Kontext. Die Hildsage in wechselnden Kontexten’. In Reichert et al. 1990, 187-209.
14. Internal references
15. (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=112> (accessed 19 April 2024)
16. Not published: do not cite (Rloð^VIII)
17. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Ragnarsdrápa 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. 39.
18. Not published: do not cite ()
19. Not published: do not cite ()
20. Not published: do not cite ()