Egill Frag 1III
Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Egill Skallagrímsson, Fragment 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 66.
notes
[1] vrǫngu ‘awry’: As Björn Magnússon Ólsen (TGT 1884, 199) points out, Óláfr Þórðarson clearly understood this word as the m. or n. dat. sg. (or the adv.) of the adj. (v)rangr ‘wrong, false, twisted, awry’ because he referred to it in his prose text as a nafn (Lat. nomen), a noun or adj. Thus W’s reading has been adopted here rather than A’s vrungu, which would give the 3rd pers. pl. pret. indic. of a hypothetical *vringa (cf. OE wringan ‘wring’). As the prose text of TGT (1884, 87) makes clear shortly after this citation, the use of a word beginning with initial <vr> rather than <r> is an archaism (vinðandin forna, the use of the letter venð <w> in such locations), necessary here to provide correct alliteration in a dróttkvætt line (see also ANG §288). For another example, also using vrangr, see Bragi Þórr 6/1-2 and Note there.
kennings
varrar Gungnis …‘the lips of Gungnir <spear> ’
= SPEAR-BLADES
the lips of Gungnir <spear> → SPEAR-BLADES
notes
[1, 2] varrar … varrar ‘the lips … of the wake’: Adopting A’s reading, this word, repeated in each line, must be gen. sg. or nom. or acc. pl. of vǫrr f. ‘lip’ or gen. sg. or nom. pl. of vǫrr m. ‘the pull of an oar, the wake created by an oar’. Given that lung ‘longship’ (l. 2) has a nautical sense, the second meaning seems more probable than the first in l. 2. Finnur Jónsson (TGT 1927, 100) suggested that varrar Gungnis ‘the lips of Gungnir’ in l. 1 might be a kenning for the edges of a spear, and that suggestion has been adopted tentatively here. If W’s reading is adopted, Várar might be the gen. sg. of the proper noun Vár, name of a goddess (cf. Gylf, SnE 2005, 29).
Gungnis ‘of Gungnir <spear>’
(not checked:)
2. Gungnir (noun m.): Gungnir
kennings
varrar Gungnis …‘the lips of Gungnir <spear> ’
= SPEAR-BLADES
the lips of Gungnir <spear> → SPEAR-BLADES
varrar ‘of the wake’
(not checked:)
1. vǫrr (noun m.; °dat. verri; acc. vǫrru): oar-stroke
[2] varrar: so A, varar W
notes
[1, 2] varrar … varrar ‘the lips … of the wake’: Adopting A’s reading, this word, repeated in each line, must be gen. sg. or nom. or acc. pl. of vǫrr f. ‘lip’ or gen. sg. or nom. pl. of vǫrr m. ‘the pull of an oar, the wake created by an oar’. Given that lung ‘longship’ (l. 2) has a nautical sense, the second meaning seems more probable than the first in l. 2. Finnur Jónsson (TGT 1927, 100) suggested that varrar Gungnis ‘the lips of Gungnir’ in l. 1 might be a kenning for the edges of a spear, and that suggestion has been adopted tentatively here. If W’s reading is adopted, Várar might be the gen. sg. of the proper noun Vár, name of a goddess (cf. Gylf, SnE 2005, 29).
lungs ‘of the longship’
(not checked:)
lung (noun n.): longship
of ‘’
(not checked:)
4. of (particle): (before verb)
stunginn ‘pierced’
(not checked:)
stinga (verb): stab, poke
Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses
See Introduction.
The metre is dunhent ‘echoing-rhymed’ (cf. SnSt Ht 24). — It is impossible to give a definitive sense of this couplet, as it probably lacks a nom. subject and a finite verb, hence no connected prose order or translation of the whole couplet has been attempted here. Skald (cf. NN §844C) constructs one but this requires three words to be emended and cannot be considered as more than speculative. It is possible, as Björn Magnússon Ólsen (TGT 1884, 199) suggests, that the repeated varrar (or várar) in each ms. is a result of textual corruption. On the other hand, the couplet may employ a deliberate play on words with the same form but different meanings (homonyms), and that is how the lines have been interpreted here. It is also curious that two of the words in this couplet, Gungnis ‘of Gungnir’ and lung ‘longship’, also appear in a couplet by Bragi Boddason (Bragi Frag 4/1-2) cited in the very next section of TGT (1884, 87).
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