Anon Bjark 1^III

Dagrs upp kominn;         dynja hana fjaðrar;
máls vílmǫgum         at vinna erfiði.
Vaki æ ok vaki,         vina hǫfuð,
allir inir œztu         Aðils of sinnar.

Dagrs upp kominn; fjaðrar hana dynja; máls {vílmǫgum} at vinna erfiði. Vaki æ ok vaki, hǫfuð vina, allir inir œztu of sinnar Aðils.

Day has broken; the rooster’s feathers rustle; it is time {for the sons of toil} [SERVANTS] to get to work. Wake now and wake, friends, all the noblest companions of Aðils.

Mss: Kˣ(458r-v) (Hkr); Holm2(64v), J2ˣ(220r), Bæb(4rb), 68(64r), Holm4(59vb), 61(122va), 325V(78rb), 325VII(35v), Bb(196ra-b), Flat(123ra), Tóm(153r) (ÓH); 141ˣ(52r-v) (Fbr)

Readings: [2] hana fjaðrar: ‘han[…] fjaðrar’ Holm4, ‘hana hanafjadrir’ 61;    fjaðrar: ‘fíadrir’ Tóm    [3] vílmǫgum: víkingum 68, Tóm, víkingum at vaka Flat, vílmǫgum corrected from víkingum at vaka in another hand 141ˣ    [4] at: om. 68, ok Flat, 141ˣ;    vinna: vekja 61, 325V, ‘vækia’ 325VII, ‘veikia’ Bb;    erfiði: ‘ærbiðe’ 325VII, ‘erfvidí’ Bb, ‘erfuide’ Flat    [5] æ ok: ok á Holm2, ok æ J2ˣ, Bæb, Holm4, 61, 325V, ok 325VII, Bb, Flat, Tóm, 141ˣ;    vaki: vak Bb    [7] œztu: ágæztu J2ˣ, ‘[…]’ Holm4    [8] Aðils: ‘adlis’ corrected from ‘allis’ Bb;    of: so Holm2, Bæb, 68, Holm4, 61, 325V, 325VII, um Kˣ, ok J2ˣ, Bb, Flat, Tóm, 141ˣ;    sinnar: sinna Holm4, sína 325VII, svía Bb, Flat, Tóm, sinnar corrected from ‘snia’ in right margin in another hand 141ˣ

Editions: Skj AI, 180, Skj BI, 170, Skald I, 91, FF §25; Hkr 1893-1901, II, 463, ÍF 27, 361 (ÓHHkr ch. 208); ÓH 1941, I, 547, Flat 1860-8, II, 343; ÍF 6, 262-3 (Fbr ch. 24).

Context: King Óláfr awakens early while his men are still asleep and asks for his skald, Þormóðr, who is close by. The king asks Þormóðr to recite a poem to them (‘Tel þú oss kvæði nǫkkut’ ÍF 27, 361). The skald sits up and recites sts 1 and 2 very loudly so that the whole army can hear him. The two stanzas are said to be the beginning (upphaf) of Bjarkamál in fornu.

Notes: [All]: The stanza is somewhat similar to lines near the opening of the Old English heroic fragment The Fight at Finnsburg, ll. 10-12 (Beowulf 2008, 283): Ac onwacniġeað nū, | wīġend mīne, | habbað ēowre linda, | hicgeaþ on ellen, | winnað on orde, | wesað on mōde! ‘But awaken now, my warriors, take hold of your shields, think of valour, fight in the vanguard, be courageous!’. — [All]: The stanza’s first helmingr evokes the sounds and activities of domesticity, with roosters crowing and servants starting the day’s work, while the second helmingr changes the focus to the warrior band who are still at rest and are urged by the speaker to get up and prepare for battle. — [2] fjaðrar hana dynja ‘the rooster’s feathers rustle’: It is just before dawn, when roosters rustle their feathers as they are about to crow. — [3] vílmǫgum ‘for the sons of toil [SERVANTS]’: A circumlocution for servants or workmen, who must be about their business at the crack of dawn; cf. Skí 35/4, Hávm 134/12, Þul Manna 10/10 and Note there. The reading víkingum ‘for vikings’ is clearly secondary and inappropriate to the context of ll. 1-4. — [5] vaki æ ‘wake now’: The adv. æ, lit. ‘always’, is an intensifier here; cf. Anon Nkt 9/5^II and Note there. — [6] hǫfuð vina ‘friends’: Lit. ‘heads of friends’. Hǫfuð ‘head’ is used here in a circumlocutionary sense, based on the sense ‘person’ (cf. LP: hǫfuð 2). Saxo (Saxo 2005, I, 2, 7, 4, p. 170) has quisquis se regis amicum … fatetur ‘whoever would prove … that he is a friend to the king’. The Germanic leader was traditionally primus inter pares with his personal followers; cf. Green (1965, 106-7). It has been argued by Hofmann (1955, 94-5), and before him Kock (1921, 117), that the Old Norse use of vinr in the sense of a leader as friend to his followers and vice versa shows the influence of West Germanic usage; cf. the Old English Beowulf where wine ‘friend’ can refer either to the leader or his retainers. — [8] of sinnar Aðils ‘companions of Aðils’: Aðils was a legendary king in Sweden, and the enemy of Hrólfr kraki, so it would seem inappropriate here to refer to Hrólfr’s men by such a phrase, and Olrik (in Hollander 1919, 197) suggested an (unmetrical) emendation to *aðalsinnar ‘excellent followers’. However, Bugge (1887, 13) had previously suggested that the phrase might refer to an earlier episode in the legend of Hrólfr kraki, as reported in Skm (SnE 1998, I, 58-9), in which he sent his twelve berserks to help Aðils gain the kingdom of the Svíar from a rival, Áli, and this is plausible enough. In ll. 7-8 Bb, Flat and Tóm have allir inir œztu | Aðils ok Svía ‘all the noblest [men] of Aðils and the Swedes’.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. 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.
4. Flat 1860-8 = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and C. R. Unger, eds. 1860-8. Flateyjarbók. En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler. 3 vols. Christiania (Oslo): Malling.
5. ÓH 1941 = Johnsen, Oscar Albert and Jón Helgason, eds. 1941. Saga Óláfs konungs hins helga: Den store saga om Olav den hellige efter pergamenthåndskrift i Kungliga biblioteket i Stockholm nr. 2 4^to med varianter fra andre håndskrifter. 2 vols. Det norske historiske kildeskriftfond skrifter 53. Oslo: Dybwad.
6. ÍF 6 = Vestfirðinga sǫgur. Ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson and Guðni Jónsson. 1943.
7. ÍF 26-8 = Heimskringla. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. 1941-51.
8. Hkr 1893-1901 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1893-1901. Heimskringla: Nóregs konunga sǫgur af Snorri Sturluson. 4 vols. SUGNL 23. Copenhagen: Møller.
9. Beowulf 2008 = Fulk, Robert D., Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, eds. 2008. Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg. 4th rev. edn of Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Fr. Klaeber. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press.
10. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
11. Hofmann, Dietrich. 1955. Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen der Wikingerzeit. BA 14. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
12. 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.
13. FF = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1922. Fornjermansk forskning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 18:1. Lund: Gleerup.
14. Bugge, Sophus. 1887. ‘Studien über das Beowulfepos’. BGDSL(H) 12, 1-112, 360-75.
15. Green, D. H. 1965. The Carolingian Lord: Semantic Studies on Four Old High German Words: Balder, Frô, Truhtin, Hêrro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
16. Hollander, Lee M. 1919. The Heroic Legends of Denmark. Trans. and rev. by Axel Olrik in collaboration with the author. Scandinavian Monographs 4. New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation.
17. Kock, Ernst Albin. 1921. ‘Bidrag til eddatolkningen’. ANF 37, 1-135.
18. Internal references
19. (forthcoming), ‘ Anonymous, Fóstbrœðra saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=7> (accessed 25 April 2024)
20. (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 25 April 2024)
21. (forthcoming), ‘ Heimskringla, Óláfs saga helga (in Heimskringla)’ 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. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=152> (accessed 25 April 2024)
22. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2009, ‘Anonymous Poems, Nóregs konungatal 9’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 768.
23. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Manna heiti 10’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 785.
24. Not published: do not cite ()
25. Not published: do not cite ()
26. Not published: do not cite ()