Glúmr Gráf 2^I

Diana Whaley (ed.) 2012, ‘Glúmr Geirason, Gráfeldardrápa 2’ 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. 249.

Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses

This and the following stanza are cited to support the statement that the Eiríkssynir (or Gunnhildarsynir), forced into exile after their father’s death, took control of Orkney and Shetland and spent some summers raiding around the British Isles.

For a suggestion that this stanza, together with st. 3, could belong to Glúmr’s fragmentary drápa for Eiríkr blóðøx (Glúmr Eir), see Introduction. — [1-4]: No interpretation of the helmingr is without drawbacks. (a) This edn tentatively follows the interpretation of ÍF 26, which is based on points made by Kock (NN §1058). Kock notes parallels to góða fǫr Skáneyjar ‘a good voyage to Skåne’ such as Sigv ErfÓl 27/1-2 góðri fǫr Róms ‘the good journey to Rome’. He defends the use of bakki ‘bank’ as the determinant in a ship-kenning, though it refers to dry land rather than sea, citing parallels such as GunnlI Lv 6/3-4^V (Gunnl 10) ǫndurr andness ‘ski of the headland’; unlike andnes, bakki is not usually a coastal feature, but see ONP: bakki 1.1, and cf. LP: marbakki, sjóvarbakki ‘sea-shore’; see also Note to Anon (Styrb) 2/4. Kock further construes fróðr til ferju as a phrase meaning ‘skilful in seafaring’, since til can be expected to govern the immediately following gen. sg. ferju. However, í, á or um rather than til is normally used with fróðr (Fritzner, ONP: fróðr) and although ferja is a heiti for ‘ship’ (Þul Skipa 4/6^III), its use here is curious. Finnur Jónsson proposed the following three solutions, but all of them are problematic since they separate til and ferju, which are consecutive in l. 1. (b) In Hkr 1893-1901 Finnur emended bakka to bekkja ‘of streams’, with ferju as a free-standing dat. ‘by ship’. (c) In a note in Hkr 1893-1901, IV, however, Finnur expresses dissatisfaction with this usage of ferju, and adds the possibility of construing it within the phrase fróðr ferju ‘skilful in seafaring’; this is adopted in Hkr 1991. (d) In Skj B Finnur formulates the kenning blakkríðandi bakka ferju ‘rider of the steed of the bank of the ferry [(lit. ‘steed-rider of the bank of the ferry’) SEA > SHIP > SEAFARER]’. — [5-8]: The overall sense of the helmingr is clear, but the detail is uncertain. (a) The interpretation above avoids emendation and adopts ráðvandr ‘judicious’ (lit. ‘counsel-careful’), the reading of the main ms. Kˣ. Rógeisu ‘battle-fire’ is a standard sword-kenning (cf. dolgeisa ‘battle-fire’ in st. 3/1), and vann á Skotlandi is taken to mean ‘attacked Scotland’. (b) Rand-Ullr ‘shield-Ullr <god> [WARRIOR]’ in l. 6 is the reading of all mss except Kˣ. It is taken in ÍF 26 and Hkr 1991 in apposition with ræsir ‘ruler’. Such apposition is unusual, but a further possiblity would be that rand-Ullr is the subject of sendi in l. 7. ÍF 26 also assumes rógeisa ‘strife-fire’ in l. 6 is a battle-kenning, rather than the expected sword-kenning. (c) Finnur Jónsson (Skj B; LP: rógeisa) takes ræsir rógeisu as a kenning, ‘wielder of strife-fire [SWORD > WARRIOR]’, reads ráðvandr ‘careful in counsel’ in l. 6 and emends sendi ‘sent’ in l. 7 to sendan, hence combining the two clauses with the construction vann sendan, lit. ‘managed to send’. Although this solution is attractive, ræsir is normally a heiti for ‘ruler’, not a base-word in a kenning, and the emendation is unwarranted (cf. Kock, NN §1059).