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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Guðbr Frag 2^III

Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Guðbrandr í Svǫlum, Fragment 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. 198.

Guðbrandr í Svǫlum Fragment2

Upp ‘up’

notes

[1] setr upp ‘rises up’: Used impersonally with inn mikla mǫkk ‘the great cloud’ as the acc. object. The A variant dregr upp ‘rises up’ is also possible but could have been caused by association with Þjsk Jarl l. 1^I Þoku dregr upp ‘Fog rises up’.

setr ‘rises’

[1] setr: dregr A(1r)

notes

[1] setr upp ‘rises up’: Used impersonally with inn mikla mǫkk ‘the great cloud’ as the acc. object. The A variant dregr upp ‘rises up’ is also possible but could have been caused by association with Þjsk Jarl l. 1^I Þoku dregr upp ‘Fog rises up’.

mǫkk ‘cloud’

notes

[1] inn mikla mǫkk ‘the great cloud’: Recalls Þjsk Jarl l. 3^I (see TGT 1884, 194).

inn ‘The’

notes

[1] inn mikla mǫkk ‘the great cloud’: Recalls Þjsk Jarl l. 3^I (see TGT 1884, 194).

mikla ‘great’

notes

[1] inn mikla mǫkk ‘the great cloud’: Recalls Þjsk Jarl l. 3^I (see TGT 1884, 194).

móð ‘of the mind’

(not checked:)
1. móðr (noun m.; °dat. -i/-): courage < móðfjall (noun n.): [mind-mountain]

kennings

alla verǫld móðfjalls.
‘over the entire world of the mind-mountain. ’
= BREAST
the mind-mountain. → HEART
over the entire world of the HEART → BREAST

notes

[2] móðfjalls ‘of the mind-mountain [HEART]’: Most earlier eds agree that this is a kenning for ‘heart’. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) treats the gen. as syntactically independent of the rest of the couplet: … hjærtets (usikker opfattelse) ‘… of the heart (uncertain interpretation)’ (so also TGT 1927). In TGT 1884, 194 and NN §1373, móðfjalls is taken as a determinant to alla verǫld ‘the entire world’, yielding a kenning for ‘breast’. Björn Magnússon Ólsen (loc. cit.) adduces the kenning hneggverǫld ‘heart-world [BREAST]’ (Anon (SnE) 18/3) in support of that interpretation, and it has been adopted here. Because móðfjall, if given in the acc., in itself would have been sufficient to express the poet’s state of mind (‘the great cloud rises up over my heart’), it is possible that the addition of alla verǫld, which is not semantically necessary, constituted macrologia (see Note to [All] above).

móð ‘of the mind’

(not checked:)
1. móðr (noun m.; °dat. -i/-): courage < móðfjall (noun n.): [mind-mountain]

kennings

alla verǫld móðfjalls.
‘over the entire world of the mind-mountain. ’
= BREAST
the mind-mountain. → HEART
over the entire world of the HEART → BREAST

notes

[2] móðfjalls ‘of the mind-mountain [HEART]’: Most earlier eds agree that this is a kenning for ‘heart’. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) treats the gen. as syntactically independent of the rest of the couplet: … hjærtets (usikker opfattelse) ‘… of the heart (uncertain interpretation)’ (so also TGT 1927). In TGT 1884, 194 and NN §1373, móðfjalls is taken as a determinant to alla verǫld ‘the entire world’, yielding a kenning for ‘breast’. Björn Magnússon Ólsen (loc. cit.) adduces the kenning hneggverǫld ‘heart-world [BREAST]’ (Anon (SnE) 18/3) in support of that interpretation, and it has been adopted here. Because móðfjall, if given in the acc., in itself would have been sufficient to express the poet’s state of mind (‘the great cloud rises up over my heart’), it is possible that the addition of alla verǫld, which is not semantically necessary, constituted macrologia (see Note to [All] above).

fjalls ‘mountain’

(not checked:)
1. fjall (noun n.): mountain < móðfjall (noun n.): [mind-mountain]

kennings

alla verǫld móðfjalls.
‘over the entire world of the mind-mountain. ’
= BREAST
the mind-mountain. → HEART
over the entire world of the HEART → BREAST

notes

[2] móðfjalls ‘of the mind-mountain [HEART]’: Most earlier eds agree that this is a kenning for ‘heart’. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) treats the gen. as syntactically independent of the rest of the couplet: … hjærtets (usikker opfattelse) ‘… of the heart (uncertain interpretation)’ (so also TGT 1927). In TGT 1884, 194 and NN §1373, móðfjalls is taken as a determinant to alla verǫld ‘the entire world’, yielding a kenning for ‘breast’. Björn Magnússon Ólsen (loc. cit.) adduces the kenning hneggverǫld ‘heart-world [BREAST]’ (Anon (SnE) 18/3) in support of that interpretation, and it has been adopted here. Because móðfjall, if given in the acc., in itself would have been sufficient to express the poet’s state of mind (‘the great cloud rises up over my heart’), it is possible that the addition of alla verǫld, which is not semantically necessary, constituted macrologia (see Note to [All] above).

fjalls ‘mountain’

(not checked:)
1. fjall (noun n.): mountain < móðfjall (noun n.): [mind-mountain]

kennings

alla verǫld móðfjalls.
‘over the entire world of the mind-mountain. ’
= BREAST
the mind-mountain. → HEART
over the entire world of the HEART → BREAST

notes

[2] móðfjalls ‘of the mind-mountain [HEART]’: Most earlier eds agree that this is a kenning for ‘heart’. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) treats the gen. as syntactically independent of the rest of the couplet: … hjærtets (usikker opfattelse) ‘… of the heart (uncertain interpretation)’ (so also TGT 1927). In TGT 1884, 194 and NN §1373, móðfjalls is taken as a determinant to alla verǫld ‘the entire world’, yielding a kenning for ‘breast’. Björn Magnússon Ólsen (loc. cit.) adduces the kenning hneggverǫld ‘heart-world [BREAST]’ (Anon (SnE) 18/3) in support of that interpretation, and it has been adopted here. Because móðfjall, if given in the acc., in itself would have been sufficient to express the poet’s state of mind (‘the great cloud rises up over my heart’), it is possible that the addition of alla verǫld, which is not semantically necessary, constituted macrologia (see Note to [All] above).

verǫld ‘world’

(not checked:)
verǫld (noun f.; °-aldar, dat. -/-u; -aldir): world, age

kennings

alla verǫld móðfjalls.
‘over the entire world of the mind-mountain. ’
= BREAST
the mind-mountain. → HEART
over the entire world of the HEART → BREAST

notes

[2] alla verǫld ‘over the entire world’: An acc. of place (see NS §96b).

alla ‘over the entire’

(not checked:)
allr (adj.): all

kennings

alla verǫld móðfjalls.
‘over the entire world of the mind-mountain. ’
= BREAST
the mind-mountain. → HEART
over the entire world of the HEART → BREAST

notes

[2] alla verǫld ‘over the entire world’: An acc. of place (see NS §96b).

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

In TGT the couplet illustrates the rhetorical figure macrologia (TGT 1927, 57): Þessi fígúra verðr ok, ef maðr talar þǫrfum fleira um hinn sama hlut ‘This rhetorical figure also occurs if a man speaks more than necessary about the same thing’. In the fragment preserved in A(1r) the context appears to be the same, but the wording of the prose is somewhat different (SnE 1848-87, II, 397): … garð ær þat kallað æf længi ær talat vm hit sama æfni ‘… it is called ‘yard’ [?] if the same topic is spoken about for a long time’.

The couplet is fragmentary, and the present attempt (following TGT 1884, 193-4 and NN §1373) to make syntactic and semantic sense of the two lines remains tentative. According to this interpretation, the poet is lamenting the fact that his soul is being enveloped in a cloud of sorrow. It is not entirely clear exactly how this couplet exemplifies macrologia, however, unless it refers to the overladen phrase used by the poet with expressions for both ‘heart’ and ‘breast’ (see Note to l. 2 below). — For another fragment illustrating macrologia in TGT, see Arn Hryn 2^II and Context there.

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