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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Refr Ferðv 4III

Edith Marold (ed.) 2017, ‘Hofgarða-Refr Gestsson, Ferðavísur 4’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 247.

Hofgarða-Refr GestssonFerðavísur
345

text and translation

Barðristinn nemr brjósti
borðheimr drasils skorðu,
— nauð þolir viðr — en víði
verpr inn of þrǫm stinnan.

{Barðristinn borðheimr} nemr brjósti {drasils skorðu}, en verpr víði inn of stinnan þrǫm; viðr þolir nauð.
 
‘The prow-carved world of ship-planks [SEA] strikes the breast of the steed of the prop [SHIP], and the ocean is thrown in over the firm gunwale; the timber suffers distress.

notes and context

This stanza is cited in Skm (SnE) and LaufE among stanzas exemplifying sea-heiti.

[1-2]: In l. 2, mss R and C read drasils (the descender on the final <s> is very faint in R and earlier eds read <l> here), and mss and A, as well as the LaufE mss, contain two nom. forms, borðheimr ‘world of ship-planks’ and drasill ‘steed’. In order to decide which of them ought to be the subject of the sentence, one must take the case assignment and semantic structure of the verb nema into account, because the dat. brjósti ‘breast’ must be accommodated syntactically. The only example of a similar syntactic structure is found in LP: nema 5: spjót nemr hjartarótum ‘the spear strikes the heart at the roots’ (Anon Pét 38/6VII). Hence the subject of the sentence must be the sea which strikes the breast of the ship, i.e. it crashes against the bow of the ship. This interpretation also matches the general tenor of the helmingr, which characterises the sea in this confrontation as the aggressive entity and the ship as the affected one. This is also the sense of the intercalary ‘the ship suffers distress’. Hence borðheimr ‘world of ship-planks’ (so all mss), the base-word of the sea-kenning, must be the subject of the sentence, and drasils (gen.) (so R and C) is the base-word in the ship-kenning qualifying the dat. brjósti ‘breast’. Previous eds (SnE 1848-87; Skj B; Skald; SnE 1998) take drasill as the subject of the sentence and emend borðheimr nom. sg. ‘world of ship-planks [SEA]’ to borðheim (acc. sg.) as the object. However, the semantic interpretation of nemr is problematic here. Cf. LP: nema 3, which gives the following complicated interpretation: tage imod noget (for at støde det tilbage, holde det ude) ‘receive something (in order to push it back, keep it outside)’, slightly different than the translation in Skj B: Skibet sætter sit bryst imod den stavnfurede sø ‘the ship pushes its breast against the prow-carved sea’, where the dat. brjósti cannot be accommodated syntactically.

readings

sources

Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.

editions and texts

Skj: Hofgarða-Refr Gestsson, 4. Et rejsedigt 4: AI, 321, BI, 297, Skald I, 151; SnE 1848-87, I, 498-9, II, 451, 600, III, 103, SnE 1931, 175, SnE 1998, I, 94; LaufE 1979, 389.

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