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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Refr Giz 2III

Edith Marold (ed.) 2017, ‘Hofgarða-Refr Gestsson, Poem about Gizurr gullbrárskáld 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. 255.

Hofgarða-Refr GestssonPoem about Gizurr gullbrárskáld
123

text and translation

Opt kom (jarðar leiptra
es Baldr hniginn skaldi
hollr) at helgu fulli
hrafnásar mér (stafna).

Opt kom mér at {helgu fulli {hrafnásar}}; {Baldr {leiptra {jarðar stafna}}}, hollr skaldi, es hniginn.
 
‘He often brought me to the holy cup of the raven-god [= Óðinn > POETRY]; the Baldr <god> of the lightnings of the land of prows [SEA > GOLD > MAN], loyal to the skald, has fallen.

notes and context

In Skm (SnE), the helmingr is cited among stanzas that illustrate kennings for Óðinn (here, hrafnáss ‘raven-god’).

[2-3]: Earlier eds have taken skaldi (n. dat. sg.) ‘the skald’ with hniginn ‘fallen’ (p. p. of hníga ‘fall (in battle), pass away, topple, bend down’), sometimes in the sense of ‘passed away from the skald’ (cf. Skj B: nu er manden død fra skjalden (mig) ‘now the man has passed away from the skald (me)’; Clunies Ross 2005a, 61 ‘is departed from the poet’). However, neither hníga nor deyja ‘die’ is attested with a dat. object in the sense of ‘pass away from sby, leave sby behind’. Kock (NN §2463E) compares hníga e-m with falla e-m which he translates as falla för ngns hand ‘fall by sby’s hand’, which would mean that Hofgarða-Refr had killed Gizurr. Faulkes (SnE 1998, II, 315) entertains both of these possibilities. In the present edn, skaldi is taken as a dat. with the adj. hollr ‘loyal, faithful, well-disposed towards sby’, which is regularly construed with the dat. (Fritzner: hollr 1). The sense is that the skald (Hofgarða-Refr) laments the fact that the man (Gizurr) who was loyal to him and taught him the art of skaldic composition has fallen in battle.

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, 2. Et digt om Gizurr Gullbrárskáld 2: AI, 319, BI, 295, Skald I, 150, NN §§2070D, 2338, 2463E; SnE 1848-87, I, 232-3, II, 302, 518, III, 2, SnE 1931, 88, SnE 1998, I, 7.

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