HSt Frag 5^III

Ek hef óðar lokri,
ǫlstafna, þér skafna,
væn mǫrk, — skala verki
vandr — stefknarrar branda.

Ek hef skafna þér {branda {stefknarrar}} {lokri óðar}, {væn mǫrk {ǫlstafna}}; verki skala vandr.

I have smoothed {the bows {of the refrain-ship}} [DRÁPA > UPPHAF] for you {with the plane of poetry} [TONGUE], {beautiful forest {of ale-prows}} [DRINKING HORNS > WOMAN]; the poem should not be difficult.

Mss: R(33r), Tˣ(34v), W(76), U(32r), A(10v), C(4v) (SnE)

Readings: [1] hef: ‘[…]’ U;    óðar lokri: ‘o[…]’ U    [2] ǫl‑: ‘au‑’ Tˣ, auð‑ W;    ‑stafna: ‘sta(f)na’(?) U;    þér: bil A;    skafna: ‘skafn(a)’(?) U    [3] væn: so all others, ‘vetz’ R;    verki: verki corrected from merki Tˣ, verka C    [4] vandr: ‘[…]ndir’ U;    ‑knarrar: so Tˣ, W, A, C, ‘‑knarrarar’ R, ‘[…]’ U;    branda: ‘[…]randa’ U

Editions: Skj AI, 553, Skj BI, 535, Skald I, 260, NN §§447A, 1188, 1853E; SnE 1848-87, I, 410-11, II, 324, 435, 584, III, 73, SnE 1931, 146, SnE 1998, I, 63.

Context: This helmingr is cited in Skm (SnE) to exemplify a woman-kenning with mǫrk ‘forest’ as its base-word.

Notes: [All]: In this stanza, Hallar-Steinn compares the activity of composing poetry to that of a ship-builder smoothing wood with a plane; the poem (drápa) is a ship (stefknǫrr ‘refrain-ship’) and the beginning of the poem (upphaf) the bow(s) (brandar) of a ship (Clunies Ross 2005a, 38). Cf. also RvHbreiðm Hl 3/3, where framstafn ‘the prow’ refers to the beginning of the poem (see Kreutzer 1977, 255-7 on comparison of poems to ships in skaldic poetry, as well as Clunies Ross 2005a, 87). — [1] ek hef ‘I have’: The older form ek hef has been adopted here in place of the later ek hefi used in the mss (cf. ANG §532.6). — [1] lokri óðar ‘with the plane of poetry [TONGUE]’: In accordance with the comparison of composing poetry with building a ship, the tongue as the tool of poetry is paraphrased by the nýgerving ‘plane of poetry’. A similar kenning, ómunlokri ‘with the voice-plane’, is found in Egill Arkv 15/2^V (Eg 111); see Note to l. 2 there. — [2] þér ‘for you’: This edn adopts þér (so mss R, Tˣ, U, W, C) following the interpretation of Jón Þorkelsson (1890, 5-6). Finnur Jónsson (Skj B), followed by all subsequent eds, opted for the A variant Bil (the name of a goddess). Hence his interpretation contains two woman-kennings, Bil ǫlstafna ‘Bil <goddess> of ale-prows’ and væn mǫrk skála ‘beautiful forest of bowls’ (for skála, see Note to ll. 3-4 below). Finnur Jónsson takes Bil ǫlstafna as dat. (‘for the woman’) and væn mǫrk skála as a form of address. That interpretation is highly unlikely, because the woman is then addressed directly while at the same time being referred to in the third person in the same helmingr. Kock (NN §§1188, 1853) also reads Bil but regards both woman-kennings as nom. and as parallel. The examples given in NN §1853, however, actually show that two kennings seldom form such parallelisms – instead, one of the two constituents of a parallelism is a personal name. — [2, 3] mǫrk ǫlstafna ‘forest of ale-prows [DRINKING HORNS > WOMAN]’: Meissner (Meissner 410) holds that a collective noun meaning ‘forest’, in place of a tree-name, could be used as the base-word in a woman-kenning. However, mǫrk ‘forest’ could also be interpreted as a variation of the base-word ‘land’, which is also frequently found in woman-kennings (NN §447A). ‘Prows’ here is to be understood as pars pro toto for ‘ship’ (Meissner 434), and ‘ale-ships’ is a kenning for ‘drinking horns’ (cf. ǫlstafns ‘of the ale-prow’ in KormǪ Lv 18/6^V (Korm 19)). — [3-4] verki skala vandr ‘the poem should not be difficult’: This edn takes the mss’ ‘skala’ as skala, the finite verb skal ‘shall, will, must’ plus the negative suffix ‑a in an intercalated clause (verki skala vandr ‘the poem should not be difficult’; cf. Jón Þorkelsson 1890, 5-6). Finnur Jónsson (Skj B), followed by all other eds, interpreted ‘skala’ as the noun skála f. gen. pl. ‘of bowls’ and joined it with mǫrk ‘forest’ to form the woman-kenning mǫrk skála ‘forest of bowls [WOMAN]’. In eds which regard skála as the determinant in a woman-kenning, verki (verka ms. C) is interpreted differently in syntactical terms. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) and Kock (Skald) choose the C variant verka and regard it as gen. governed by vandr ‘careful’ (l. 4), hence vandr verka is translated as ‘careful with the poem’ and regarded as an attribute to the subject ek ‘I’ (l. 1). Faulkes’s edn (SnE 1998, I, 63) has vandr verki ‘careful with the work’ (verki regarded as dat. of verk n.) in the same syntactical function (SnE 1998, II, 420). However, vandr is normally construed with prepositions like at, um or við ‘with, concerning sth.’ (Fritzner: vandr 1) and not with the gen. or dat. Furthermore, skála is unmetrical, because the disyllabic word in metrical positions 3-4 must have a short stem vowel in this type of odd line (A2k; cf. Gade 1995a, 117-18). — [4] branda stefknarrar ‘the bows of the refrain-ship [DRÁPA > UPPHAF]’: A drápa is a longer poem with one or more refrains (stef). Upphaf ‘beginning’ is usually the technical term for the first part of a drápa, its introductory section before the first stef ‘refrain’ (see Section 4.5 in the General Introduction in SkP I). — [4] branda ‘the bows’: Taken here as acc. pl. of brandr m. In skaldic poetry brandr is often used in the pl. (LP: 3. brandr) and as pars pro toto for ‘ship’ (Jesch 2001a, 147-8). Accordingly, in such cases it must have referred to some part of a ship, but it is not clear exactly which part (ibid.). According to Falk (1912, 44-5) brandr was a strip of wood running along the side of a ship’s prow, and Clunies Ross (2005a, 38 n. 16) assumes that brandar refer to a pair of these wooden strips and hence to the prow as a whole in the present stanza.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. SnE 1848-87 = Snorri Sturluson. 1848-87. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Edda Snorronis Sturlaei. Ed. Jón Sigurðsson et al. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Legatum Arnamagnaeanum. Rpt. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1966.
4. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
6. Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
7. 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.
8. Gade, Kari Ellen. 1995a. The Structure of Old Norse dróttkvætt Poetry. Islandica 49. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
9. Jesch, Judith. 2001a. Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse. Woodbridge: Boydell.
10. Kreutzer, Gert. 1977. Die Dichtungslehre der Skalden: Poetologische Terminologie und Autorenkommentare als Grundlage einer Gattungspoetik. 2nd edn. Hochschulschriften: Literaturwissenschaft 1. Meisenheim am Glan: Hain.
11. ANG = Noreen, Adolf. 1923. Altnordische Grammatik I: Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter Berücksichtigung des Urnordischen. 4th edn. Halle: Niemeyer. 1st edn. 1884. 5th unrev. edn. 1970. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
12. Falk, Hjalmar. 1912. Altnordisches Seewesen. Wörter und Sachen 4. Heidelberg: Winter.
13. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
14. Clunies Ross, Margaret. 2005a. A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
15. SnE 1931 = Snorri Sturluson. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
16. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
17. SkP I = Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Ed. Diana Whaley. 2012.
18. Jón Þorkelsson [J. Thorkelsson]. 1890. ‘Bemærkninger til enkelte vers i Snorra Edda’. ANF 6, 1-13.
19. Internal references
20. Edith Marold 2017, ‘Snorra Edda (Prologue, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál)’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols [check printed volume for citation].
21. (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 26 April 2024)
22. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2022, ‘Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar 111 (Egill Skallagrímsson, Arinbjarnarkviða 15)’ 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. 351.
23. Edith Marold (ed.) 2022, ‘Kormáks saga 19 (Kormákr Ǫgmundarson, Lausavísur 18)’ 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. 1056.
24. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Rǫgnvaldr jarl and Hallr Þórarinsson, Háttalykill 3’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1011.