Ólsv Kristdr 2^III

Tungl gaft, tryggvinr engla,
talið dœgr megin lœgis,
— fekk hlýrnir stað stjǫrnum —
sterkr, ok aldir merkja.

{Sterkr tryggvinr engla}, gaft tungl merkja talið dœgr, megin lœgis ok aldir; hlýrnir fekk stjǫrnum stað.

{Powerful faithful friend of angels} [= God], you gave celestial bodies to mark the number of days and nights, the power of the sea and the ages; the sky found a place for the stars.

Mss: 743ˣ(87r), 2368ˣ(114) (LaufE)

Readings: [1] gaft: gaf 2368ˣ;    ‑vinr: ‘‑umur’ 2368ˣ    [2] megin: megir both

Editions: Skj AII, 85, Skj BII, 96, Skald II, 52, NN §1333; SnE 1848-87, II, 629, III, 193, LaufE 1979, 372-3.

Context: As st. 1 above.

Notes: [All]: Given the theme of creation, the referent of the kenning tryggvinr engla ‘faithful friend of angels’ (l. 1) must be ‘God’ rather than ‘Christ’. The content of the stanza is very reminiscent of the creation of the world according to Vsp (sts 5-6), especially st. 6/5-10 (NK 2): nótt oc niðiom | nǫfn um gáfo, | morgin héto | oc miðian dag, | undorn oc aptan, | árom at telia ‘[they] gave names to the night and the waning moon, they named the morning and the middle of the day, the afternoon and the evening, so as to keep count of the years’. See also Vafþr 22-5. Ártali ‘year-counter’ is also a heiti for ‘moon’ (see Þul Tungls l. 6, Alv 14/6 and Skm, SnE 1998, I, 85). See also Gen. I.14. — [2] dœgr ‘days and nights’: Dœgr could mean the twelve-hour period of the day (or night) as well as the full twenty-four hours (see Introduction to Þul Dœgra). — [2] megin lœgis ‘the power of the sea’: Both mss have ‘meger’, i.e. megir m. nom. pl. ‘sons’, which makes no sense syntactically. The reading was undoubtedly introduced by the compiler of this section of LaufE (or its exemplar), based on the assumption that megir lœgis ‘sons of the sea’ was a kenning for ‘men’ (cf. Context to st. 1 above). The emendation is in keeping with earlier eds. Megin ‘power’ also occurs in Vsp 5/9-10 (NK 2): máni þat né vissi, | hvat hann megins átti ‘the moon did not know what power it had’. It is not immediately clear what the creation of celestial bodies had to do with the power of the sea, but it probably refers to high and low tide, phenomena caused by the gravitational forces of the heavenly bodies and the earth’s rotation (see Clunies Ross and Gade 2012, 202). — [3] hlýrnir fekk stjǫrnum stað ‘the sky found a place for the stars’: Cf. Vsp 5/7-8 (NK 2): stiǫrnor þat né visso, | hvar þær staði átto ‘the stars did not know where they should be placed’. For hlýrnir as a heiti for ‘sky, heaven’, see Note to Þul Himins I l. 13. — [4] merkja ‘to mark’: Merkja is taken here (with SnE 1848-87 and Skj B) as a verb (‘mark’). Kock (NN §1333) treats this as a noun ‘of the stars’, gen. pl., qualifying aldir (aldir merkja ‘the ages of the stars’). According to that interpretation, the first clause would be construed as gaft tungl, talið dœgr, megin lœgis, aldir merkja ‘you gave celestial bodies, the number of days and nights, the power of the sea, the ages of the stars’. Aside from the fact that it is difficult to see what ‘(you gave) the ages of the stars’ would mean, it is out of keeping with Old Norse cosmology, which was very much preoccupied with computation (see Note to [All] above, as well as Clunies Ross and Gade 2012).

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. LaufE 1979 = Faulkes, Anthony, ed. 1979. Edda Magnúsar Ólafssonar (Laufás Edda). RSÁM 13. Vol. I of Two Versions of Snorra Edda from the 17th Century. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1977-9.
7. NK = Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn (1899), eds. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. 2 vols. I: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Winter.
8. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
9. Internal references
10. (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 25 April 2024)
11. Not published: do not cite ()
12. Not published: do not cite ()
13. Not published: do not cite ()
14. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Himins heiti I’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 905. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3217> (accessed 25 April 2024)
15. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Tungls heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 911. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3230> (accessed 25 April 2024)
16. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Dœgra heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 914. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3231> (accessed 25 April 2024)
17. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Laufás Edda’ 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=10928> (accessed 25 April 2024)