Ormr Woman 5^III

Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Ormr Steinþórsson, Poem about a woman 5’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 329.

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

In Skm (SnE) the stanza occurs in a series of citations exemplifying kennings for ‘poetry’.

The whole of the fragment is an at-clause; the remainder of the sentence is not extant (SnE 1998, I, 161). The speaker evidently expresses reluctance to be separated from the woman. In the Snæfríðr story, Haraldr is so infatuated with Snæfríðr that he never leaves her side so long as she lives and sits by her body for three years after she has died (Ágr, ÍF 29, 6; Hkr, ÍF 26, 126; Flat 1860-8, I, 582). Nothing is said, however, as to his wishes regarding the disposition of his own body after his death. This stanza and Hhárf Snædr 1^I have in common the use of the words rekkr ‘man’ (l. 3) and Dvalinn (l. 4). — [3-4]: It is not fully clear how to construe the potential kenning elements in these two lines. (a) This edn follows Kock (NN §898), who construes dauðs ‘of the dead’ (l. 3) as an adj. describing Dvalins in l. 4 (cf. SnE 1998), yielding a kenning of the ‘drink of the dwarfs’ = ‘poetry’ type. When Dvalinn is described as ‘dead’, the poet may be influenced by a linkage in the mythology between dwarfs and the dead (see Reichborn-Kjennerud 1934a, 282; Holtsmark 1989, 77). (b) Earlier solutions hinged on taking dauðs outside the parenthesis, though this would make for aberrant word order by skaldic norms. In CPB II, 322 dauðs is apparently combined with sal ‘hall’ (l. 4) to yield the meaning ‘grave’, which in and of itself is contextually superior to ‘hall’ (since the speaker would more naturally wish for his and the woman’s body to be placed in a common grave rather than in one hall) but cannot be sustained in terms of kenning usage and word order. (c) In Skj B, here following SnE 1848-87, III, it is instead combined with mitt, with translation mit afsjælede legeme ‘my dead body’, but the syntax of this is unclear and the problem of word order persists. (d) If Dvalins could instead be construed with sal the result would be a kenning for ‘stone’ or ‘mountain’, since the dwarfs characteristically dwell there (see Note to st. 6/2 below). The legend of king Sveigðir shows that human beings could be envisaged as disappearing into such ‘stones’ never to reappear (see Þjóð Yt 2^I Note to [All]), as if into the grave, which would yield an appropriate wish on the part of the speaker. But that, unless we presuppose apo koinou of Dvalins between the parenthesis and the subordinate clause, would entail accepting drykk dauðs ‘drink of a dead [one]’ as a kenning for ‘poetry’. Such a combination would be unparalleled in kenning usage. On the other hand, given the equally aberrant kenning kerlaug drauga ‘the cup-liquid of the undead [POETRY]’ in Hhárf Snædr 1/4^I and the occurrence of Dvalins in a second unparalleled kenning, greip Dvalins ‘the grasp of Dvalinn <dwarf> [MOUTH]’, in Hhárf Snædr 1/5^I, it could be that the original Snæfríðardrápa contained much play upon the motifs of the dead, the undead and dwarfs, incorporating some free handling of traditional kenning templates. To this extent, the possibility of a poetry-kenning drykk dauðs should be kept in consideration. — [3-4]: The speaker of the parenthesis is the poet rather than the hero of the inset narrative, who speaks the rest of the helmingr.