Ótt Knútdr 7^I

Fjǫrlausa hykk Frísi,
friðskerðir, þik gerðu,
— brauzt með byggðu setri
Brandfurðu þar — randa.
Játmundar hlaut undir
ættniðr gǫfugr hættar;
danskr herr skaut þá dǫrrum
drótt, es þú rakt flótta.

{Friðskerðir randa}, hykk þik gerðu Frísi fjǫrlausa; þar brauzt Brandfurðu með byggðu setri. {Gǫfugr ættniðr Játmundar} hlaut hættar undir; danskr herr skaut þá drótt dǫrrum, es þú rakt flótta.

{Peace-breaker of shields} [WARRIOR], I believe you made the Frisians lifeless; you destroyed Brentford there with its inhabited settlement. {The noble descendant of Eadmund} [= Edmund Ironside] received dangerous wounds; the Danish army then pierced the host with spears when you pursued the fleeing.

Mss: JÓ(20), 20dˣ(8r-v), 873ˣ(10r), 41ˣ(8r) (Knýtl)

Readings: [1] hykk: hyr 20dˣ    [2] þik: þeir with þér in margin JÓ, 873ˣ, þeir 20dˣ, 41ˣ    [4] þar: þér with þeir in margin JÓ, 873ˣ, þér 20dˣ, 41ˣ    [5] hlaut: laut all    [6] hættar: hættir all    [8] es: enn 41ˣ;    rakt: ‘rakzt’ 873ˣ

Editions: Skj AI, 297, Skj BI, 274, Skald I, 140; Fms 11, 194, Fms 12, 248-9, SHI 11, 183, Knýtl 1919-25, 43, ÍF 35, 112 (ch. 12).

Context: The stanza is quoted after a brief account of Knútr’s attack on Brandfurða (Brentford).

Notes: [1-4]: Some emendation is necessary here. The ms. reading þeir in l. 2 suggests that scribes interpreted gerðu as a pret. pl., whereas modern eds instead take it as a past inf. All eds emend þeir in l. 2 and þér in l. 4 to þar ‘there’ and þik ‘you’, but differ as to which should be which. Skj B and Skald prefer to emend þeir to þar and þér to þik, while Knýtl 1919-25 and ÍF 35 emend þeir to þik and þér to þar. The latter seems preferable on account of a more compact syntax, and is adopted here, though þar may seem a little redundant alongside Brandfurðu. — [1] Frísi ‘the Frisians’: Either Frísir is here being used as a somewhat loose, alliteratively driven term for the English, or else this may be a reference to the Frisian population in late Anglo-Saxon London, caught up in the fighting (see Poole 1987, 274). — [2, 4] friðskerðir randa ‘peace-breaker of shields [WARRIOR]’: I. e. ‘destroyer of the well-being of shields’. This is also assumed by previous eds; cf. other kennings referring to a man as a destroyer or damager of shields (Meissner 311). LP: friðskerðir offers the parallel friðskerðir hjǫrva ‘peace-breaker of swords’ in Hfr Lv 12/7, 8^V (Hallfr 15; see also Meissner 301), though only one ms. reads frið- there while the majority form is fúr- ‘fire’. (b) A more straightforward kenning friðskerðir ‘peace-breaker’ and a syntactic arrangement into couplets as seen elsewhere in the poem are obtained if randa ‘of shields’ is emended to an instr. dat. sg. rǫndu (cf. ANG §416.2) meaning ‘by/with the shield’ and comparable with sverði ‘by/with the sword’ in st. 9/6. The parallel und skildi ‘under the shield’ in st. 9/1 indicates that Óttarr invokes shields metonymically to indicate aggressive action, not simply defensive. Under either interpretation, the density of allusions to shields in this poem is likely to be a play on Knútr’s dynastic status as a Skjǫldungr: see further Frank (1994b, 111-12). — [4] Brandfurðu ‘Brentford’: In Middlesex (OE Bregentford), scene of a major battle in 1016 (see ASC s. a.). — [6-7] ættniðr Játmundar ‘the descendant of Eadmund [= Eadmund Ironside]’: The person referred to by the kenning as a whole is (somewhat confusingly) Eadmund Ironside, though English sources do not record Eadmund as suffering wounds in a battle near Brentford (if the two helmingar refer to the same event). But there are two candidates for the Eadmund who is his ancestor, and determinant of the kenning: the king of East Anglia martyred by vikings in 869, and the king of England from 939-46. Both are plausible: Knútr’s devotion to the cult of S. Eadmund (see Lawson 1993, 142-3) might suggest it is the saint who is being invoked, while Óttarr’s allusion to Eadgar in st. 3/6 indicates that he was familiar with the royal house of Wessex. Eadmund Ironside was indeed the descendant of the tenth-century king, but not of the ninth-century martyr; however, kinship need not be literal in honorific locutions such as this. The same kenning occurs in Ótt Hfl 13/6, 8 as niðja Játmundar ‘kinsman of Eadmund’, but there refers to Æthelred. — [6] hættar ‘dangerous’: Emendation seems necessary to make the adj. agree grammatically with undir (f. acc. pl.) ‘wounds’ and is adopted in all eds.

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. Fms = Sveinbjörn Egilsson et al., eds. 1825-37. Fornmanna sögur eptir gömlum handritum útgefnar að tilhlutun hins norræna fornfræða fèlags. 12 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
4. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. ÍF 35 = Danakonunga sǫgur. Ed. Bjarni Guðnason. 1982.
9. Poole, Russell. 1987. ‘Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History: Some Aspects of the Period 1009-1016’. Speculum 62, 265-98.
10. ASC [Anglo-Saxon Chronicle] = Plummer, Charles and John Earle, eds. 1892-9. Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1952.
11. SHI = Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1828-46. Scripta historica islandorum de rebus gestis veterum borealium, latine reddita et apparatu critico instructa, curante Societate regia antiquariorum septentrionalium. 12 vols. Copenhagen: Popp etc. and London: John & Arthur Arch.
12. Knýtl 1919-25 = Petersens, Carl af and Emil Olsen, eds. 1919-25. Sǫgur danakonunga. 1: Sǫgubrot af fornkonungum. 2: Knýtlinga saga. SUGNL 66. Copenhagen: SUGNL.
13. Frank, Roberta. 1994b. ‘King Cnut in the Verse of his Skalds’. In Rumble 1994, 106-24.
14. Lawson, M. K. 1993. Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century. London: Longman.
15. Internal references
16. Diana Whaley (ed.) 2022, ‘Hallfreðar saga 15 (Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld Óttarsson, Lausavísur 12)’ 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. 892.
17. Matthew Townend (ed.) 2012, ‘Óttarr svarti, Hǫfuðlausn 13’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 757.