RvHbreiðm Hl 19^III

Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Rǫgnvaldr jarl and Hallr Þórarinsson, Háttalykill 19’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1027.

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

The heading is inn grænlenzki háttr (‘hin Grænlanske hottr’) ‘the verse-form from Greenland’ (cf. SnSt Ht 71). Structurally this metre is like fornyrðislag, but the even lines have internal rhymes (aðalhending in positions 1 and 3) on two disyllabic words that end in the same syllable. The metre is otherwise attested only in Anon (TGT) 14, 23.

In Ht 71, the odd lines also have internal rhymes (skothending; see l. 5 above). — The stanza eulogises Sigurðr ormr-í-auga ‘Snake-in-the-Eyes’, another of Ragnarr loðbrók’s sons (see sts 11-18 above). Sigurðr had spots in his eyes, which caused them to resemble the eyes of a snake (see Saxo 2005, I, 9, 4, 12, pp. 592-3; ÍF 35, 85-6 n. 8). On Sigurðr, see also Rloð Lv 4^VIII (Ragn 8). — [7-8]: The meaning of ‘girdr (or ‘girdur’) en’ in l. 7 is unclear (gyrðr, en ‘girdled, but’ (?)). In papp25ˣ the words are given with dots beneath each letter, which indicates that Rugman was uncertain about the transcription. As it stands in the mss, the line is unmetrical with one syllable too many, and there is no alliteration between ll. 7 and 8. (a) In the present edn, these words have been emended to sókn (f. acc. sg.) ‘attack’, qualified by skarpa, snarpa (f. acc. sg.) ‘swift, sharp’ (l. 8) as the object of gerði ‘made’ in a Type E-line. (b) Skj B and Skald render ll. 7-8 as follows: gumi gœddi sá | garpa snarpa ‘that man advanced the swift warriors’. That reading retains only two of the original words in the lines. (c) As Jón Helgason (Hl 1941) points out, this mistranscribed part of l. 7 most likely contained a word meaning ‘battle’. However, his suggestions sverðhríð ‘sword-storm’ or snerru ‘battle’ are incompatible with the metre, which requires only one metrical position.