RvHbreiðm Hl 41^III

Hringr brast; hjoggusk drengir;
hjalmr gnast; bitu malmar;
rǫnd skar; rekkar týndusk;
ruðusk sverð; hnigu ferðir.
Brandr reið; blœddu undir;
ben sullu; spjǫr gullu;
brast hjǫrr; brynjur lestusk;
beit skjómi; dreif sveita.

Hringr brast; drengir hjoggusk; hjalmr gnast; malmar bitu; skar rǫnd; rekkar týndusk; sverð ruðusk; ferðir hnigu. Brandr reið; undir blœddu; ben sullu; spjǫr gullu; hjǫrr brast; brynjur lestusk; skjómi beit; dreif sveita.

A sword crashed; warriors exchanged blows; a helmet cracked; weapons bit; a shield-rim was cut; warriors died; swords were reddened; companies fell. A blade swung; gashes bled; wounds swelled; spears resounded; a sword crashed; byrnies were damaged; a sword bit; there was a blizzard of blood.

Mss: papp25ˣ(34v), R683ˣ(129v)

Readings: [1] hjoggusk: so R683ˣ, ‘higgost’ papp25ˣ    [6] ben (‘bæn’): so R683ˣ, ‘bænn’ papp25ˣ    [8] sveita: so R683ˣ, ‘sveitta’ papp25ˣ

Editions: Skj AI, 520, Skj BI, 497, Skald I, 244, NN §2074; Hl 1941, 26, 70.

Context: The heading is sextánmælt (‘Sextanmælt’) ‘sixteen-times spoken’, a dróttkvætt stanza that contains sixteen clauses with two clauses per line (cf. SnSt Ht 9).

Notes: [All]: In the corpus of skaldic poetry, there are examples of dróttkvætt lines containing two independent clauses as here, but this syntactic peculiarity never occurs systematically as in this stanza and in Ht 9. Holtsmark (Hl 1941, 127) adduces Latin models. — [All]: Although it does not emerge from the present version, the hero commemorated must be Hringr Randvésson, King of Sweden, the nephew of Haraldr hilditǫnn ‘War-tooth’ and his opponent at the battle of Brávellir (see sts 39-40 above; ÍF 35, 58-78; Saxo 2005, I, 7, 10, 11, pp. 498-9, 7, 11, 12-13, 12, 2, pp. 506-9, 8, 1, 1-5, 1, pp. 510-23, 8, 7, 3-4, pp. 526-9). — [1] hringr ‘a sword’: Lit. ‘ring’. This is a heiti for ‘sword’ (Þul Sverða 7/7), where the ring in the hilt of a sword is used pars pro toto for ‘sword’. Hringr is also a pers. n. Rugmann added Gladius ‘Sword’ above the word in papp25ˣ, but translated hringr brast as Arcus sonuit ‘A bow resounded’ in R683ˣ. The verb brast ‘crashed’ was likely added at some point by someone who mistook the pers. n. Hringr for the common noun (perhaps caused by hjǫrr brast ‘a sword cracked’ in l. 7 below). The original reading cannot be recovered (Jón Helgason (Hl 1941) suggests Hringr vá ‘Hringr fought’). — [3] skar rǫnd ‘a shield-rim was cut’: Skera ‘cut’ (skar 3rd pers. sg. pret. indic.) used impersonally with rǫnd ‘shield-rim’ as the acc. object. — [4] sverð ruðusk ‘swords were reddened’: See st. 42/1. — [5-8]: Some of the clauses in this helmingr have close parallels in SnSt Ht 9/5-8: brandr reið ‘a sword was swung’ (l. 5), spjǫr gullu ‘spears resounded’ (l. 6), brynjur lestusk ‘byrnies were damaged’ (l. 7); cf. brandr gellr ‘the blade resounds’ (Ht 9/7), spjǫr braka ‘spears crash’ (Ht 9/8), brynjur sundrask ‘byrnies are sundered’ (Ht 9/7). — [6] ben sullu ‘wounds swelled’: Cf. sts 42/2 and 74/2. In the latter, ben is f. rather than n. — [8] dreif sveita (m. dat. sg.) ‘there was a blizzard of blood’: Lit. ‘it snowed with blood’. Skj B emends sveita ‘blood’ to sveiti (m. nom. sg.) in analogy with st. 40/4. However, drífa ‘snow’ can equally well be construed impersonally with a dat. object (see NN §2074).

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. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. ÍF 35 = Danakonunga sǫgur. Ed. Bjarni Guðnason. 1982.
6. Saxo 2005 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2005. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum / Danmarkshistorien. Trans. Peter Zeeberg. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Det danske sprog- og litteraturselskab & Gads forlag.
7. Hl 1941 = Jón Helgason and Anne Holtsmark, eds. 1941. Háttalykill enn forni. BA 1. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
8. Internal references
9. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Sverða heiti 7’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 802.
10. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 9’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1114.