Cookies on our website

We use cookies on this website, mainly to provide a secure browsing experience but also to collect statistics on how the website is used. You can find out more about the cookies we set, the information we store and how we use it on the cookies page.

Continue

skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Menu Search

SnSt Lv 7III

Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Lausavísur 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. 374.

Snorri SturlusonLausavísur
67

introduction

The helmingr (SnSt Lv 7), edited by Kari Ellen Gade, is transmitted only in ms. W towards the end of Orms-Eddu-brot (Skm, SnE) in a section that illustrates kennings for women’s hair. It is not recorded in the corresponding sections that were copied from W in the X and Y versions of LaufE (LaufE 1979, 277-8, 355-6) and in RE 1665(Ff3). The half-stanza is attributed to Snorri Sturluson, but nothing is known about the circumstances surrounding its composition, nor can any certain date be assigned to it.

text and translation

Komk inn, þars sat svanni
svanna vænstr í ranni;
Gerðr leysti sú svarðar
svarðakr raðar garða.

Komk inn, þars sat svanni, vænstr svanna, í ranni; {sú Gerðr {garða {raðar svarðar}}} leysti {svarðakr}.
 
‘I came in where a woman, the most beautiful of women, sat inside the hall; that Gerðr <goddess> of the fences of the ridge of the scalp [HEAD > HEADBANDS > WOMAN] was loosening her scalp-field [HAIR].

notes and context

The helmingr illustrates kennings for women’s hair in which the base-words are words for ‘head’, ‘parting of the hair’, ‘cheek’, ‘neck’, ‘scalp’ or ‘forehead’ and the determinants are words for ‘forest’, ‘field’, ‘grass’ or ‘trees’.

The metre is dunhent ‘echoing-rhymed’, which is also attested in RvHbreiðm Hl 65-6 and in SnSt Ht 24 (see Notes there).

readings

sources

Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.

editions and texts

Skj: Snorri Sturluson, 4. Lausavísur 7: AII, 79, BII, 90, Skald II, 49, NN §2193; SnE 1848-87, II, 500, III, 182.

Close

Log in

This service is only available to members of the relevant projects, and to purchasers of the skaldic volumes published by Brepols.
This service uses cookies. By logging in you agree to the use of cookies on your browser.

Close

Stanza/chapter/text segment

Use the buttons at the top of the page to navigate between stanzas in a poem.

Information tab

Interactive tab

The text and translation are given here, with buttons to toggle whether the text is shown in the verse order or prose word order. Clicking on indiviudal words gives dictionary links, variant readings, kennings and notes, where relevant.

Full text tab

This is the text of the edition in a similar format to how the edition appears in the printed volumes.

Chapter/text segment

This view is also used for chapters and other text segments. Not all the headings shown are relevant to such sections.