Þhorn Harkv 23^I

‘At hundi elskar Andaðr         ok heimsku drýgir
eyrnalausum         ok jǫfur hlœgir.
Hinir eru ok aðrir,         es of eld skulu
        brennanda spôn bera;
logǫndum húfum         hafa sér und linda drepit
        hældræpir halir.’

‘Andaðr elskar at eyrnalausum hundi ok drýgir heimsku ok hlœgir jǫfur. Hinir eru ok aðrir, es skulu bera brennanda spôn of eld; hældræpir halir hafa drepit logǫndum húfum und linda sér.’

‘Andaðr fondles an earless dog, and he plays the fool and makes the king laugh. There are also others whose practice is to pass a burning wood-chip across a fire; those men who deserve kicking have tucked blazing caps under their belts.’

Mss: 51ˣ(3r-v), FskBˣ(4r), 302ˣ(5v-6r), FskAˣ(11-12), 52ˣ(5r), 301ˣ(4r-v) (Fsk)

Readings: [8] logǫndum: ‘loghandum’ 301ˣ    [9] sér: so FskBˣ, FskAˣ, 52ˣ, 301ˣ, þeir with sér in margin 51ˣ, 302ˣ    [10] ‑dræpir: ‘‑dræipir’ 51ˣ, FskBˣ, 302ˣ

Editions: Skj AI, 28-9, Skj BI, 25, Skald I, 16, NN §§1506, 2410; Fsk 1902-3, 12, ÍF 29, 64 (ch. 2); Möbius 1860, 231, Jón Helgason 1946, 141, Jón Helgason 1968, 21.

Context: As for st. 22.

Notes: [All]: The raven replies. — [1] elskar at ‘fondles’: The suggestion of Kershaw (1922, 87, supported by Sigfús Blöndal 1927-8, 60 n. 1 and Jón Helgason 1946, 141). Skj B suggests viser omhu for ‘is solicitous about’. Jugglers with performing dogs are mentioned in Sverris saga (ÍF 30, 130-2), where are cited Máni Lv 2-3^II, two contemptuous lausavísur about such performers. — [2] drýgir heimsku ‘he plays the fool’: Lit. ‘practises folly’.  — [5-10]: Here the metre changes from málaháttr to ljóðaháttr. — [7] spôn ‘wood-chip’: The exact nature of the entertainment is disputed. Kock (NN §1506) sees here an allusion to antics of the sort that he himself apparently had seen fire-eaters engage in: they would pass wood-shavings through (of) flames without setting them on fire (and see following Note). Accordingly, he rejects the collocation brennanda spôn ‘burning wood-shaving’ of Skj B (and here) and instead construes brennanda with eld ‘fire’. But the resulting syntax is uncharacteristic of the poem (Jón Helgason 1946, 141). Sigfús Blöndal (1927-8) would emend to brennandi spǫnn ‘burning pails’, in reference to bowls of scalding hot wine carried round the fire or (less convincingly in the Viking Age) to liquor flambé . — [8] logǫndum húfum ‘blazing caps’: As with the wood-chip in l. 7 (see Note), there have been several attempts to imagine the nature of the entertainment, often involving emendation of the text. Larsen (1943-6, II, 248) understands the performers to be placing blazing caps on their bare stomachs. CPB I, 258 would read logǫndum lúfum ‘flaming shock-locks’. Olsen (1915) suggests logǫndum stúfum ‘burning stumps’ (in reference to phallic exhibitionism, the ‘burning’ being metaphorical); and Holtsmark (1950, 247) recommends the same emendation, arguing that the ‘stumps’ are blazing torches that the entertainers wield ‘under the belt’ in a phallic dance. Sigfús Blöndal (1927-8) proposes lafandum húfum ‘dangling caps’, in reference to fools’ caps with very long peaks or tassels. Lindquist (1929, 8-9) emends to lotrǫndum, which he takes to mean ‘dangling’. Kock (NN §2410) argues that WGmc *log- ‘dangle’ was borrowed and misconstrued. — [10] hældræpir ‘who deserve kicking’: Lit. ‘heel-strikable, worthy to be struck with the heel’. Sigfús Blöndal (1927-8) suggests a pun on the alternate meaning ‘reaching to the heels’ in conjunction with his proposal that the caps have comically long peaks or tassels. Flo (1902, 69) takes the word to mean ‘one who hops or dances on his heels’ and similarly Kershaw (1922, 87) translates ‘skipping’. ÍF 29, 64 adopts the reading heldræpir ‘who may be dispatched to death/the realm of the dead’ in the FskA transcripts and interprets it to mean réttdræpir, i.e. ‘who may be killed without legal offence’ (similarly Magerøy 1963, 86). This analysis was first proposed by Benedikt Gröndal, as reported by Sueti (1884, 32-3).

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. CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
6. Fsk 1902-3 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1902-3. Fagrskinna: Nóregs kononga tal. SUGNL 30. Copenhagen: Møller.
7. Flo, Rasmus J., trans. 1902. Gamle skaldar og kvad. Oslo: [n. p.]. First printed 1901 in SoS 7, 145-69, 261-78, 309-26, 389-405, 468-82.
8. ÍF 29 = Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum; Fagrskinna—Nóregs konungatal. Ed. Bjarni Einarsson. 1985.
9. ÍF 30 = Sverris saga. Ed. Þorleifur Hauksson. 2007.
10. Möbius, Theodor. 1860. Edda Sæmundar hins fróða. Mit einem Anhang bisher ungedruckter Gedichte. Leipzig: Hinrichs.
11. Kershaw, Nora, ed. and trans. 1922. Anglo-Saxon and Norse Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12. Lindquist, Ivar. 1929. Norröna lovkväden från 800 och 900 talen. I: Förslag till restituerad täxt jämte översättning. Lund: Gleerup.
13. Jón Helgason, ed. 1968. Skjaldevers. 3rd edn. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
14. Holtsmark, Anne. 1950. ‘Leik og skjemt’. In Andersen 1950, 236-60.
15. Jón Helgason. 1946. ‘Haraldskvæði’. Tímarit Máls og menningar, 131-46.
16. Magerøy, Hallvard, trans. 1963. ‘Haraldskvedet’. In Haugen 1994, 82-6.
17. Olsen, Magnus. 1915. ‘Til Haraldskvæði strofe 23’. ANF 31, 381-2.
18. Sueti, Friedrich. 1884. Ueber die auf den König Haraldr Hárfagri bezüglichen Gedichtfragmente in der norwegischen Königschronik Fagrskinna. Leipzig: August Press.
19. Larsen, Martin, trans. 1943-6. Den ældre edda og eddica minora. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
20. Sigfús Blöndal. 1927-8. ‘Some Remarks on the Haraldskvæði 23’. APS 2, 59-65. Rpt. as ‘Nokkrar athugasemdir við Haraldskvæði’. Skírnir 103 (1929), 129-38.
21. Internal references
22. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Sverris saga’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=2> (accessed 18 April 2024)
23. Not published: do not cite (Run^VI)
24. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2009, ‘Máni, Lausavísur 2’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 642-3.