Þjóð Haustl 10^III

Urðut bjartra borða
byggvendr at þat hryggvir:
þá vas Ið- með jǫtnum
-unnr nýkomin sunnan.
Gerðusk allar áttir
Ingvi-Freys at þingi
(váru heldr) ok hárar
(hamljót regin) gamlar,

{Byggvendr bjartra borða} urðut hryggvir at þat: þá vas Iðunnr með jǫtnum nýkomin sunnan. {Allar áttir Ingvi-Freys} gerðusk gamlar ok hárar at þingi – regin váru heldr hamljót –,

{The inhabitants of the bright hillsides} [GIANTS] were not sad after that: then Iðunn was among the giants, newly arrived from the south. {All the kin of Ingvi-Freyr} [GODS] became old and grey at the assembly – the divine powers were quite ugly of form –,

Mss: R(25v), Tˣ(26v), W(55) (SnE)

Readings: [1] Urðut: ‘Vrdott’ Tˣ;    bjartra: brattra W;    borða: so all others, ‘b[…]rþa’ R    [2] byggvendr: ‘byggendr’ Tˣ, W;    hryggvir: hryggir Tˣ, W    [4] unnr: uðr R, Tˣ, uðr with ‘unnr’ written above in a later hand W;    nýkomin: so W, nýkominn R, Tˣ    [6] Ingvi‑ (‘inge’): ‘ing[…]’ W;    at: ‘[…]’ W

Editions: Skj AI, 18, Skj BI, 16, Skald I, 10, NN §§2504, 3039; SnE 1848-87, I, 312-13, III, 45, SnE 1931, 112, SnE 1998, I, 32.

Context: As for st. 1.

Notes: [All]: The prose narrative of Skm (SnE 1998, I, 1-2) tells that, after the trio of gods had returned to Ásgarðr, at an appointed time, Loki lured Iðunn into a forest outside Ásgarðr, and there Þjazi, once again in eagle form, snatched her up and abducted her to his home in Þrymheimr. The gods soon began to show signs of the absence of her youth-preserving apples, and became grey and old (hárir ok gamlir, cf. ll. 7, 8). They held an assembly (þing) to discover who had last seen Iðunn. — [1-2] byggvendr bjartra borða ‘the inhabitants of the bright hillsides [GIANTS]’: Skj B, LP: borð 5 and Skald emend the mss’ borða to barða, gen. pl. of barð ‘beard, prow of a ship, edge, slope of a hill’ to make sense of a kenning which must, on account of the context, refer to giants, characteristically dwellers in rocks or mountains. Although the first vowel in R is obscured by a blot, all mss are likely to have read borða, and it is possible to keep the mss’ reading, understanding borð in the sense ‘edge, side, slope’ (Fritzner: borð 2; Marold 1983, 165 n. 370). SnE 1998, II, 254 assumes a sense ‘inhabitants of (those who dwell on, stand on) bright shields, giants’. Borð is here understood to mean ‘shield-board’ and a reference is assumed to the myth of the giant Hrungnir, who stood on his stone shield when facing the god Þórr in single combat. However, there is no indication that this property of Hrungnir could be generalised to all giants in the kenning system. Both Skj B and Skald prefer W’s brattra ‘steep’ over R, Tˣ’s bjartra, and that reading is equally good. — [3, 4] Iðunnr ‘Iðunn’: The name of a goddess, wife of Bragi (see also Note to Þul Ásynja I 1/7). The two parts of her name (cf. AEW: Iðunn) are separated by tmesis, tellingly punctuated by the phrase með jǫtnum ‘among the giants’. The second element is given as the later form ‘uðr’ in all mss, though a later scribe has written ‘unnr’ above the line in W. The form in ‑unnr must have been original here, as it provides aðalhending with sunn-. — [4] sunnan ‘from the south’: Þjóðólfr imagines Ásgarðr to have been in the south of the mythic world, and Jǫtunheimar probably in the north; cf. Lindow (1994a). — [5-6, 7, 8]: The main clause in these lines (which is punctuated by an intercalary in ll. 7, 8) is unusually completed in the following stanza, by the unz ‘until’ clause of st. 11/1-4. The punctuation of these two helmingar indicates the continuity of sense between them. — [5] gerðusk ‘became’: The pl. subject is allar áttir Ingvi-Freys ‘all the kin of Ingvi-Freyr [GODS]’ (ll. 5-6) and the complement gamlar ok hárar ‘old and grey’ (ll. 7, 8). Another possibility is to understand gerðusk at þingi in the sense ‘[all the kin of Ingvi-Freyr, old and grey,] set about/organised an assembly’. As it stands, l. 5 lacks a hending and this prompted Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) to emend to gættusk ‘they paid attention, deliberated’ and Kock (Skald; NN §3039) to emend to mœttusk ‘they met’. There is no ms. support for either emendation. — [6] Ingvi-Freys ‘of Ingvi-Freyr’: Name for the god Freyr. The various extant forms of the first element derive from the Proto-Scandinavian form *ingwaz (Gmc *Ingwiafraujaz ‘Lord of the Ingvaeones’; cf. AEW: Ingi 1, Yngvi). In Old Norse the presence of ‑w- caused w-umlaut to Yngvi- (ANG §82.4); here, however, Ing- is secured by the internal rhyme with þing- (a very early example of such a change), but ‑v- has been restored (from the mss’ ‘ing’) in line with Old Norse prose sources, where ‑v- is still preserved.

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. SnE 1848-87 = Snorri Sturluson. 1848-87. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Edda Snorronis Sturlaei. Ed. Jón Sigurðsson et al. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Legatum Arnamagnaeanum. Rpt. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1966.
4. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
6. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
10. SnE 1931 = Snorri Sturluson. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
11. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
12. Marold, Edith. 1983. Kenningkunst: Ein Beitrag zu einer Poetik der Skaldendichtung. Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker, new ser. 80. Berlin: de Gruyter.
13. Lindow, John. 1994a. ‘The Social Semantics of Cardinal Directions in Medieval Scandinavia’. Mankind Quarterly 34, 209-24.
14. Internal references
15. (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=112> (accessed 30 April 2024)
16. Not published: do not cite (Anon (X) Ing^V (Hallfr))