Anon Líkn 35^VII

Bezt ert brú til ástar,
brýn þó at torgeng sýniz
gumna kind, af grundu
guðs þrælum fullsælum.
Færir ganga þik fyrðar
fimir í lið til himna;
hallaz af þér, er illrar
óvenju til spenjaz.

Ert bezt brú til ástar af grundu fullsælum þrælum guðs, brýn þó at sýniz torgeng kind gumna. Færir fyrðar, fimir í lið, ganga þik til himna; hallaz af þér, er spenjaz til illrar óvenju.

You are the best bridge to love from earth for the fully blessed servants of God, though you seem conspicuous, difficult to traverse for the children of men. Capable men, agile in limb, traverse you to the heavens; they fall off you who are allured to evil misconduct.

Mss: B(12r), 399a-bˣ

Readings: [3] grundu: so 399a‑bˣ, ‘g[...]du’ B    [5] Færir: ‘fe᷎[...]er’ B, ‘fe᷎[...]ir’ 399a‑bˣ    [8] spenjaz: ‘spe[...]azth’ B, ‘spennazth’ 399a‑bˣ

Editions: Skj AII, 156-7, Skj BII, 169, Skald II, 89, NN §2329; Sveinbjörn Egilsson 1844, 46, Rydberg 1907, 17, 51, Kock and Meissner 1931, I, 91, Tate 1974, 80.

Notes: [All]: The Cross as way is inherent in the poem’s title Líknarbraut ‘way of grace’ (see Note to 51/4). Here that way is a bridge (brú, l. 1), apparently difficult to traverse, leading to heaven. This image is in the tradition of various obstacle bridges crossing a water barrier to the Otherworld (see Patch 1950, passim; for ON, see Boberg 1966, nos F152 and A657.1). The motif received its classical formulation in Gregory’s Dialogues (Gregorius I, Dialogorum IV, chs 37-38, cols 384-8; ON translation in Hms I, 249-51, differently numbered and, because of a gap in fragments, missing Gregory’s explication). A soldier who dies of the plague but shortly comes back to life tells how he saw a bridge over a black river, on the other side of which were lovely meadows and gleaming mansions. The bridge is such that if a wicked man attempts to cross it he falls into the river, but the righteous are able to cross safely. Questioned by his interlocutor, Gregory explains that the bridge teaches us that angusta valde est semita quae ducit ad vitam ‘very narrow is the way that leads to life’ (cf. Matt. VII.14), and that the black river represents the vice and corruption of the world. This text is important background for this st., not only because it was known in Iceland, but because Gregory uses Matt. VII.14 to explicate the bridge. It is this passage in turn that underlies the frequent medieval representations of the Cross as way, e.g. Hildebert of Lavardin’s Liber de sacra eucharista crux ... via vitae ‘the Cross is the way of life’ (Hildebertus Cenomanensis [C12th], col. 1205) and, from hymns, AH 9, 27 Crux est coelorum via ‘The Cross is the way of/to heaven’. In subsequent formulations the narrowness or difficulty of the bridge is emphasised; it is often sharp-edged or spiked. In Duggals leiðsla (C13th trans. of C12th Visio Tnugdali), e.g., such a bridge is described as only a hand’s breadth and studded with sharp steel spikes (Hms I, 339; Cahill 1983, 40); for further medieval examples, including sword bridges, see Patch 1950, 73, 98, 123, 284 and 303-5. While the bridge of this st. is clearly in this tradition, specific references to the Cross itself as bridge are rare; unlike most of the poem’s other figures of the Cross, this image is not a recurrent motif in hymns and exegetical literature. The wood of the Cross does appear as a footbridge in legends of the cross-tree before the Crucifixion; beginning in the C12th, these occur in various versions with varying details (see Meyer 1882). The popular Legenda aurea version (C13th) recounts that when workmen were unable to fit the cross-tree’s wood into any part of Solomon’s temple, they cast it across a pond for use as a footbridge (pons). When later the Queen of Sheba, visiting Solomon, was about to cross the bridge, she saw in spirit (uidit in spiritu) that the Saviour of the world was destined to hang from the beam, and she immediately knelt in veneration (Meyer 1882, 124). In the later Icel. version, she has goose feet, which are transformed into those of a human as she removes her shoes in reverence before crossing the bridge (Overgaard 1968, 41). In some versions, a small bridge of the same wood (a tre þat the cros was made offe) is laid across the brook Cedron (e.g., in C14th Mandeville’s Travels, see Hamelius 1919-23, I, 62; cf. Meyer 1882, 163); in others the beam is made into a footbridge for people going to the temple, symbolising, as Meyer 1882, 161 notes, that the Cross of Christ is the bridge to heaven (die Brücke zum Himmel). The idea of a bridge to suggest mediation is also used of Mary in the late medieval poem Máría heyr mig háleitt víf 4/5, where she is called hjálpar brú ‘bridge of salvation’ (ÍM II, 258). — [2] brýn ‘conspicuous’: For this sense see ONP: brýnn adj. 1. Skj B translates loosely as ‘leading (to love)’, and all eds other than Kock and Meissner 1931, I, 91 (see glossary ‘steep, narrow’, II, 21) appear to construe the adj. as a positive contrast to torgeng ‘difficult to traverse’ – a contrast supported by the position of the adj. just before þó at torgeng syniz ‘though you seem difficult to traverse’ in l. 2. LP gives ‘sharp-edged’ as the first meaning but gives ‘easy to traverse’ for this occurrence. — [2] torgeng ‘difficult to traverse’: Cf. synonymous torfærr (Fritzner). Gengr commonly refers to the capacity to walk but can also refer to passability; e.g. illgengr is used both of a horse with rough gait and of something ‘“bad to pass” of ice, crags, or the like’ (CVC). — [3] grundu (dat.) ‘earth’: Restoration based upon 399a-bˣ, with <n> supported by skothending and by a nasal stroke over the damaged third letter, of which the lower tip of a minim remains. — [5] færir ‘capable’: Sveinbjörn Egilsson 1844, 46 conjectures færðir ‘are brought’; for færðir í lið LP (1860) gives ordinatim instructi ‘arranged in succession’. That the ‘-er’ abbreviation is, however, directly over the third letter (remnant of possible ‘r’) in B argues against -rðir, even if space of the lacuna might allow a further letter. The single <r> of færir is also sufficient for skothending with fyrðar ‘men’. — [6] fimir ‘agile, clever’: A favourite adj. in Leið (6/6, 15/2, 17/4, 26/6), where all instances rhyme, as here, with himn-. — [7] þér er: NN §2329 (cf. Skald), objecting to er ‘who’ as overly elliptical for ‘[those] who’, suggests that the ‘-er’ abbreviation of þér ‘you’ be expanded to form þeir ‘they’. But there is no other instance of the abbreviation as ‘-eir’, and the ms. reading makes perfectly good sense. — [8] spenjaz ‘are allured’: Restoration based upon 399a-bˣ’s reading of <n> and aðalhending with óvenju. With the exception of eigniz ‘might obtain’ 52/7 (ms. ‘eígnezt’), this is the poem’s only instance of ‘-zt(h)’ as m.v. ending, elsewhere consistently ‘-z’. Sveinbjörn Egilsson, based upon 399a-bˣ, has spennazth.

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. 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.
6. LP (1860) = Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1860. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis. Copenhagen: Societas Regia antiquariorum septentrionalium.
7. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
8. AH = Dreves, G. M., C. Blume and H. M. Bannister, eds. 1886-1922. Analecta hymnica medii aeui. 55 vols. Leipzig: Reisland. Rpt. 1961. New York: Johnson.
9. Boberg, Inger M. 1966. Motif-Index of Early Icelandic Literature. BA 27. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
10. Cahill, Peter, ed. and trans. 1983. Duggals leiðsla. RSÁM A 25. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar.
11. Rydberg, Hugo, ed. 1907. ‘Die geistlichen Drápur und Dróttkvættfragmente des Cod. AM 757 4to.’. Ph.D. thesis. University of Lund. Copenhagen: Møller.
12. Tate, George S. 1974. ‘Líknarbraut: A Skaldic Drápa on the Cross’. Ph.D. thesis. Cornell University. DAI 35:6112A.
13. 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.
14. ONP = Degnbol, Helle et al., eds. 1989-. A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose / Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. 1-. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission.
15. Overgaard, Marianne, ed. 1968. The History of the Cross-Tree Down to Christ’s Passion: Icelandic Legend Versions. EA B 26. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
16. Patch, Howard R. 1950. The Other World, According to Description in Medieval Literature. Smith College Studies in Modern Language new ser. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
17. Hamelius, P., ed. 1919-23. Mandeville’s Travels. 2 vols. Early English Text Society, Original Ser. 153. London and New York: Oxford University Press.
18. ÍM = Jón Helgason, ed. 1936-8. Íslenzk miðaldarkvæði: Islandske digte fra senmiddelalderen. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
19. Hms = Heilagra manna søgur.
20. Kock, Ernst Albin and Rudolf Meissner, eds. 1931. Skaldisches Lesebuch. 2 vols. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 17-18. Halle: Niemeyer.
21. Meyer, Wilhelm. 1882. Die Geschichte des Kreuzholzes vor Christus. Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologischen Classe der königlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften I. Classe 16. Band 2. Munich: Verlag der k. Akademie.
22. Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1844. Fjøgur gømul kvæði. Boðsrit til að hlusta á þá opinberu yfirheyrslu í Bessastaða Skóla þann 22-29 mai 1844. Viðeyar Klaustri: prentuð af Helga Helgasyni, á kostnað Bessastaða Skóla. Bessastaðir: Helgi Helgason.
23. Internal references
24. Katrina Attwood 2007, ‘ Anonymous, Leiðarvísan’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 137-78. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1022> (accessed 25 April 2024)