Án Lv 2^VIII (Án 2)

Án speaks this stanza during a journey undertaken by King Ingjaldr to meet with his half-brothers, ostensibly in order to reach an agreement with them about sharing the kingdom inherited from their father (FSGJ 2, 377-9). Án and his brother Þórir accompany the king and his men, although Án suspects that the king has evil designs on his half-brothers. Þórir had previously served Ingjaldr’s brother, King Óláfr, and had received from him a fine sword called Þegn ‘Freeman’, as a consequence of which he himself was given the nickname þegn (FSGJ 2, 368-9).

Vel þér, selja;         stendr þú sjó nær
        laufguð harla vel.
Maðr skekkr af þér         morgindöggvar,
en ek at þegni þrey         nátt sem dag.

Vel þér, selja; þú stendr nær sjó, laufguð harla vel. Maðr skekkr morgindöggvar af þér, en ek þrey at þegni nátt sem dag.

It is well for you, willow-tree; you stand near the sea, very well covered with leaves. One shakes the morning dews off you, but I yearn for a freeman night and day.

Mss: 343a(83r), 109a Iˣ(6v) (Án)

Readings: [1] selja: ‘seirna’ 109a Iˣ    [2] stendr þú sjó nær: víst svá stendr þó svá næri 109a Iˣ    [3] laufguð harla vel: laufi vaxið 109a Iˣ    [4] Maðr: margt 109a Iˣ;    af þér: á þik 109a Iˣ    [5] ‑döggvar: dögginn 109a Iˣ    [6] þrey: þreyi 109a Iˣ

Editions: Skj AII, 319, Skj BII, 339, Skald II, 182; FSN 2, 336, FSGJ 2, 378; Edd. Min. 104.

Context: The king has just ordered his men to set up a ‘harbour mark’ (hafnarmerki) at the spot where the expedition is resting. Since Án speaks this stanza immediately thereafter the word selja ‘sallow, willow-tree’ appears to refer to the harbour-mark, whose good location, healthy condition and usefulness are contrasted with the longing for a þegn expressed by the speaker (cf. Edd. Min. lxxxvii; Läffler 1912, 7-9; Liestøl 1945, 82).

Notes: [All]: The stanza appears to express a conventional contrast familiar from love poetry, in which a speaker contrasts a natural phenomenon with his or her inner longing; cf. Skí 4 and the C13th Middle English song ‘Fowles in þe friþe’ ‘Birds in the wood’. Several scholars have considered the stanza may originally have been a love-poem spoken by a woman (Edd. Min. lxxxvii-viii; Läffler 1912, 7, 13, 61; Liestøl 1945, 85-92; Ólafur Halldórsson 1973, 80). However, this is not how it is interpreted in Án because there the stanza is spoken by a man, Án himself, about his longing for a þegn. In the context of the saga the word þegn ‘freeman, man’ could have several meanings: it might refer to the sword of that name owned by Án’s brother Þórir, but þegn is also a very common term for ‘man’ in poetry (cf. LP: þegn), and Án claims to be using the word to refer to his brother Þórir by his nickname, which is also þegn. In Án a discussion about the meaning of the stanza follows and highlights its homoerotic implications and the ambiguities of the word þegn within the saga (FSGJ 2, 378-9; cf. Hughes 1976, 199 n.; Läffler 1912, 8): Þórir mælti: ‘Eigi skaltu þess þurfa, því at ek mun gefa þér sverðit Þegn.’ Án segir: ‘Ekki þrey ek at þeim þegni.’ Ketill sagði þar: ‘Ek ætla, at þú þreyir at karlmanni nokkorum, ok viltu serða hann,’ ok gerðu þeir at þessu gys mikit ok dáraskap. ‘Eigi er svá,’ sagði Án, ‘ekki þrey ek at þeim þegni, ek þrey at Þóri þegn, bróður mínum, því at hann er svá grunnhygginn, at hann trúir konungi þessum, en ek veit, at hann mun honum at bana verða’ ‘Þórir spoke: “You shall not have need of that [i.e. to long for þegn], for I will give you the sword Þegn.” Án says: “I do not long for that þegn.” Then Ketill [one of the king’s retainers] said: “I think that you are yearning for some man, and you want to fuck him,” and they made much mockery and sport of this. “That is not so,” said Án, “I do not yearn for such a man, I suffer for my brother Þórir the follower [þegn] of the king, because he is so shallow-minded that he trusts this king, but I know that he [the king] will become his killer”’. Án’s foreboding proves true, for the king eventually kills Þórir with the latter’s own sword Þegn (FSGJ 2, 394). — [All]: In 340ˣ the stanza is very different and has clearly been influenced by the ríma tradition; for the text, see Edd. Min. 104 and notes there. — [1-3]: In Áns rímur bogsveigis III 6/1-2 there are two lines which correspond in content to this passage (Ólafur Halldórsson 1973, 110): Vel þier selia vidi nær | vaxen laufe goda ‘It is well for you, willow-tree near the sea, grown with good foliage’. In the four-line ríma stanza in ferskeytt metre the two lines of a couplet share alliteration, whilst the two odd and the two even lines share end rhyme (abab; cf. Vésteinn Ólason 1982, 57). Since Án 2/3 is much shorter than the other lines and contains no two words that alliterate with one another, several eds emend l. 3 on the basis of the line vaxen laufe goda in the ríma (cf. Note to l. 3 below). Heusler and Ranisch and Läffler also emend the word sjó ‘sea’ to víði and thus implicitly assume that ll. 1-2 and 3-4 share alliteration on <v>, though their interpretations of víði differ. Heusler and Ranisch (Edd. Min.) treat víði as from víðir, a poetic word for ‘sea’, while Läffler (1912, 2-3, 5) understands it as the dat. sg. of víðir ‘willow’ (cf. ModGer. Weide and ModEngl. withy). Läffler argues that the scribe of 343a misunderstood víði ‘willow’ in his exemplar as the homonym víði ‘sea’ and substituted the more usual word sjó. The reconstructed line would thus read: Vel þér selja! | Stendr þú víði nær ‘It is well for you, [female] willow-tree (selja)! You stand near a [male] willow-tree (víðir)’ and would thus provide a heightened contrast between the proximity of the female and male willow trees on the one hand and the (presumed) lonely woman speaker, who longs for the man she loves, on the other (Läffler 1912, 13, 24-61). Such a reconstruction is purely hypothetical, because, as Ólafur Halldórsson (1973, 74-5, 79-80) points out, the ríma stanza cannot provide any evidence about whether the ríma poet knew the stanza from the saga in a different form from the one we know from 343a: the ríma poet doubtless changed the word sjó ‘sea’ to víði ‘sea’ to provide alliteration between ll. 1 and 2 of his stanza in conformity with the ríma metre. The ríma thus provides no adequate basis for emendation of the stanza from the saga (cf. also Note to st. 2/3 below). — [2] þú stendr nær sjó ‘you stand near the sea’: Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) and Kock (Skald) omit the pers. pron. þú ‘you’ but retain the word sjór/sær and change the one-syllable dat. form sjó to the two-syllable form sævi, presumably in order to obtain a four-syllable half-line and to provide an unaccented syllable between the two monosyllabic words sjó and nær (cf. Läffler 1912, 3, 61-3). Guðni Jónsson (FSGJ) prints the two-syllable dat. form sævi as well, although he also retains þú. In any case the dat. form sjó is perfectly acceptable from the point of view of grammar, since both the case-ending [i] and the stem consonant [w] are dropped in later Icelandic (cf. ANG §365). — [3] laufguð harla vel ‘very well covered with leaves’: Neither the 343a nor 109a Iˣ text of this line has alliteration. Skj B and Skald adopt an emended amalgam of the two texts, laufi vaxin vel ‘well grown with foliage’, presuming the stanza to be in the metre ljóðaháttr and influenced by the text of the corresponding passage in Áns rímur bogsveigis (III, 6-7, Óláfur Halldórsson 1973, 110): vaxen laufe goda ‘grown with good foliage’. Läffler (1912, 7, 14, 61) on the other hand proceeds from the assumption that the stanza is in fornyrðislag and emends l. 3 to: ok ert harla vel | vaxin laufi ‘and you are very well grown with foliage’. Heusler and Ranisch suggest a similiar reconstruction in Edd. Min. 104 n.: vel of vaxin | vænu laufi ‘well grown with beautiful foliage’. Óláfur Halldórsson (1973, 79-80) regards the word vaxen in the ríma as an attempt on the part of the poet to adapt the stanza he found in the version of the saga he used by supplying a word to alliterate with words in l. 1 of the ríma st. III, 6 in accord with ferskeytt metre. — [5] morgindöggvar ‘the morning dews’: For the positive associations of dew cf. Vsp 19/5-6, Vafþr 45/4-6, HHj 28/5-6. — [6-7] en ek þrey at þegni nátt sem dag ‘but I yearn for a freeman night and day’: Finnur Jónsson and Kock assume that the stanza was originally composed in ljóðaháttr (cf. Note to l. 3); they regard the words nátt sem dag ‘night and day’ as a later addition or omit them to produce a full-line without a caesura that reads: en ek at þegni þrey ‘but I long for a man’ (cf. Ólafur Halldórsson 1973, 80 n.). These lines are reminiscent of GSúrs Lv 5/5-6^V (Gísl 7).

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. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
4. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 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. 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.
7. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
8. Edd. Min. = Heusler, Andreas and Wilhelm Ranisch, eds. 1903. Eddica Minora: Dichtungen eddischer Art aus den Fornaldarsögur und anderen Prosawerken. Dortmund: Ruhfus. Rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
9. Hughes, Shaun F. D. 1976. ‘The Literary Antecedents of Áns saga bogsveigis’. MS 9, 196-235.
10. Läffler, Leopold Frederik. 1912. ‘En kärleksvisa i Áns saga bogsveigis’. Studier i nordisk filologi 3, 1-65.
11. Liestøl, Knut. 1945. ‘Til spørgsmålet om dei eldste islendske dansekvæde’. Arv 1, 69-101.
12. Ólafur Halldórsson. 1973. Áns rímur bogsveigis. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árnamagnússonar á Íslandi.
13. Vésteinn Ólason. 1982. The Traditional Ballads of Iceland: Historical Studies. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi.
14. Internal references
15. (forthcoming), ‘ Anonymous, Áns saga bogsveigis’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=12> (accessed 3 May 2024)
16. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2022, ‘Gísla saga Súrssonar 7 (Gísli Súrsson, Lausavísur 5)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 557.
17. Not published: do not cite ()
18. Not published: do not cite ()
19. Not published: do not cite ()
20. Not published: do not cite ()
21. Beatrice La Farge (ed.) 2017, ‘Áns saga bogsveigis 2 (Án bogsveigir, Lausavísur 2)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 7.
22. Not published: do not cite ()