Busla Busl 9^VIII (Bós 9)

Komi hér seggir sex;         seg þú mér nöfn þeirra
öll óbundin;         ek mun þér sýna.
Getr þú ei ráðit,         svá at mér rétt þikki,
þá skulu þik hundar         í hel gnaga,
en sál þín         sökkvi í víti.

Sex seggir komi hér; seg þú mér nöfn þeirra öll óbundin; ek mun sýna þér. Getr þú ei ráðit, svá at mér þikki rétt, þá skulu hundar gnaga þik í hel, en sál þín sökkvi í víti.

Let six warriors come here; tell me all their names without concealment; I will show [them] to you. If you cannot guess, so that it seems correct to me, then let dogs gnaw you to death and your soul sink to punishment.

Mss: 586(14v), 577(54r), 510(11v), 361ˣ(11v) (Bós)

Readings: [4] mun: skal 577, 361ˣ    [6] at: om. 510;    mér: om. 577, 361ˣ;    þikki: ‘þike’ 510    [10] sökkvi: sökkva 577, 361ˣ;    í víti: ‘i v’ 577

Editions: Skj AII, 332, Skj BII, 352-3, Skald II, 190; Bós 1666, 21, FSN 3, 206, Bós 1893, 19, FSGJ 3, 295, Bós 1996, 15; Edd. Min. 125.

Context: The king partially gives in by agreeing to grant Herrauðr his life, but insists on maintaining his hostility to Bósi. This is not enough for Busla, and thus there now follows the crucial and decisive final third section, the ‘Syrpa-vísa’ (for this name, cf. Introduction).

Notes: [All]: Here the king is confronted with a riddle before which he must ultimately capitulate. It involves guessing the names of six warriors, apparently by decoding the six runes r. o. þ. k. m. u. which appear immediately after Busl 9 in all the older mss, followed by the runic letters i, s, t, i and l, each written six times over. The six warriors are to be understood as the six runes above, whose meaning the king is supposed to unlock. The six times repeated runes are a variant of the so-called þistill-mistill-kistill formula, which is frequently attested from various runic objects (cf. Heizmann 1998, 519-20), the oldest example of which is located on the Danish runestone from Gørlev c. 800 (DRI 239). It is likely that the formula was originally a curse associated with burial rituals, whose purpose was to banish the dead into the grave (NIyR 4, 177-8). — [8-9] þá skulu hundar gnaga þik í hel ‘then let dogs gnaw you to death’: I.e. ‘let dogs chew on you until you die’. Cf. ModDan. ihjæl, ModNorw. ihjel ‘to death’ and Anon Mhkv 8/2^III (see Note there). — [9-10] en sál þín sökkvi í víti ‘and your soul sink to punishment’: The implication is that this is punishment for King Hringr’s soul in the Christian Hell.

References

1. Bibliography
2. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. DRI = Jacobsen, Lis and Erik Moltke. 1941-2. Danmarks Runeindskrifter. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
5. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
6. 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.
7. NIyR = Olsen, Magnus et al., eds. 1941-90. Norges innskrifter med de yngre runer. Norges indskrifter indtil reformationen. 2. afdeling. 6 vols. Oslo: Norsk historisk kjeldeskrift-institutt.
8. Heizmann, Wilhelm. 1998. ‘Runica manuscripta: Die isländische Überlieferung’. In Düwel et al. 1998, 513-35.
9. Bós 1996 = Sverrir Tómasson, ed. 1996. Bósa saga og Herrauðs. Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
10. Bós 1666 = Verelius, Olaus, ed. 1666. Herrauds och Bosa saga Med en ny vttolkning iämpte Gambla Götskan. Uppsala: Henrich Curio.
11. Bós 1893 = Jiriczek, Otto L., ed. 1893. Die Bósa-Saga in zwei Fassungen nebst Proben aus den Bósa-Rímur. Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner.
12. Internal references
13. Roberta Frank (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Málsháttakvæði 8’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1222.
14. Wilhelm Heizmann (ed.) 2017, ‘Bósa saga 9 (Busla, Buslubæn 9)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 36.