StarkSt Vík 7^VIII (Gautr 15)

Hann mældi mik         mundum ok spönnum,
alla arma         til úlfliða,
…         …,
vaxit hári         á höku niðri.

Hann mældi mik mundum ok spönnum, alla arma til úlfliða, … vaxit hári á höku niðri.

He measured me with hands and hand-breadths, all my arms to the wrists … grown with hair down on my chin.

Mss: 590b-cˣ(3v), 152(198va) (Gautr)

Readings: [1] mældi: mælti both    [8] á: ok 152

Editions: Skj AII, 325, Skj BII, 345, Skald II, 185; FSN 3, 19, Gautr 1900, 16, FSGJ 4, 16; Edd. Min. 39.

Context: As for Gautr 13.

Notes: [All]: Immediately after the end of this stanza, the prose text offers the following gloss: Hér segir Starkaðr frá því, at hann hafði þá skegg er hann var tólf vetra ‘Here Starkaðr tells that he already had a beard when he was twelve years old’. This explanation may have been given because the stanza itself was defective when the prose text was first composed; neither ms. has a full eight-line stanza, yet there is no lacuna in either for the missing lines (probably ll. 5-6 in the original version), which would have mentioned Starkaðr’s precocious growth of beard. It is interesting that the explanatory prose gloss is also present in papp11ˣ, though the stanza is absent. — [1] mældi ‘measured’: Both mss have mælti ‘spoke’, but the context indicates that the verb must be mældi, 3rd pers. sg. pret. indic. of mæla ‘measure’. — [2] spönnum (dat. pl.) ‘hand-breadths’: As in Modern English and other Germanic languages, a span or hand-breadth was originally the distance from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger, or sometimes to the tip of the forefinger, when the hand is fully extended, a measure of length of about nine inches (cf. OED: span, n.¹). — [3-4] alla arma til úlfliða ‘all my arms to the wrists’: I.e. ‘my arms from the top down to the wrists’. There may be another allusion to Starkaðr’s original six or eight arms here (see Note to Gautr 13/2 and Gautr 40 Note to [All]). — [4] úlfliða ‘the wrists’: Lit. ‘the wolf-joints’. The cpd úlfliðr ‘wolf-joint’ (cf. Arn Frag 4/3^III) is explained by Snorri Sturluson in Gylf (SnE 2005, 25), doubtless basing himself on popular etymology, as derived from the story of how the gods persuaded the wolf Fenrir to be bound with the fetter Gleipnir. Týr placed his hand in the wolf’s mouth as a pledge of the gods’ good faith, but, when they later refused to release the wolf, he bit Týr’s hand off at the wrist, and that is why the wrist may be called úlfliðr. The first element in this cpd probably derives from ǫln ‘forearm’; cf. Þul á hendi l. 5 and Note.

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. OED = Murray, J. A. H. et al., eds. 1884-1928. The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon. 2nd edn 1989. Simpson, J. A. and E. S. C. Weiner, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
6. SnE 2005 = Snorri Sturluson. 2005. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2nd edn. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
7. 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.
8. Gautr 1900 = Ranisch, Wilhelm, ed. 1900. Die Gautrekssaga in zwei Fassungen. Palaestra 11. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.
9. Internal references
10. (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning’ 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=113> (accessed 2 May 2024)
12. Diana Whaley (ed.) 2017, ‘Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, Fragments 4’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 6.
13. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Heiti á hendi’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 967. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3245> (accessed 2 May 2024)
14. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Gautreks saga 13 (Starkaðr gamli Stórvirksson, Víkarsbálkr 5)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 259.
15. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Gautreks saga 40 (Starkaðr gamli Stórvirksson, Víkarsbálkr 32)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 284.