StarkSt Vík 13^VIII (Gautr 21)

Vart þú eigi         með Víkari
austr í Væni         árdag snemma,
þá er sóttu vér         Sísar á velli;
þat var þrekvirki         þokks megnara.

Þú vart eigi með Víkari austr í Væni árdag snemma, þá er vér sóttu Sísar á velli; þat var þokks megnara þrekvirki.

You were not with Víkarr east on Vänern early in the day, when we attacked Sísarr on the [battle-]field; that was a still more powerful feat of strength.

Mss: 590b-cˣ(4r-v) (Gautr)

Readings: [1] eigi: ei 590b‑cˣ

Editions: Skj AII, 326, Skj BII, 346, Skald II, 186, NN §122; FSN 3, 23, Gautr 1900, 20, FSGJ 4, 20; Edd. Min. 40.

Context: After their victory over King Herþjófr, Víkarr and Starkaðr take over all the king’s ships and sail east along the coast of Norway to Agder, where many men join them. Víkarr becomes the ruler of all the districts that Herþjófr had controlled, and embarks on viking raids every summer. One such took him and his men to Lake Vänern in Sweden, where they fought a fierce battle with King Sísarr of Kiev (ON Kænugarðr). Starkaðr fought hand-to-hand with Sísarr, who gave him two serious head wounds, broke his collarbone, and wounded him on one side above the hip. Vík  13, 14 and 15 (Gautr 21, 22 and 23) give a verse account of these events, introduced by svá segir Starkaðr ‘so Starkaðr says’.

Notes: [All]: There is no obvious addressee (þú ‘you’ l. 1) for this stanza and the opening gambit ‘you were not there at a dangerous encounter’ where the speaker says he fought bravely is strongly reminiscent of the mannjafnaðr ‘comparison of men’ convention, such as we find it in Ǫrv 34-58. The implication is usually that the addressee is a coward. The stanza seems out of place in Vík, unless it and the following stanzas detailing Starkaðr’s wounds have been drawn into Vík from a separate source. Gautr 21 and 22 are only in 590b-cˣ, but Gautr 23 is also in 152. — [3] í Væni ‘on Vänern’: The largest lake in Sweden, in the southwest of the country. — [4] árdag snemma ‘early in the day’: Árdag, possibly acc. sg. of time, is an unparalleled form, beside árdagar m. pl. ‘days of yore’, often found in eddic poetry, as in Vsp 61/5-6 (cf. LP: árdagar). The meaning of árdag here in combination with snemma ‘early’ is unclear. Finnur Jónsson (LP: árdagar) suggests the composer of Gautr 21 may have misunderstood the meaning of the cpd to mean the morning or early part of the day, and that is the sense given here. Edd. Min. emends to árdags (gen. sg.) but this does not make the meaning clearer. — [6] Sísar ‘Sísarr’: Name for the ruler of Kiev (ON Kænugarðr), according to the prose text. The name itself is probably derived from Lat. Caesar (cf. Gautr 1900, ic) and perhaps reflects a generalised awareness of the princely status ascribed to the rulers of Kiev in the late Viking Age and later (cf. Melnikova 1996 for a discussion of such legends).

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. 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. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
7. Melnikova, Elena A. 1996. The Eastern World of the Vikings: Eight Essays about Scandinavia and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Gothenburg Old Norse Studies 1. Gothenburg: Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen, Göteborgs universitet.
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. Gautr 1900 = Ranisch, Wilhelm, ed. 1900. Die Gautrekssaga in zwei Fassungen. Palaestra 11. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.
10. Internal references
11. Not published: do not cite (Run^VI)
12. Not published: do not cite ()
13. Margaret Clunies Ross (forthcoming), ‘ Starkaðr gamli Stórvirksson, Víkarsbálkr’ 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=3118> (accessed 17 April 2024)
14. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Gautreks saga 21 (Starkaðr gamli Stórvirksson, Víkarsbálkr 13)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 266.
15. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Gautreks saga 23 (Starkaðr gamli Stórvirksson, Víkarsbálkr 15)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 269.
16. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Ǫrvar-Odds saga 34 (Sjólfr, Lausavísur 1)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 848.