StarkSt Vík 33^VIII (Gautr 41)

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Gautreks saga 41 (Starkaðr gamli Stórvirksson, Víkarsbálkr 33)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 286.

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As for Gautr 39.

This is the final stanza of Vík, according to 590b-cˣ, and it is in a mixture of fornyrðislag and kviðuháttr; ll. 1 and 5 are fornyrðislag, ll. 2 and 6 are hypometrical, while ll. 3 and 7 are kviðuháttr. Shortly after its citation the prose text in all mss of the longer Gautr brings the story of Starkaðr to a rather abrupt end, with a few summary remarks about his later career as a viking, in which he was always victorious. As a concluding stanza to Starkaðr’s life-history, Vík 33 is rather unconvincing; it is a list of Starkaðr’s repulsive physical traits, which one might expect to lead on to further stanzas describing his various adventures, but they do not, leaving one to speculate that there may have been more stanzas not used in the prose saga. — The list of Starkaðr’s physical traits is strongly suggestive of the animal as much as the human. Skoltr (the younger form of skolptr) ‘snout’ (l. 3) and trjóna ‘muzzle’ (l. 4) suggest the long face of an animal, like a bear or a wolf; skoltr is used in two places in Old Norse poetry to refer to figure-heads on ships, possibly dragon heads (cf. HSt Rst 14/5^I and Valg Har 10/5^II). The adj. úlfgrár ‘wolf-grey’ (l. 6) contributes to this picture, not only by indicating Starkaðr’s age, but also by drawing a comparison with a wolf, an animal frequently symbolic of both physical aggression and the position of social outcast in Old Norse and other Germanic literature (cf. Hildr Lv 1^I and Jacoby 1974). The same adj. is used by Egill Skallagrímsson in Arbj 7/5^V (Eg 103) of his own grey head. Both Egill and Starkaðr are figures of great physical strength but also have supernatural connections; the animal qualities ascribed to them may be a way of symbolising the mixture of these two sources of their power (cf. Clunies Ross 2015, 83-4).  — [1-2]: These two lines show metrical and alliterative irregularities. Both Gautr 1900 and Edd. Min. replace rekkar ‘men’ in l. 1 with menn ‘men’ to regularise both metre and alliteration, while Skj B addresses the metrical irregularity of l. 2 by indicating that words must be missing between mik ‘me’ and sjá ‘see’. Skald, on the other hand, keeps rekkar in l. 1 and replaces mik ‘me’ in l. 2 with raum, from raumr ‘large, ugly person, giant’ (NN §2613).