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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Anon (FoGT) 24III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 24’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 601.

Anonymous LausavísurStanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise
232425

text and translation

Haki Kraki
hoddum broddum
særði mærði
seggi leggi.
Veitir neitir
vella pella
báli stáli
beittiz heittiz.

Haki særði leggi broddum; Kraki mærði seggi hoddum. {Veitir pella} heittiz báli; {neitir vella} beittiz stáli.
 
‘Haki wounded legs with pikes; Kraki (‘Pole-ladder’) honoured men with treasures. The giver of costly materials [GENEROUS MAN = Haki] was burnt on a pyre; the squanderer of gold [GENEROUS MAN = Kraki] was killed by a steel weapon.

notes and context

This stanza provides the Fourth Grammarian’s fourth example of antitheton. Here, as he explains, the first and fourth words of each couplet belong together, in such a way that two clauses are created in a cross-over pattern in each helmingr, making four independent clauses in the stanza as a whole, referring to two legendary subjects, the pirate or sea-king Haki and the Danish king Hrólfr kraki ‘Pole-ladder’.

In this ingenious stanza, in every line of which there is full internal rhyme, words 1, 4, 5 and 8 in the first helmingr form a clause, while words 2, 3, 6 and 7 do likewise. In the second helmingr the same combination of words (1, 4, 5, 8) form another clause referring to the subject of the first clause in helmingr 1 (Haki), while words 2, 3, 6 and 7 form a second clause with Hrólfr kraki as their subject. Following the pattern established in st. 23, the poet dwells on how these two heroes met their deaths. The same two subjects are also treated in st. 27 (q.v.). The dual rhyming subjects of Haki and Kraki may have been suggested by SnSt Ht 94, where they are also juxtaposed. The metre is inn nýi háttr ‘the new verse-form’, illustrated in SnSt Ht 73.

sources

Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.

editions and texts

Skj: Anonyme digte og vers [XIII], D. 3. Vers af den 4. grt. afhandling 18: AII, 217, BII, 235, Skald II, 122; SnE 1848-87, II, 224-5, III, 159, FoGT 1884, 137-8, 275-6, FoGT 2004, 46, 72, 130-3, FoGT 2014, 28-9, 112-13.

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