Forað Lv 5^VIII (Ket 25)

Beatrice La Farge (ed.) 2017, ‘Ketils saga hœngs 25 (Forað, Lausavísur 5)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 577.

Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses

After Forað has described her itinerary along the coast of Norway, she asks Ketill what he intends to do, to which he replies that he is going to cook himself a meal of meat (slátr). After this prose exchange Forað utters a threat in the form of a stanza, which is introduced with the words: Hún kvað ‘She said’.

The first two lines of the stanza have end-rhyme (snúa : gnúa), appropriately for a curse or imprecation, while l. 3 also produces a rhyming effect through the repeated grí- in two successive words. Some previous eds regard l. 4 as a later addition and either omit it (Edd. Min.) or place it within square brackets (Skj B). Kock (Skald) retains it (as does Rafn) but ‘improves’ the line by altering the word order, changing the verb to a subj. form and omitting the pron. hon: ok með gjálfri sínu komi. Kock also changes grípr (l. 3) to the subj. form gripi. The reason for the reversal of word order in l. 4 is Kock’s belief that the main alliterating word (here gjálfri) in the original form of any long-line could not have occupied the penultimate and ultimate syllables of the half-line (cf. NN §2402). — All the threats that Forað utters in this stanza have parallels in the behaviour of giants as depicted in other texts: thus the giant Þjazi prevents the fire, which the three gods Óðinn, Hœnir and Loki kindle in a cooking-pit, from roasting an ox, until they promise him the choice portion of the meat (Þjóð Haustl 2-6^III; SnE 1998, I, 1). In both cases the fire (and the cooking-pit) are referred to as seyðir (LP: seyðir, cf. l. 1 and the runic spell Run N B252^VI). Giants grapple with their opponents and crush them in their grasp (cf. the threat against Atli which the giantess Hrímgerðr utters in HHj 22 (see Kommentar IV, 506-7 to HHj 22/4-5 and HjǪ 18-19).