ǪrvOdd Ævdr 14^VIII (Ǫrv 84)

Skjótt nam kynda         í skóg þykkum
eld brennanda         uppi á landi.
Svá við lopti         létum leika
hávan ok rauðan         hrottgarm viðar.

Skjótt nam kynda brennanda eld í þykkum skóg uppi á landi. Svá létum {hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar} leika við lopti.

Quickly I kindled burning fire in a thick wood up in the countryside. So we [I] caused {the towering and red howling hound of wood} [FIRE] to play against the sky.

Mss: 343a(80v), 471(94v), 173ˣ(61va) (Ǫrv)

Readings: [2] skóg: skógi 173ˣ    [3, 4] eld brennanda uppi á landi: hávan uppi hrottgarm viðar 471, eld brennandi upp á landi 173ˣ    [5, 6] Svá við lopti létum leika: eld brennanda uppi á landi 471, svá at við lopti létum leika 173ˣ    [7, 8] hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar: svá með lopti létum leika 471, hávan heldr hrottgarm viðar 173ˣ

Editions: Skj AII, 308, Skj BII, 327, Skald II, 175; Ǫrv 1888, 200, FSGJ 2, 344.

Notes: [All]: In order to attract his companions’ attention and discover the location of their missing ships, Oddr goes to a wood, climbs up a tall tree, and sets fire to its upper branches (í limum uppi) so that flames quickly rose high into the air (stóð logi í lopti uppi). This acts as a signal to the ships to return to the shore where all the men are reunited (Ǫrv 1888, 36-7). This stanza follows the wording of the prose quite closely. — [All]: The order of lines in 471 differs considerably from 343a and 173ˣ, although the actual wording does not diverge significantly. — [5-6]: Line 6 has double alliteration. Skj B and Skald reverse the ms. order of ll. 5-6 in order to regularise the alliteration, and also reverse the order of words in l. 5 to svá lopti við. — [7-8] hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar ‘the towering and red howling hound of wood [FIRE]’: With Skj B and Skald, but not Ǫrv 1888, which has hrótgarm ‘roof-hound’, the mss’ ‘hrot(t) garm’ is understood as a cpd noun whose first element is judged (cf. LP: hrotgarmr) to be the otherwise unrecorded hrot ‘howling’, assumed to be related to the verb hrjóta ‘fall, fly, snore, make a rough sound’. A very similar pair of lines occurs in a variant to Helr 10/4 (NK 221 and notes; Kommentar VI, 550-1) in Norn, hávan brenna | hrottgarm viðar. The context is the burning of Brynhildr’s hall. The element hrott- is otherwise unrecorded and is difficult to relate to hrjóta, but several ms. spellings of this cpd, including the present instance, have the double <t>. The fire-kenning hár hrótgarmr ‘the towering roof-hound’ occurs in Þjóð Sex 21/8^II, and it is possible that hrótgarmr ‘roof-hound’ may have been intended as the base-word of the kenning here also. For fire-kennings with ‘hound, dog’ as base-word, see Meissner 101.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.
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. NK = Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn (1899), eds. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. 2 vols. I: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Winter.
7. Kommentar = See, Klaus von et al. 1997-2012. Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda. 7 vols. Heidelberg: Winter.
8. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
9. Ǫrv 1888 = Boer, R. C., ed. 1888. Ǫrvar-Odds saga. Leiden: Brill.
10. Internal references
11. Not published: do not cite ()
12. Not published: do not cite ()
13. Diana Whaley (ed.) 2009, ‘Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, Sexstefja 21’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 135-6.