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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Rloð Lv 6VIII (Ragn 10)

Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 10 (Ragnarr loðbrók, Lausavísur 6)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 644.

Ragnarr loðbrókLausavísur
567

Sá ek engum sveini
nema Sigurði einum
í brúnsteinum brúna
bráðhalls tau*ma lagða.
Sjá hefir dagrýfir dýra
— dælt er hann at því kenna —
hvass í hvarmatúni
hrings myrkviðar fengit.

Ek sá {brúna tau*ma bráðhalls} lagða í {brúnsteinum} engum sveini, nema Sigurði einum. {Sjá {dýra dag}rýfir}, hvass, hefir fengit {hrings myrkviðar} í {hvarmatúni}; dælt er kenna hann at því.

I have seen {bright reins of a rockface} [SNAKES] placed in {the brow-stones} [EYES] of no boy save Sigurðr alone. {This breaker {of the light of hands }} [(lit. ‘light-breaker of hands’) GOLD > GENEROUS MAN], keen as he is, has received {a ring of the murky forest} [SNAKE] in {the enclosure of the eyelids} [EYE]; it is easy to recognise him by that.

Mss: 1824b(62v), 147(99v) (l. 1), 147(97r) (ll. 1-8) (Ragn)

Readings: [1] ek: so 147, ‘Sea er’ 1824b;    engum: ‘enngí’ 1824b, ‘eínngi’ 147;    sveini: ‘suein(i)’(?) so 147, ‘suení’ 1824b    [2] nema Sigurði einum: ‘(ne)ma sig[…]di (ei)nu[…]’(?) 147    [3] í brúnsteinum brúna: ‘j (b)ru[…]stei(nu)[…] (b)ru[…](a)’(?) 147    [4] bráðhalls (‘brad halz’): ‘(b)ra(d) […]’(?) 147;    tau*ma: ‘tuarmí’ 1824b, ‘[…]’ 147;    lagða (‘logda’): ‘lagdann’ 147    [5] dagrýfir (‘dagr yfir’): ‘d(a)g(ur) […]’(?) 147    [6] dælt er hann: ‘d[…] hann’ 147;    at: so 147, at corrected from ‘af’ 1824b    [7] hvass: ‘hv(a)ss’(?) so 147, hauss 1824b;    hvarma‑: ‘huarm(a)’ or ‘harm(a)’(?) so 147, harma‑ 1824b    [8] hrings myrkviðar fengit: ‘[…]’ 147

Editions: Skj AII, 234, Skj BII, 254, Skald II, 132, NN §§181, 1452, 2367; FSN 1, 259 (Ragn ch. 8), Ragn 1891, 193-4 (ch. 8), Ragn 1906-8, 136-7, 181, 202-3 (ch. 9), Ragn 1944, 58-9 (ch. 9), FSGJ 1, 246 (Ragn ch. 9), Ragn 1985, 121 (ch. 9), Ragn 2003, 31-2 (ch. 9), CPB II, 348.

Context: Ragnarr further comments on the distinctive mark in the eye of his newborn son. The prose following this stanza briefly reports Ragnarr’s abandonment of his idea of marrying the daughter of King Eysteinn, and the fact that Kráka-Áslaug’s true parentage is now universally acknowledged.

Notes: [All]: In 147, part of l. 1 of this stanza (‘sa eg eín’) is written at the foot (l. 27) of fol. 99v, and the remainder of the stanza at the head of fol. 97v, of which l. 1 begins: ‘ngi suein(i)’ (?). The ordering of the fols in this ms. was clearly completed without regard to their inclusion of the text of Ragn, fragmentarily preserved on fols 93r-111v, or to the original ordering of those fols, on which the text of the saga is all but effaced by partial erasure and overwriting (see the Introduction). Olsen’s renumbering of the relevant fols (as 1r-19v) for the purposes of his edn, which shows in correct order what he could read of the text, is described in detail in Ragn 1906-8, lxxxiv-vi; cf. 176-94. — [1-4]: (a) As Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 202) notes, the readings sá ek in l. 1 and to a lesser extent lagða in l. 4, both suggested by Bugge (1876, 403), find support in the 147 text, with which Bugge was evidently already familiar in 1876, since he refers to the reading ‘lagðann der besten hds.’ (‘of the best ms.’), cf. the Introduction and Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, lxxxix, xcv). In l. 1, Sá ek engum ‘In no-one’s (eyes) have I seen …’ is originally Bugge’s (1876, 403) emended reading, also adopted by Guðni Jónsson (FSGJ), Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985) and the present ed. (b) Both Rafn (FSN) and Valdimar Ásmundarson (Ragn 1891) follow 1824b in normalising to sjá er in l. 1 and both read l. 4 as bráð háls traumi logða, making it difficult to extract a meaning from the half-stanza as a whole (on Skj B’s and Skald’s emendation to svá eru in l. 1, see (d) below). Without discussing ll. 2-3, Bugge (1876, 403) reads l. 4 as bráð háls trǫnu lagða ‘food of the throat of the crane [SNAKE] placed …’ with lagða as f. acc. sg. agreeing with bráð ‘food, meat’, and the latter forming the acc. subject of a passive inf. (vera lagða ‘be/being placed’, with vera omitted, in an acc. and inf. construction dependent on Sá ek ‘I saw, I have seen’, in l. 1. Bugge’s understanding of the half-stanza is thus that the speaker, Ragnarr, saw a snake placed in the eyes of no-one but those of his son Sigurðr. Bugge’s interpretation leaves unanswered the question of how to interpret brúna in l. 3. Is it gen. pl. of brún, f. ‘brow’ or the adj. brúnn ‘brown’, here in the f. acc. sg., agreeing with bráð ‘food’? The former seems on the face of it unlikely, given that brúnsteinn ‘brow-stone’, as Ragn 9/2, above, shows, is an adequate kenning for ‘eye’ (cf. also Ragn 14/6, below), and the kenning brúnsteinn brúna ‘brow-stone of brows’ would surely be tautologous. (c) Olsen considers as a possibility the heavily emended sequence tauma brúðar bergjarls ‘reins of the bride of the rock-ruler [GIANT > GIANTESS > SNAKES]’, taking brúna ‘brown’ as m. acc. pl., agreeing with tauma ‘reins’ (l. 4); in his edited text, however, he takes up Finnur Jónsson’s suggestion of brúnir taumar barðhjarls ‘brown reins of the craggy earth’ (cf. Skj B), also meaning ‘snakes’, though with brúna and tauma in the acc. (as opposed to Finnur’s nom., see further below). In each of these two possible readings tauma is to be seen as the acc. subject of the passive inf. vera lagða ‘be/being placed’ (with vera understood) in the acc. and inf. construction dependent on Sá ek ‘I saw’, l. 1. Eskeland (Ragn 1944) follows the first of these two readings in his translation, but adopts the second (with the spelling barðjarls, understood as ‘of earth’) in his text. Guðni Jónsson (FSGJ) and Ebel (Ragn 2003) also follow Olsen’s finally chosen reading of ll. 3-4 (i.e. í brunsteinum brúna | barðhjarls tauma lagða), as does Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985), except that Örnólfur has barðhalls, gen. of barðhallr ‘cliff, slope beneath a mountain rim’, in place of Olsen’s barðhjarls, while also taking it as the determinant in a kenning meaning ‘snakes’. (d) It remains to consider the readings of Finnur Jónsson in Skj B and Kock in Skald. Both are in agreement in emending the 1824b readings ‘sea er’ and ‘tuarmí logda’ to svá eru and taumir lagðir (m. nom. pl.) in ll. 1 and 4 respectively, so producing the meaning ‘Thus are … reins placed …’. Finnur, moreover, also emends to brúnir ‘brown’, m. nom. pl. adj., to agree with taumar ‘reins’, and reads barðhjarls ‘of craggy earth’ in l. 4, as indicated above, giving the overall meaning: ‘So brown reins of craggy earth [SNAKES] are placed in no boy’s eyes but those of Sigurðr alone’. (e) Kock (NN §1452) objects to these two emendations. In l. 3 he normalises to brúna, understanding this as gen. pl. of brún, f., ‘brow’, and sees the first element, brún-, in brúnsteinum as adjectival, meaning either ‘brown’ or ‘bright, glittering’. In l. 4 he normalises to bráðhalls ‘precipitous cliff’, again taking the first element in the word as adjectival, having the function of intensifying the steepness of the cliff signified by the second element, ‑hallr, m. He thus removes the need for emendation in these two cases, but retains, with Skj B, the emended nom. pl. readings taumar lagðir ‘reins placed’ necessitated by the emendation to Svá eru ‘Thus are…’ in l. 1. (f) The present edn accepts from 147 the Sá ek ‘I have seen’ reading in l. 1, takes brúnsteinum, dat. pl., ‘brow-stones’ in l. 3 as a straightforward kenning for ‘eyes’ (cf. Ragn 9/2 and 14/6, and brásteinar ‘eyelash-stones’, Anon Pét 45/4VII), and brúna ‘brown, bright, glittering’ in l. 3 as an acc. pl. m. adj. qualifying and agreeing grammatically with tauma lagða ‘reins placed’ in l. 4 and forming with them part of the acc. and inf. construction introduced by the opening words of the stanza. This involves minimal emendation. The present ed. also prefers Kock’s NN §1452 reading bráðhalls ‘(of a) precipitous cliff’ in l. 4 (involving no emendation) to his subsequently emended form bráðhjarls ‘(of) precipitous earth?’ in Skald. — [5] sjá dýra dagrýfir ‘this breaker of the light of hands [(lit. ‘light-breaker of hands’) GOLD > GENEROUS MAN]’: This interpretation of the kenning involves no emendation. Kock’s interpretation (NN §§181, 2367; Skald) as dýra dagrýfir ‘breaker of the life of animals [(lit. ‘life-breaker of animals’) HUNTSMAN]’ involves no emendation either, but has the twofold disadvantage that kennings for ‘huntsman’ are nowhere else attested in the skaldic corpus, and that examples of dagr ‘day’ in the meaning ‘life’ are similarly hard to find, whether as an element in a kenning or elsewhere. It is clear that rýfir ‘breaker’ is an agent noun formed from rjúfa, rýfa ‘break, split’. Kock’s interpretation (‘huntsman’), formed by analogy with fjǫrspillir bǫlverðungar Belja ‘the life-destroyer of the evil-causing troop of Beli [GIANTS > = Þórr]’ (Þjóð Haustl 18/1, 3III) (NN §181) is followed by Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985). The interpretation offered here, ‘generous man’, as well as avoiding emendation, has the advantage of being consistent with what seems to be said of Ragnarr’s son Sigurðr in st. 9/7-8. It may be defended on the grounds that dagr m. ‘day’ can mean by extension ‘light’ in kennings for ‘gold’, where it appears not infrequently as a base-word (see Meissner 233), and that dýra may be understood here as gen. pl. not of dýr n. ‘animal’ but of dýr n. (?) (LP: dýr 2), listed as a heiti for ‘hand’ in Þul Á hendi 1/2III, thus enabling dagr dýra ‘light of hands’ to be interpreted as a gold-kenning, here forming part of the inverted kenning dýra dagrýfir ‘breaker of the light of hands (lit. ‘light-breaker of hands)’, i.e. a breaker-up of gold, a generous man. Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 202), following advice personally communicated by Bugge, also arrives at the interpretation ‘generous man’, but as a result of emending, no doubt for metrical reasons, to dagrífr ‘daylight-tearer’, with ‑rífr taken as an agent noun formed from rífa ‘tear’, and dýr understood as ‘hand’ on the basis just described. Hence: ‘tearer-up of the daylight of hands [(lit. ‘daylight-tearer of hands’) GOLD > GENEROUS MAN]’. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B), followed by Guðni Jónsson (FSGJ), emends to dýja dagrýrir ‘diminisher of the daylight of swamps [(lit. ‘daylight-diminisher of swamps’) GOLD > GENEROUS MAN]’ (cf. LP: dagr 1 and LP: dý and rýrir), where the gold-kenning should be viewed as one of the ‘wave-fire’ type, cf. the Note to 9/6, above, as also in the case of Bugge’s further suggestion, referred to by Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 202-3), of Dyrnar dagrífr ‘tearer-up of the daylight of the river [(lit. ‘daylight-tearer of the river’) GOLD > GENEROUS MAN]’, Dyrn, Durn f. being a river-name (LP: durn and dyrn; Þul Á 3/1III; SnE 1998 I, 125, II, 453; CVC: Dyrn). — [6] at því ‘by that’: CPB, FSN,  Ragn 1891, Skj B, and Skald have af ‘from’ rather than at ‘by’, ‘at’, here; all other eds have at. Ms. 1824b does not offer a clear choice between the two, as the reading is indistinct; either would be acceptable in the context. — [7] hvass ‘keen as he is’: CPB, FSN, and Ragn 1891 retain here the 1824b reading hauss, i.e. hǫss ‘grey, dark’, which makes little sense in the context; all other eds have hvass ‘keen’, an appropriate adj. for Sigurðr Ragnarsson, since it may also be used of keen-seeing eyes (LP: hvass 2; CVC: hvass II. 2). This reading is supported by 147 and is not treated here as an emendation. As Olsen (1906-8, xv-xvi) notes, ‑au- is not infrequent in 1824b as a (mis)spelling of ‑- or -va-. — [8] hrings ‘a ring’: Base-word in kenning for ‘snake’. All eds apart from Vigfusson and Powell (CPB), Rafn (FSN), and Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985), emend here to acc., hring*, but this seems unnecessary: ‘obtain, acquire’ may take the gen. as well as the acc., the former usage perhaps implying the earning of something more or less deserved or (to judge from its frequent occurrence in the sense ‘take sby to wife’) acquisition in the long term; see CVC:  IV.

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. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
  4. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
  5. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
  9. CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
  10. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
  11. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
  12. Olsen, Magnus, ed. 1906-8. Vǫlsunga saga ok Ragnars saga loðbrókar. SUGNL 36. Copenhagen: Møller.
  13. Bugge, Sophus. 1876. ‘Hamðismál: Aus den Vorarbeiten zu einer neuen Ausgabe der sogenannten Sæmundar Edda’. ZDP 7, 377-406.
  14. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
  15. Ragn 1944 = Eskeland, Severin, ed. and trans. 1944. Soga om Ragnar Lodbrok med Kråka-kvædet. Norrøne bokverk 16. 2nd ed. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. [1st ed. 1914].
  16. Ragn 1985 = Örnólfur Thorsson 1985, 101-53.
  17. Ragn 1891 = 2nd edn (pp. 175-224) of Ragn as ed. in Valdimar Ásmundarson 1885-9, I.
  18. Ragn 2003 = Ebel, Uwe, ed. 2003. Ragnars saga loðbrókar. Texte des skandinavischen Mittelalters 4. Vol. II of Ebel 1997-2003.
  19. Internal references
  20. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ragnars saga loðbrókar’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 616. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=81> (accessed 28 March 2024)
  21. David McDougall 2007, ‘ Anonymous, Pétrsdrápa’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 796-844. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1038> (accessed 28 March 2024)
  22. Margaret Clunies Ross 2017, ‘ Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, Haustlǫng’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 431. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1438> (accessed 28 March 2024)
  23. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Á heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 838. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3205> (accessed 28 March 2024)
  24. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 9 (Ragnarr loðbrók, Lausavísur 5)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 642.
  25. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 14 (Eiríkr Ragnarsson, Lausavísur 4)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 653.
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