EirRagn Lv 4^VIII (Ragn 14)

Hlakkar hrafn of höfði
hér mínu nú sýnu;
krefr unda valr augna
ósynju hér minna.
Veiztu, ef hrafn ór höfði
høggr brúnsteina mína,
launar unda valr egðis
illa marga fylli.

Sýnu hlakkar nú hrafn hér of höfði mínu; hér krefr {valr unda} ósynju augna minna. Veiztu, ef hrafn høggr {brúnsteina mína} ór höfði, launar {valr unda} illa {marga fylli egðis}.

A raven is now clearly shrieking here above my head; {the falcon of wounds} [RAVEN] is here at an ill-fated hour claiming my eyes. You know, if a raven hacks {my brow-stones} [EYES] from my head, {the falcon of wounds} [RAVEN] will be paying a poor reward {for many a full meal of the wolf} [CORPSE].

Mss: 1824b(64r-v) (Ragn)

Readings: [2] sýnu: sína 1824b    [4] ósynju: ‘o sína’ 1824b;    minna: mína 1824b    [7] egðis: ‘ekils’ 1824b

Editions: Skj AII, 235, Skj BII, 255, Skald II, 132, NN §§1456, 2368, 3245; FSN 1, 263 (Ragn ch. 9), Ragn 1891, 196-7 (ch. 9), Ragn 1906-8, 140, 205 (ch. 10), Ragn 1944, 66-7 (ch. 10), FSGJ 1, 250 (Ragn ch. 10), Ragn 1985, 124-5 (ch. 10), Ragn 2003, 35-6 (ch. 10), CPB II, 348.

Context: After being placed on the spears and seeing a raven flying by, Eiríkr recites this stanza just before dying his heroic death.

Notes: [All]: This stanza is comparable in sentiment to Ket 34, where, however, it is the eagle rather than the raven that functions as a bird of battle; see also Jesch (2002b). The stanza shows a striking degree of parallelism, with its near-repetition in l. 5 hrafn ór höfði ‘… a raven … from my head’ of hrafn of höfði ‘… a raven … over my head’, occurring in the same position in l. 1, the corresponding line of the first half-stanza; and with the repetition from l. 3 of the kenning valr unda ‘the falcon of wounds [RAVEN]’ in l. 7, the corresponding line of the second half-stanza, also in the same position. The problematic readings in ll. 2 and 4, and also in l. 7, to be discussed below, unfortunately obfuscate whatever poetic or rhetorical effect this parallelism may originally have had. — [1-4]: The present ed. follows Kock’s interpretation of this helmingr (see (c) below). (a) Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 205) retains hrafn in l. 1, emends sína to steina (gen. pl.) ‘stones, jewels’ in l. 2, and ‘osína’ to ósynju, f. dat. sg. ‘groundlessly, wantonly’, in l. 4, thus giving: ‘a raven is shrieking here over my head; the falcon of wounds [RAVEN] is now wantonly claiming the jewels of (which) my eyes (consist) (i.e. my eye-jewels (augnasteina) [EYES])’. (b) Finnur Jónsson in Skj B adopts Valdimar Ásmundarson’s emendations and interpretation of ll. 1-2 (hrafn to már ‘seagull’ in l. 1 and sína to sára ‘of wounds’ in l. 2), but in l. 4 also emends ‘o sína’ to ósynju, thus giving as the meaning of ll. 3-4: ‘the falcon of wounds [RAVEN] is here gratuitously claiming my eyes’. (Finnur’s alternative reading (in Skj A II n. 4) of sína in l. 2 as ‘sma’ (smá ‘small’) is questionable in itself and makes for an unsatisfactory reading of the line, both semantically and metrically.) (c) Kock (Skald; NN §§2368, 3245), evidently accepting Finnur’s reading of ll. 3-4, retains hrafn in l. 1 and emends sína in l. 2 to sýnu n. dat. sg. of sýnn ‘evident’, thus interpreting the first sentence as ‘a raven is now clearly shrieking here above my head’. However, sýnu, when used as an intensifying adv., usually appears with comparatives or superlatives, and that is not the case here (cf. LP: sýnn; Heggstad et al. 2008: sýnn 1, with examples at the end of both entries). (d) Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985) adopts the emendation ósynju ‘unrightfully’ in l. 4, but emends sína in l. 2 to sinna, gen. pl. of refl. poss. adj. sinn ‘his (own)’, taking it as complement to augna, gen. pl. object of krefr, and so producing the meaning ‘the falcon of wounds [RAVEN] is now unrightfully claiming my eyes as its own’. — [6] brúnsteina ‘brow-stones [EYES]’: Yet another example of brúnsteinn as an eye-kenning; cf. sts 9/2 and 10/3, above. — [7]: This line is hypermetrical, and most eds have dealt with it by (a) converting the ms’s unda valr to a cpd undvalr ‘wound-hawk’ (so Olsen, Eskeland, Ebel) or unnvalr ‘wave-horse’ (Skj B; Skald) and (b) by emending the ms.’s ‘ekils’, which, with its short first syllable, would not be expected in the cadence of a dróttkvætt line (see Note to ll. 7, 8 below). — [7] launar ‘will be paying a … reward’: For the many previous eds who emend leyni ‘conceals’ (3rd pers. sg. pres. subj.), to launi ‘pays a reward’ in Ragn 12/8, above, the occurrence here of the verb launa ‘reward’ is a justification for that emendation, which, however, is not accepted in the present edn. See the Note to 12/5-8, above. — [7, 8] marga fylli egðis ‘many a full meal of the wolf [CORPSE]’: The ms. reading ‘ekils’ (gen. sg. of *ekill ‘driver’?) has been emended to Ekkils (from Ekkill, name of a sea-king, Þul Sækonunga 2/3^III) by earlier eds, except for CPB, Skj B and Skald. Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 205) regards Ekkils as a subjective gen. (NS §124), combining with marga fylli (l. 8) to give the sense ‘many a full meal of (i.e. provided by) Ekkill’, but this is unconvincing, given the connection of sea-king names with kennings for ships and the sea rather than, as seems probable here, with the activities of ravens in connection with carnage. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) emends ‘ekils’ to ýti, dat. sg. of ýtir ‘pusher’, taking it as dat. object of launar (l. 7) with hrafn (l. 5) as subject, thus: ‘it (the raven) rewards the pusher of the wave-horse [SHIP > SEAFARER] (i.e. me, Eiríkr) poorly for many a full meal’. Kock (Skald) supplies eggi, dat. sg. of the unrecorded *eggir ‘egger on, encourager’ in place of ýti, otherwise letting it have the same meaning and place in the sentence as Finnur. The present ed. proposes the emendation of ‘ekils’ to egðis ‘of the eagle’ (see Þul Ara 1/5^III) or ‘of the wolf’ (see Þul Vargs 1/9^III), cf. LP: egðir 2. The latter meaning is probably preferable in the context, given the heavy emphasis in this stanza on a bird of battle in the form of a raven. Thus: ‘the falcon of wounds [RAVEN] will be paying a poor reward for many a full meal of the wolf [CORPSE]’. The many corpses are to be understood as having been served up by Eiríkr, the speaker of the stanza, as food for beasts of battle in the course of his warlike career. 

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj A = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15a. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. A: Tekst efter håndskrifterne. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1967. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
4. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
5. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
6. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
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. 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.
9. NS = Nygaard, Marius. 1906. Norrøn syntax. Kristiania (Oslo): Aschehoug. Rpt. 1966.
10. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
11. Jesch, Judith. 2002b. ‘Eagles, Ravens and Wolves: Beasts of Battle, Symbols of Victory and Death’. In Jesch 2002a, 251-80.
12. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
13. 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].
14. Ragn 1985 = Örnólfur Thorsson 1985, 101-53.
15. Ragn 1891 = 2nd edn (pp. 175-224) of Ragn as ed. in Valdimar Ásmundarson 1885-9, I.
16. Ragn 2003 = Ebel, Uwe, ed. 2003. Ragnars saga loðbrókar. Texte des skandinavischen Mittelalters 4. Vol. II of Ebel 1997-2003.
17. Internal references
18. 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 19 April 2024)
19. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Sækonunga heiti 2’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 680.
20. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Vargs 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. 902. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3216> (accessed 19 April 2024)
21. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ara 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. 949. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3240> (accessed 19 April 2024)
22. Beatrice La Farge (ed.) 2017, ‘Ketils saga hœngs 34 (Framarr víkingakonungr, Lausavísur 1)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 587.
23. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 12 (Eiríkr Ragnarsson, Lausavísur 2)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 649.