KrákÁsl Lv 6^VIII (Ragn 17)

Kaga létu mik mínir
mávangs synir löngum;
ér eruð heim ok heiman
húsgangs meðalfærir.
Rögnvaldr tók at rjóða
rönd í gumna blóði;
hann kom yngstr til Óðins
ógndjarfr sona minna.

Synir mínir létu mik kaga {mávangs} löngum; ér eruð meðalfærir húsgangs heim ok heiman. Rögnvaldr tók at rjóða rönd í blóði gumna; hann, yngstr sona minna, kom ógndjarfr til Óðins.

My sons let me gaze at {the gull-field} [SEA] for a long time; you are hardly capable of begging from house to house. Rǫgnvaldr proceeded to redden a shield in the blood of men; he, the youngest of my sons, went, bold in battle, to Óðinn.

Mss: 1824b(65r), 147(104r) (Ragn)

Readings: [1] Kaga létu mik mínir: ‘(Ka)ga (l)ietu m(i)g min(ir)’(?) 147    [2] mávangs: ‘(ma)g(v) […]gs’(?) 147    [3] heim: ‘(heim)’(?) 147;    ok: af 1824b, ‘[…]’ 147;    heiman: ‘h[…]’ 147    [4] húsgangs: ‘hvsgafs’ 1824b, ‘hus(g)[…]’(?) 147;    meðalfærir: ‘[…](dal fæ) rir’(?) 147    [5] Rögnvaldr: ‘rraug[…]valldur’ 147;    rjóða: ‘ri(o)d(a)’(?) 147    [6] rönd í gumna blóði: ‘[…] gumna bl[…]’ 147    [7] hann kom yngstr til Óðins: ‘(hann) […] odin(s)’(?) 147    [8] ógndjarfr sona minna: ‘ogn dia[…]ur (so)na (m)inna’(?) 147

Editions: Skj AII, 236, Skj BII, 255-6, Skald II, 133; FSN 1, 265 (Ragn ch. 9), Ragn 1891, 198 (ch. 9), Ragn 1906-8, 142, 207 (ch. 10), Ragn 1944, 68, 70-71 (ch. 10), FSGJ 1, 252-3 (Ragn ch. 10), Ragn 1985, 126 (ch. 10), Ragn 2003, 38 (ch. 10), CPB II, 351.

Context: With her three-year-old son Sigurðr in tow, Áslaug receives the news of Rǫgnvaldr’s death from her newly returned sons Ívarr, Bjǫrn and Hvítserkr. She implies criticism of them for keeping her waiting so long for the news, and compares them unfavourably, also by implication, with Rǫgnvaldr, the youngest of her sons at the time of his heroic death at Hvítabær.

Notes: [1-4]: Among previous eds, only Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 207) (perhaps followed by Eskeland (Ragn 1944) is clear in taking heiman ‘from home’ in l. 3 together with kaga ‘gaze (at), watch’, in l. 1, in the sense of ‘watch … from home’. All others (including those of CPB, who, however, leave ll. 2-4 partly blank) seem to treat ll. 1-2 as syntactically independent, as does the present ed. Rafn (FSN) follows 1824b in ll. 3-4, while Valdimar Ásmundarson (Ragn 1891) emends heim af in l. 3 to harmi at and ‘hvsgafs’ in l. 4 to húsgangs ‘begging from house to house’; neither’s text lends itself to satisfactory interpretation. Olsen takes kaga ‘gaze at’, as transitive, with its object mávangs ‘the gull-field [SEA]’ in l. 2 in the gen. He emends 1824b’s heim af in l. 3 to heima ‘at home’, understanding it to modify the verb eruð immediately preceding it, while taking heiman to modify kaga in l. 1, as said; he also emends to húsgangs in l. 4, thus: ‘my sons let me gaze at the sea for a long time from home, (while) you, at home, are only moderately capable (meðalfærir, i.e. hardly even capable) of begging from house to house’. Olsen further considers, without committing himself to it, the alternative possibility of emending heim af in l. 3 to hreina, gen. pl. of hreinn m. ‘reindeer’ and taking it as the base-word in a kenning for ‘ships’, with mávangs ‘the gull-field’s’, ‘sea’s’, as determinant, and forming the gen. object of kaga, thus producing: ‘my sons let me gaze at the reindeer of the gull-field [SEA > SHIPS] for a long time from home …’. Finnur Jónsson’s emendation of af in l. 3 to ok ‘and’ (Skj B) gives very satisfactory sense in the context (heim ok heiman ‘homewards and from home’), intensifying the idea of ‘from house to house’ implicit in the emended form húsgangs in l. 4, which Finnur also adopts. His text of ll. 3-4 is followed by Kock (Skald), Guðni Jónsson (FSGJ), Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985) and also by the present ed. — [3] ér ‘you’: Lit. ‘you (pl.)’. Both mss have the earlier form ér of the 2nd pers. pl. nom. ‘you’; cf. Ragn 15/1 and 18/4. — [4] húsgangs ‘of begging from house to house’: Húsgangr m. is a legal term, found in the final subsection (§143) of the Ómagabálkr ‘Dependents’ section’ in the Codex Regius of Grágás (Grg Ib, 28), and translated by Dennis et al. (1980-2000, II, 52) as ‘house-to-house vagrancy’. Áslaug’s words are insulting, contributing to her purpose of taunting her sons into taking revenge. — [7] yngstr ‘the youngest’: At the time of her reciting this stanza Áslaug’s youngest son is in fact the three-year-old Sigurðr ormr-í-auga, who according to the saga prose (Ragn 1906-8, 142) is at her side as she does so. The reference here is to Rǫgnvaldr, who died before Sigurðr was born, and was her youngest son at the time of his death. See the Contexts of Ragn 7-8, above. The reference til Óðins ‘to Óðinn’ is to Rǫgnvaldr joining the einherjar, Óðinn’s warriors in Valhǫll, after his heroic death (cf. SnE 2005, 21).

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. 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.
6. Grg = Grágás.
7. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
8. SnE 2005 = Snorri Sturluson. 2005. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2nd edn. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
9. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
10. 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].
11. Ragn 1985 = Örnólfur Thorsson 1985, 101-53.
12. Ragn 1891 = 2nd edn (pp. 175-224) of Ragn as ed. in Valdimar Ásmundarson 1885-9, I.
13. Ragn 2003 = Ebel, Uwe, ed. 2003. Ragnars saga loðbrókar. Texte des skandinavischen Mittelalters 4. Vol. II of Ebel 1997-2003.
14. Internal references
15. 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 26 April 2024)
16. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Óðins nǫfn’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 731. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3228> (accessed 26 April 2024)
17. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 15 (Kráka/Áslaug Sigurðardóttir, Lausavísur 5)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 655.
18. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 37 (Anonymous Lausavísur, Lausavísur from Ragnars saga loðbrókar 7)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 697.
19. Not published: do not cite ()