KrákÁsl Lv 10^VIII (Ragn 31)

Höfðum lét of hrundit
hundmörgum gramr undir,
at feigum bör fólka
fingi eldr yfir syngja.
Hvat skyli beð enn betra
böðheggr und sik leggja?
Olli d*ýrr við orðstír
allvaldr jö*furs falli.

Gramr lét hundmörgum höfðum of hrundit undir, at eldr fingi syngja yfir {feigum bör fólka}. Hvat skyli {böðheggr} leggja und sik enn betra beð? D*ýrr allvaldr olli falli jö*furs við orðstír.

The leader allowed a great many heads to be thrust under him, so that fire would have a chance to sing over {the doomed tree of battles} [WARRIOR]. How could {a battle-tree} [WARRIOR] place beneath himself an even better bed? The mighty ruler caused a prince’s death with renown.

Mss: 1824b(74v-75r) (Ragn)

Readings: [2] hund‑: hodd 1824b    [3] at feigum bör fólka: ‘í feiga by foska’ 1824b    [4] eldr: om. 1824b    [6] böðheggr: ‘bęþ havggr’ 1824b    [7] Olli d*ýrr: ‘illa ðeyrr’ 1824b    [8] jö*furs: ‘iorfurrs’ 1824b

Editions: Skj AII, 239-40, Skj BII, 259, Skald II, 134-5, NN §1463; FSN 1, 293 (Ragn ch. 19), Ragn 1891, 219 (ch. 19), Ragn 1906-8, 169, 215-6 (ch. 18), Ragn 1944, 120-1 (ch. 20), FSGJ 1, 279-80 (Ragn ch. 18), Ragn 1985, 148 (ch. 18), Ragn 2003, 62 (ch. 18), CPB II, 351-2.

Context: See Context to Ragn 30.

Notes: [All]: De Vries (1927b, 136-7; cf. 1928c, 125) believes that the story of Eiríkr’s death reflected in Ragn 11-14 influenced that of Hvítserkr’s death as reflected in Ragn 30 and in the present stanza, and more specifically that the image of a bed (of spears) in Ragn 12/3 gave rise to the use of the image of a bed (of human heads) in l. 5 of the present stanza. However, while Ragn 11 and 13 are preserved in RagnSon, which may well reflect a version of Ragn older than that of the X (147) or Y (1824b) versions (see Introduction), Ragn 12, which contains the image of the bed, and Ragn 14 above are not, nor can any trace of Ragn 11-14 be read in the fragmentary and largely illegible ms. 147. — [1-2]: (a) Lét hrundit ‘caused/allowed to be thrust’ is a standard construction with understood vera ‘be’; the emendation to hrundiz ‘(be) thrust’ adopted by some eds is unnecessary. Gramr ‘the leader’ in l. 2 supplies a subject for lét ‘caused/allowed’ in l. 1, referring either to Hvítserkr’s captor or to himself (see Note to ll. 7-8, below); gramr could alternatively be understood as an adj. used substantivally, meaning ‘the angry one’. Undir may be taken as adverbial, ‘underneath, under (him, Hvítserkr)’. (b) Finnur Jónsson (Skj B), Kock (Skald) and Guðni Jónsson (FSGJ) emend lét (l. 1) to létu, 3rd pers. pl. pret. of láta ‘let, allow’, and gramr to acc. sg. gram governed by undir ‘under’, hence ‘they (Hvítserkr’s captors) allowed … heads to be thrust under the leader (Hvítserkr)’. (c) Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985) retains lét ‘(he) allowed’ while emending gramr to acc. sg. gram, i.e. Hvítserkr. The unexpressed subject of lét would be one of Hvítserkr’s captors or indeed the heroic Hvítserkr himself. — [2] hundmörgum ‘a great many’: Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985) treats the two-word reading of the ms. (hodd mörgum) as a cpd word hoddmörgum. This reading attributes to hodd ‘hoard, treasure’ the same meaning as hund-, though there is no support in the poetic corpus for such a sense. All other eds emend to hundmörgum, i.e. dat. pl. of hundmargr ‘very many’, a word which is well attested elsewhere in poetry (LP: hundmargr), and which, with its first element hund-, probably related to hundrað ‘hundred’ (ÍO: 1 hund-; cf. CVC: hundrað), is certainly appropriate in the context. This element provides the line with aðalhending. — [3-4]: Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 215) and all subsequent eds add at ‘so that’ by emendation at the beginning of l. 3, understanding what follows as a subordinate clause of purpose, with eldr ‘fire’ also added by these eds (except for Kock, Skald, who adds the more poetic hyrr ‘fire’) as its subject. Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 215), Eskeland (Ragn 1944), and Ebel (Ragn 2003) emend inf. syngja ‘sing, crackle’ to n. p. p. (supine) sungit, but this is unnecessary; fá in the sense of ‘manage to, have a chance to’ (here in the 3rd pers. sg. pret. subj., fingi, in l. 4), may be used with the inf. as well as the p. p. (cf. Heggstad et al. 2008: fá). As for yfir feigum bör fólka ‘over the doomed tree of battles [WARRIOR]’, the emendations are supplied by Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 215-16, citing Bugge and Finnur Jónsson in the case of dat. sg. feigum bör governed by prep. yfir ‘over’, and Finnur alone in the case of gen. pl. fólka), and by all subsequent eds. — [5] enn ‘even’: The ms. reading ‘en̄’ is taken here (as by Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 215), Eskeland (Ragn 1944) and Ebel (Ragn 2003)), as the intensive adv. en(n) ‘still, even’, used before a comp., hence ‘an even better bed’. It is taken by CPB and others as an archaic form of the def. art. (h)inn, hence ‘the better bed’. — [6] böðheggr ‘a battle-tree [WARRIOR]’: This kenning, formed from heggr m. ‘bird cherry’ and böð f. ‘battle’, supplied through emendation by Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 215-16) (citing Bugge and Finnur Jónsson), and apparently not attested elsewhere (LP: bǫðheggr), is accepted by all subsequent eds including the present. — [7-8]: The ms. reading illa deyr ‘dies badly’ is problematic in the context, and ‘iorfurrs’ appears to be an error. (a) The present edn follows Kock (NN §1463) and Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985) in emending to Olli dýrr ‘caused; noble’ and to jöfurs ‘king’s’, taking dýrr ‘noble’ as qualifying allvaldr ‘sovereign’. (b) Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 215-16) and Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) also print Olli dýrr but emend ‘iorfurrs’ to jöfurr, taking olli jöfurr falli as a separate syntactic unit meaning ‘the king (jöfurr; Hvítserkr’s enemy in the east) caused (his, i.e. Hvítserkr’s) death’, and the remaining words as another separate sentence: allvaldr deyr við orðstír ‘the sovereign (i.e. Hvítserkr) dies with renown’. In this they appear to be followed by Eskeland (Ragn 1944), Guðni Jónsson (FSGJ) and Ebel (Ragn 2003). However, Kock (NN §1463) objects that pres. tense deyr ‘dies’ is at variance with the pret. lét(u) ‘allowed’; that the intricate syntax is inconsistent with the simple style of the Ragn stanzas; and that allvaldr ‘sovereign’ refers to Hvítserkr’s enemy in the east and jöfurs falli ‘a king’s death’ to Hvítserkr’s death. The allvaldr ‘sovereign’ who caused Hvítserkr’s death is possibly Daxon, King of the Hellespont, who according to Saxo (Saxo 2015, I, ix. 4. 29, pp. 654-5) attacked and defeated Withsercus. The attack was a treacherous one, however, which hardly qualifies Daxon for the epithet dýrr ‘noble’, and the possibility remains that the allvaldr is Hvítserkr himself, since Hvítserkr/Withsercus in effect causes his own death by choosing the manner of it (see Notes to Ragn 30, above). (c) Valdimar Ásmundarson (Ragn 1891) emends to illan and to jöfurs, hence allvaldr deyr við illan orðstír ‘the sovereign dies with ill renown’, but leaving jöfurs falli hardly accounted for.

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. 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.
7. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
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. ÍO = Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon. 1989. Íslensk orðsifjabók. Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans.
10. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
11. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
12. 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].
13. Vries, Jan de. 1927b. ‘Die ostnordische Überlieferung der Sage von Ragnar Lodbrok’. APS, 115-49.
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. Saxo 2015 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2015. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes. Trans. Peter Fisher. Oxford Medieval Texts. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
17. Ragn 2003 = Ebel, Uwe, ed. 2003. Ragnars saga loðbrókar. Texte des skandinavischen Mittelalters 4. Vol. II of Ebel 1997-2003.
18. Internal references
19. 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 2 May 2024)
20. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ragnars sona þáttr’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 777. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=85> (accessed 2 May 2024)
21. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 11 (Eiríkr Ragnarsson, Lausavísur 1)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 648.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 30 (Kráka/Áslaug Sigurðardóttir, Lausavísur 9)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 684.