Anon (Ragn) 8VIII (Ragn 38)
Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 38 (Anonymous Lausavísur, Lausavísur from Ragnars saga loðbrókar 8)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 699.
var ‘was’
(not checked:)
2. vera (verb): be, is, was, were, are, am
fyrir ‘ago’
(not checked:)
fyrir (prep.): for, before, because of
löngu ‘long’
(not checked:)
langr (adj.; °compar. lengri, superl. lengstr): long
leið ‘their way’
(not checked:)
leið (noun f.; °-ar, dat. -u/-; -ir/-ar): path, way
[2] er í leið megir: er leið heldu 2845
megir ‘the sons’
(not checked:)
mǫgr (noun m.; °; megir, acc. mǫgu): son, boy
[2] er í leið megir: er leið heldu 2845
Heklings ‘of Heklingr’
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heklingr (noun m.; °; -ar): °(I) heklinger (øgenavn for tilhængere af politisk gruppe)
[3] Heklings fóru: heldr hundmargir 2845
fóru ‘went’
(not checked:)
fara (verb; ferr, fór, fóru, farinn): go, travel
[3] Heklings fóru: heldr hundmargir 2845
hlum ‘with oar’
(not checked:)
hlummr (noun m.; °; -ar): oar-handle < hlumtunga (noun f.): oar-handle tongue
[4] hlumtungum: ‘hlumtvaghvm’ 1824b, ‘Hæ̋klíngs (rr)eru’(?) 2845
kennings
hlumtungum‘with oar-handle tongues ’
= OAR BLADES
with oar-handle tongues → OAR BLADES
notes
[4] hlumtungum ‘with oar-handle tongues [OAR BLADES]’: The letter emended here to <n> and read as <a> (see ‘hlumtvaghvm’, Readings, above), is unclear; Olsen (Ragn 1906-08, 174) in fact read it as <n>, also noting, however, that it was unclear. Emending to hlumtungum (with Rafn (FSN) and Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985)) and interpreting it as dat. pl. of *hlumtunga ‘oar-handle tongue’ gives reasonable sense as a kenning for ‘oar-blades, oars’. That oars are in question here is further suggested by the occurrence of the 3rd pers. pl. pret. form reru ‘rowed’ in the corresponding part of the 2845 text. Reading hlumtungum leaves the line with one syllable short of the four that would be expected in a fornyrðislag line; a purist might wish to emend to hlummatungum ‘tongues of oar-handles’. Other suggested emendations are unconvincing and/or involve more drastic emendation: hlunnatungum ‘tongues of launching-rollers [SHIPS? OARS?]’; hlunnalungum ‘ships of launching-rollers’; or hlunna viggjum ‘horses of launching-rollers [SHIPS]’. Skj B and Skald follow the 2845 reading of this line, with Hœklings/Hæklings, as shown above.
tungum ‘handle tongues’
(not checked:)
tunga (noun f.; °-u; -ur): tongue, language < hlumtunga (noun f.): oar-handle tongue
[4] hlumtungum: ‘hlumtvaghvm’ 1824b, ‘Hæ̋klíngs (rr)eru’(?) 2845
kennings
hlumtungum‘with oar-handle tongues ’
= OAR BLADES
with oar-handle tongues → OAR BLADES
notes
[4] hlumtungum ‘with oar-handle tongues [OAR BLADES]’: The letter emended here to <n> and read as <a> (see ‘hlumtvaghvm’, Readings, above), is unclear; Olsen (Ragn 1906-08, 174) in fact read it as <n>, also noting, however, that it was unclear. Emending to hlumtungum (with Rafn (FSN) and Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985)) and interpreting it as dat. pl. of *hlumtunga ‘oar-handle tongue’ gives reasonable sense as a kenning for ‘oar-blades, oars’. That oars are in question here is further suggested by the occurrence of the 3rd pers. pl. pret. form reru ‘rowed’ in the corresponding part of the 2845 text. Reading hlumtungum leaves the line with one syllable short of the four that would be expected in a fornyrðislag line; a purist might wish to emend to hlummatungum ‘tongues of oar-handles’. Other suggested emendations are unconvincing and/or involve more drastic emendation: hlunnatungum ‘tongues of launching-rollers [SHIPS? OARS?]’; hlunnalungum ‘ships of launching-rollers’; or hlunna viggjum ‘horses of launching-rollers [SHIPS]’. Skj B and Skald follow the 2845 reading of this line, with Hœklings/Hæklings, as shown above.
um ‘’
(not checked:)
1. um (prep.): about, around
salta ‘the salt’
(not checked:)
saltr (adj.): [salt, salty]
kennings
salta slóð birtinga;‘the salt track of sea-trout; ’
= SEA
the salt track of sea-trout; → SEA
slóð ‘track’
(not checked:)
slóð (noun f.; °-ar; -ir): path, track
kennings
salta slóð birtinga;‘the salt track of sea-trout; ’
= SEA
the salt track of sea-trout; → SEA
birtinga ‘of sea-trout’
(not checked:)
birtingr (noun m.; °-s, dat -i/-): [sea-trout]
kennings
salta slóð birtinga;‘the salt track of sea-trout; ’
= SEA
the salt track of sea-trout; → SEA
þá ‘then’
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2. þá (adv.): then
varð ‘became’
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1. verða (verb): become, be
ek ‘I’
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ek (pron.; °mín, dat. mér, acc. mik): I, me
þessa ‘of this’
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1. sjá (pron.; °gen. þessa dat. þessum/þeima, acc. þenna; f. sjá/þessi; n. þetta, dat. þessu/þvísa; pl. þessir): this
notes
[7-8] þessa þorps ‘of this habitation’: Evans (1986, 95-7) surveys the various senses that have been proposed for the word þorp as it occurs in Hávm 50/1-2 (NK 24; cf. Evans 1986, 49): Hrørnar þǫll, | sú er stendr þorpi á ‘a pine-tree standing in an area of human habitation withers’. Among the senses proposed is ‘mound’ (cf. LP: þorp 2), which might seem to be suggested by the prose context of the present stanza as it occurs in Hálf, where a burial-mound is mentioned; there is nothing in the stanza itself, however, to justify this interpretation, nor does the word þorp occur in the accompanying prose, either in Hálf or in Ragn. Evans plumps for the meaning ‘habitation’ as being the usual sense of the word in Old Norse (and, in the Hávm context, the one that makes most sense). This interpretation has been adopted here.
notes
[7-8] þessa þorps ‘of this habitation’: Evans (1986, 95-7) surveys the various senses that have been proposed for the word þorp as it occurs in Hávm 50/1-2 (NK 24; cf. Evans 1986, 49): Hrørnar þǫll, | sú er stendr þorpi á ‘a pine-tree standing in an area of human habitation withers’. Among the senses proposed is ‘mound’ (cf. LP: þorp 2), which might seem to be suggested by the prose context of the present stanza as it occurs in Hálf, where a burial-mound is mentioned; there is nothing in the stanza itself, however, to justify this interpretation, nor does the word þorp occur in the accompanying prose, either in Hálf or in Ragn. Evans plumps for the meaning ‘habitation’ as being the usual sense of the word in Old Norse (and, in the Hávm context, the one that makes most sense). This interpretation has been adopted here.
ráðandi ‘the ruler’
(not checked:)
ráðandi (noun m.; °-a; ráðendr): ruler
[8] ráðandi: so 2845, ‘fadandhe’ 1824b
Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses
Two versions of this stanza exist, in the texts of two separate sagas, Ragn and Hálf. In Ragn the followers of Ǫgmundr inn danski ‘the Dane’ go ashore on the island of Samsø and find an ancient trémaðr ‘wooden man’, who speaks three stanzas. In this, the first of them, he claims to have occupied his present position ever since the time of a naval expedition in the distant past. In ch. 2 of Hálf a prospective settler on his way to Iceland spends the night near where King Ǫgvaldr of Rogaland had been buried in a mound after he had been defeated in battle by a viking named Hæklingr, and the traveller hears this stanza (Hálf 2) spoken from within the mound, presumably by the ghost of Ǫgvaldr.
A stanza that is almost certainly a variant of this one occurs in ch. 2 of Hálf (as preserved in ms. 2845; see Hálf 1981, 170-1 and n. 13). A normalised version of this stanza (= Hálf 2) is presented here (with emendations of Seelow (Hálf 1981, 109) adopted in ll. 2-3) and discussed in the following Notes:
Þat var fyr löngu, er leiðangr
höldar hundmargir Hæklings reru.
Sigldu um salta slóð birtinga;
þá varð ek þessa þorps ráðandi.
Prose order: Þat var fyr löngu, er hundmargir höldar Hæklings reru leiðangr. Sigldu um salta slóð birtinga; þá varð ek ráðandi þessa þorps. Translation: It was long ago when innumerable warriors of Hæklingr were rowing the naval levy. They sailed over the salt track of sea-trout [SEA]; then I became the ruler of this habitation. — Most previous commentators have seen this fornyrðislag stanza as not belonging originally to Ragn or together with the two stanzas that follow in the same metre. An exception is Poole (1991, 20-2), who argues that the three stanzas show ‘excellent narrative progression’ and that the second and third stanzas ‘cannot stand independent of the first’. A potential problem with this view is posed by the name-forms Heklingr (1824b), Hæklingr (possibly Hœklingr) (2845), which are unique to the immediate contexts in which they occur in these mss and cannot certainly be regarded (as Olsen, Ragn 1906-8, 221, believed they could) as byforms of Hœkingr (possibly Hækingr), which is recorded in a þula (Þul Sea-kings 1/3III) as a sea-king’s name; hœkingr is also recorded in Þul Sverða 7/7III as a heiti for ‘sword’ (in previous eds of this stanza, CPB is the only one to have the form Hœkings, without the <l>). If the forms with and without the <l> cannot be regarded as different forms of the same name, then the megir Heklings ‘sons (or kinsmen) of Heklingr’ of ll. 2-3 cannot necessarily be taken as a kenning for ‘seafarers, (sea)warriors’, and the possibility must be considered that Heklingr/Hæklingr is the name of a specific person, for all that the phrase heldr hundmargir ‘excessively numerous’ in 2845 strongly suggests a military force rather than the sons or descendants of one man. However, the prose context of the stanza in Hálf mentions a viking named Hæklingr who defeated King Ǫgvaldr in battle. If the name is that of a specific person, the stanza would seem to be out of place in Ragn, where no character of that name appears. While there is nothing else in the stanza itself that is particularly inconsistent with its occurrence in Ragn, and while the episode of which it forms part in H́álf has little connection with the remainder of that saga (Hálf 1981, 109), it seems on balance safest to regard the stanza as being more appropriately placed in Hálf than in Ragn. That said, it must further be noted that, as Seelow has shown (Hálf 1981, 164-5), the chapter of Hálf in which the stanza occurs is one of those that are unlikely to have formed part of that saga until Hálf acquired its final form in the C14th, though the episode containing the stanza may well have had an independent oral existence earlier. This means that if it was borrowed from Hálf into Ragn (where it occurs only in the Y-redaction, preserved in 1824b), the borrowing must have taken place after the time of the Y-redactor (second half of the C13th) and may even be the work of the scribe of 1824b (c.1400). Alternatively, the Y-redactor may have acquired it from a source other than Hálf. — [2-4]: Skj B and Skald follow 1824b in l. 2 (er í leið megir ‘when on their way sons …’) but in l. 3 follow 2845 (heldr hundmargir), switching back to 1824b for l. 4 (Hœklings fóru), though Skj B reads Hœklings here (while Skald has Hæklings), and both read fóru ‘went’ for 2845’s ‘rreru’ (reru ‘rowed’; the initial letter of this latter word is unclear in 2845 and could be an <f>, see Hálf 1981, 170 n. 13).
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