Anon 732b 1^III

Meyjar ‘girl’

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mær (noun f.; °meyjar, dat. meyju; meyjar): maiden

bað ‘asked for’

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biðja (verb; °biðr; bað, báðu; beðinn (beiþ- Martin¹ 573‡, bỏþ- HákEirsp 661‰, cf. ed. intr. xl)): ask for, order, pray

men ‘of the neck-ring’

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2. men (noun n.; °; dat. menjum): neck-ring < mentýr (noun m.)

kennings

notes

[1] men-Týr ‘the Týr <god> of the neck-ring [MAN]’: Kennings referring to the bearers of precious adornments are unusual in that they may designate both men and women. Those with the determinant men (‘neck-ring, torque, necklace’) apply more commonly to women (Meissner 400, cf. 279, 413). Clunies Ross (1973b, 79-82) has noted that some formulations connecting men with various kinds of rings in Old Norse verse involve puns on ‘anus’ that demean their male referents by identifying them as submissive to sexual penetration. The disparaging content of the stanza as a whole encourages the view that some suggestion of unmanliness might be intended here.

Týr ‘The Týr’

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Týr (noun m.): Týr < mentýr (noun m.)

kennings

notes

[1] men-Týr ‘the Týr <god> of the neck-ring [MAN]’: Kennings referring to the bearers of precious adornments are unusual in that they may designate both men and women. Those with the determinant men (‘neck-ring, torque, necklace’) apply more commonly to women (Meissner 400, cf. 279, 413). Clunies Ross (1973b, 79-82) has noted that some formulations connecting men with various kinds of rings in Old Norse verse involve puns on ‘anus’ that demean their male referents by identifying them as submissive to sexual penetration. The disparaging content of the stanza as a whole encourages the view that some suggestion of unmanliness might be intended here.

mætrar ‘[the hand of] a splendid’

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mætr (adj.; °compar. -ri/-ari, superl. -astr): honoured, respected

sá ‘he’s’

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1. sá (pron.; °gen. þess, dat. þeim, acc. þann; f. sú, gen. þeirrar, acc. þá; n. þat, dat. því; pl. m. þeir, f. þǽ---): that (one), those

notes

[2] sá er fágiætr ‘he’s a rare one’: Lit. ‘he is rarely obtained’. An ironic expression of admiration, perhaps marking the negative insinuation of the antecedent cpd men-Týr ‘the Týr <god> of the neck-ring’ (l. 1). In his early edn, Finnur Jónsson (1886a, 192) translates the phrase as den sjældne mand ‘that rare man’ (cf. LP: fágætr), which he reads in a wholly positive light. In Skj B he reinterprets the phrase as an expression of open disapprobation; the revised translation, han opnår sjælden meget ‘he seldom achieves much’, is incorrect.

er ‘’

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2. er (conj.): who, which, when

notes

[2] sá er fágiætr ‘he’s a rare one’: Lit. ‘he is rarely obtained’. An ironic expression of admiration, perhaps marking the negative insinuation of the antecedent cpd men-Týr ‘the Týr <god> of the neck-ring’ (l. 1). In his early edn, Finnur Jónsson (1886a, 192) translates the phrase as den sjældne mand ‘that rare man’ (cf. LP: fágætr), which he reads in a wholly positive light. In Skj B he reinterprets the phrase as an expression of open disapprobation; the revised translation, han opnår sjælden meget ‘he seldom achieves much’, is incorrect.

fágiætr ‘a rare one’

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fágætr (adj.; °compar. -ari, superl. -astr): [a rare one]

notes

[2] sá er fágiætr ‘he’s a rare one’: Lit. ‘he is rarely obtained’. An ironic expression of admiration, perhaps marking the negative insinuation of the antecedent cpd men-Týr ‘the Týr <god> of the neck-ring’ (l. 1). In his early edn, Finnur Jónsson (1886a, 192) translates the phrase as den sjældne mand ‘that rare man’ (cf. LP: fágætr), which he reads in a wholly positive light. In Skj B he reinterprets the phrase as an expression of open disapprobation; the revised translation, han opnår sjælden meget ‘he seldom achieves much’, is incorrect.

hljótr ‘the receiver’

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hljótr (noun m.): recipient

kennings

notes

[3, 4] hljótr hásætrs ‘the receiver of the rowing-bench [SEAFARER]’: Alternatively, ‘the receiver of the high seat [GUEST]’: The polysemy of hásætr, through its morphological variant hásæti, underlies the cutting humour of the stanza, which associates the experiences of disappointment in love on land and the hardship experienced by a mariner in heavy seas. The lexical ambiguity arises from the homonyms of hár m.: the adj. ‘high’ and the noun ‘oar-port’. While hásætr m. usually designates the ‘high seat’ in a house, allotted to the most honoured guests, the variant form hásæti n. also refers to a humble ‘rowing-bench’ (lit. ‘oar-port seat’) on a boat or ship (see Fritzner: hásæti; cf. Finnur Jónsson 1886a, 191-2; LP: hásætr). There are therefore two possible contrasting referents for the kenning: a ‘guest’ who has been given the seat of honour in a domestic setting on land, and a ‘seafarer’ in his station at the oars. The votar nætr ‘wet nights’ (l. 4) experienced by the subject on the rejection of his wooing seems initially to disambiguate the sense of the kenning, supporting the reading ‘seafarer’. The spurned suitor is figured as having taken his place not in the seat of honour at the home of the woman he desires, but at the rowing-bench. The ambiguity of the expression hljótr hásætrs mockingly invokes the positive outcome for which he had longed, even as it resituates the unsuccessful lover as a weary rower who plies his oar night after night in tumultuous seas. Parallelisms between the emotional pain of lovesickness and the physical hardships of a sea-voyage in skaldic verse conventionally provide the basis for expressions of complaint or steadfastness by a lovelorn poet (e.g. Hfr Lv 26^V (Hallfr 32); KormǪ Lv 35-9^V (Korm 54-8); VíglÞ Lv 9^V (Vígl 12)). Here, however, the figure offers a further opportunity for defamation of the rejected suitor. The allusion to the votar nætr ‘wet nights’ that follow his disappointment develops a superficially innocuous metaphorical connection between grief and surging waves, but the phrase also contains a scurrilous double-entendre (see Note to l. 4 below).

fekk ‘had’

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2. fá (verb; °fǽr; fekk, fengu; fenginn): get, receive

við ‘on account of’

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2. við (prep.): with, against

hryggbrot ‘the refusal’

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hryggbrot (noun n.): [refusal]

notes

[3] hryggbrot ‘rejection’: Lit. ‘back-breaking’. This is an unusual medieval occurrence of an expression well known in Modern Icelandic, referring to the rejection of a lover or suitor (Finnur Jónsson 1886a, 192; Mörður Árnason 2010: hryggbrot; cf. CVC: hryggbrotinn ‘broken-backed’). Here the expression sustains the polysemy of the stanza by simultaneously signifying the figurative hurt inflicted on the suitor, and the toil of the seaman, bent in physical activity (on which see further Note to l. 4 below). Cf. l. 5, which associates the outcomes of the man’s rejection and his nocturnal exertions: var sviftr krafti og konu ‘[He] was deprived of strength and the woman’.

hásætrs ‘of the rowing-bench’

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hásætr (noun n.): [rowing-bench]

kennings

notes

[3, 4] hljótr hásætrs ‘the receiver of the rowing-bench [SEAFARER]’: Alternatively, ‘the receiver of the high seat [GUEST]’: The polysemy of hásætr, through its morphological variant hásæti, underlies the cutting humour of the stanza, which associates the experiences of disappointment in love on land and the hardship experienced by a mariner in heavy seas. The lexical ambiguity arises from the homonyms of hár m.: the adj. ‘high’ and the noun ‘oar-port’. While hásætr m. usually designates the ‘high seat’ in a house, allotted to the most honoured guests, the variant form hásæti n. also refers to a humble ‘rowing-bench’ (lit. ‘oar-port seat’) on a boat or ship (see Fritzner: hásæti; cf. Finnur Jónsson 1886a, 191-2; LP: hásætr). There are therefore two possible contrasting referents for the kenning: a ‘guest’ who has been given the seat of honour in a domestic setting on land, and a ‘seafarer’ in his station at the oars. The votar nætr ‘wet nights’ (l. 4) experienced by the subject on the rejection of his wooing seems initially to disambiguate the sense of the kenning, supporting the reading ‘seafarer’. The spurned suitor is figured as having taken his place not in the seat of honour at the home of the woman he desires, but at the rowing-bench. The ambiguity of the expression hljótr hásætrs mockingly invokes the positive outcome for which he had longed, even as it resituates the unsuccessful lover as a weary rower who plies his oar night after night in tumultuous seas. Parallelisms between the emotional pain of lovesickness and the physical hardships of a sea-voyage in skaldic verse conventionally provide the basis for expressions of complaint or steadfastness by a lovelorn poet (e.g. Hfr Lv 26^V (Hallfr 32); KormǪ Lv 35-9^V (Korm 54-8); VíglÞ Lv 9^V (Vígl 12)). Here, however, the figure offers a further opportunity for defamation of the rejected suitor. The allusion to the votar nætr ‘wet nights’ that follow his disappointment develops a superficially innocuous metaphorical connection between grief and surging waves, but the phrase also contains a scurrilous double-entendre (see Note to l. 4 below).

votar ‘wet’

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vátr (adj.): wet

[4] votar: votr (‘xptr’) 732b

notes

[4] votar nætr ‘wet nights’: The deciphered form votr (ms. ‘xptr’) is emended to restore line-length and provide concord with the f. acc. pl. nætr ‘nights’. Finnur Jónsson (1886a, 191; Skj B) originally adopted the older spelling vátar here, but the fourteenth-century form votar is required by the hálfhnept metre, in which the penultimate word in each line must be monosyllabic or consist of two short syllables. Kock (Skald; Metr. §29) emended votr nætr to an otherwise unattested cpd vátnætr, on the analogy of vátviðri ‘wet weather’, in spite of the shortness of the resultant line, and proposed that the -r in votr was introduced accidentally under the influence of the endings in the adjacent words, ‑sætrs and nætr. Kock’s intervention was scornfully rejected by Finnur Jónsson (1934a, 60), but his revision of vátar to vótar in his re-treatment of the stanza (adopting a form that would represent an intermediate stage in the sound-change vá > vo) is no more metrical than Kock’s neologism. The sense of the expression is ambiguous. Following the interpretation of hljótr hásætrs as ‘seafarer’ it may be read as a reflex of conventional poetic metaphors relating the hardship of a man’s separation from the woman he desires to the physical trials of a mariner lashed by cold waves and spray. Cf. also the hálfhnept stanza Bbreiðv Lv 6^V (Eb 30), in which Bjǫrn Breiðvíkingakappi contrasts his married lover’s bed with the vásbúð ‘hardship’, lit. ‘cold, wet lodgings’ (cf. CVC: vás ‘wetness, toil, fatigue from storm’) which he endures after he is lost in a blizzard on the return trip from a visit to her house. The effect of the reference to ‘wet nights’ in Anon 732b 1 is clearly derisive, however, and Finnur Jónsson (1886a, 191; 1934, 60) interprets the expression as a scathing allusion to the ‘tearful’ (grådfulle) nights experienced by the disappointed lover. In his final edn of the stanza, Finnur Jónsson (1934a, 60) argues that the phrase undermines the man’s masculinity further by implying that he ikke kan holde sit ‘vand’ ‘cannot hold his “water”’. A parallel charge is made in the stanza inscribed in twelfth- or thirteenth-century runes on the Årdal I runestick (Run N 344^VI), which pillories a man who languishes in lovesickness and stundum bleytir beð undir sér ‘sometimes wets his bed’ (NIyR IV, 129-30). It seems equally likely, however, that the expression is supposed to suggest repeated masturbation or involuntary nocturnal emissions, and ridicules the man’s sexual frustration and his lack of any satisfactory opportunity to demonstrate his virility after his rejection (cf. the identification in Gade 1989b, 61-2 of a wry reference to masturbation in the rowing imagery in Bjhít Lv 2^V (BjH 2)).

nætr ‘nights’

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nátt (noun f.; °náttar/nǽtr, dat. -/-u; nǽtr): night

notes

[4] votar nætr ‘wet nights’: The deciphered form votr (ms. ‘xptr’) is emended to restore line-length and provide concord with the f. acc. pl. nætr ‘nights’. Finnur Jónsson (1886a, 191; Skj B) originally adopted the older spelling vátar here, but the fourteenth-century form votar is required by the hálfhnept metre, in which the penultimate word in each line must be monosyllabic or consist of two short syllables. Kock (Skald; Metr. §29) emended votr nætr to an otherwise unattested cpd vátnætr, on the analogy of vátviðri ‘wet weather’, in spite of the shortness of the resultant line, and proposed that the -r in votr was introduced accidentally under the influence of the endings in the adjacent words, ‑sætrs and nætr. Kock’s intervention was scornfully rejected by Finnur Jónsson (1934a, 60), but his revision of vátar to vótar in his re-treatment of the stanza (adopting a form that would represent an intermediate stage in the sound-change vá > vo) is no more metrical than Kock’s neologism. The sense of the expression is ambiguous. Following the interpretation of hljótr hásætrs as ‘seafarer’ it may be read as a reflex of conventional poetic metaphors relating the hardship of a man’s separation from the woman he desires to the physical trials of a mariner lashed by cold waves and spray. Cf. also the hálfhnept stanza Bbreiðv Lv 6^V (Eb 30), in which Bjǫrn Breiðvíkingakappi contrasts his married lover’s bed with the vásbúð ‘hardship’, lit. ‘cold, wet lodgings’ (cf. CVC: vás ‘wetness, toil, fatigue from storm’) which he endures after he is lost in a blizzard on the return trip from a visit to her house. The effect of the reference to ‘wet nights’ in Anon 732b 1 is clearly derisive, however, and Finnur Jónsson (1886a, 191; 1934, 60) interprets the expression as a scathing allusion to the ‘tearful’ (grådfulle) nights experienced by the disappointed lover. In his final edn of the stanza, Finnur Jónsson (1934a, 60) argues that the phrase undermines the man’s masculinity further by implying that he ikke kan holde sit ‘vand’ ‘cannot hold his “water”’. A parallel charge is made in the stanza inscribed in twelfth- or thirteenth-century runes on the Årdal I runestick (Run N 344^VI), which pillories a man who languishes in lovesickness and stundum bleytir beð undir sér ‘sometimes wets his bed’ (NIyR IV, 129-30). It seems equally likely, however, that the expression is supposed to suggest repeated masturbation or involuntary nocturnal emissions, and ridicules the man’s sexual frustration and his lack of any satisfactory opportunity to demonstrate his virility after his rejection (cf. the identification in Gade 1989b, 61-2 of a wry reference to masturbation in the rowing imagery in Bjhít Lv 2^V (BjH 2)).

Krafti ‘of strength’

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1. kraftr (noun m.; °-s, dat. -i/- ; -ar): power

var ‘was’

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2. vera (verb): be, is, was, were, are, am

ok ‘and’

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3. ok (conj.): and, but; also

konu ‘the woman’

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kona (noun f.; °-u; -ur/-r(KlmA1980 116¹¹), gen. pl. kvenna/kvinna): woman

sviftr ‘deprived’

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2. svipta (verb): deprive, snatch

kauði ‘The wretch’

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kauði (noun m.): churl, wretch

var ‘was’

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2. vera (verb): be, is, was, were, are, am

hann ‘he’

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hann (pron.; °gen. hans, dat. honum; f. hon, gen. hennar, acc. hana): he, she, it, they, them...

þess ‘to this’

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1. sá (pron.; °gen. þess, dat. þeim, acc. þann; f. sú, gen. þeirrar, acc. þá; n. þat, dat. því; pl. m. þeir, f. þǽ---): that (one), those

trauðr ‘averse’

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trauðr (adj.): reluctant

slík ‘such’

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2. slíkr (adj.): such

gjöraz ‘get’

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1. gera (verb): do, make

notes

[8] gjöraz færð í skaup mærðar ‘get mocked in verse’: Lit. ‘get brought into the mockery of panegyric’, a nice oxymoron. For the use of mærð as a broad term for skaldic verse, as well as praise in general and encomiastic poetry in particular, see Kreutzer (1977, 49-52).

mál ‘affairs’

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1. mál (noun n.; °-s; -): speech, matter

mjó ‘slight’

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mjór (adj.; °mjóvan; comp. mjór(r)i/mjár(r)i, superl. -str/mjóvastr): slender

notes

[7] mjó ‘slight’: Lit. ‘thin’. Kock (Skald; Metr. §29) suggests emending mjó to mjúk ‘soft, gentle’, in order to restore skothending, although this is less appropriate semantically (cf. Finnur Jónsson 1934a, 60). Emendation of slík ‘such’ (n. nom. pl. adj.) to svá ‘thus’ (adv.) would be a preferable alternative. 

mærðar ‘verse’

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mærð (noun f.): praise

notes

[8] gjöraz færð í skaup mærðar ‘get mocked in verse’: Lit. ‘get brought into the mockery of panegyric’, a nice oxymoron. For the use of mærð as a broad term for skaldic verse, as well as praise in general and encomiastic poetry in particular, see Kreutzer (1977, 49-52).

í ‘in’

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í (prep.): in, into

notes

[8] gjöraz færð í skaup mærðar ‘get mocked in verse’: Lit. ‘get brought into the mockery of panegyric’, a nice oxymoron. For the use of mærð as a broad term for skaldic verse, as well as praise in general and encomiastic poetry in particular, see Kreutzer (1977, 49-52).

skaup ‘mocked’

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2. skaup (noun n.): mockery

notes

[8] gjöraz færð í skaup mærðar ‘get mocked in verse’: Lit. ‘get brought into the mockery of panegyric’, a nice oxymoron. For the use of mærð as a broad term for skaldic verse, as well as praise in general and encomiastic poetry in particular, see Kreutzer (1977, 49-52).

færð ‘’

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2. fœra (verb): bring

notes

[8] gjöraz færð í skaup mærðar ‘get mocked in verse’: Lit. ‘get brought into the mockery of panegyric’, a nice oxymoron. For the use of mærð as a broad term for skaldic verse, as well as praise in general and encomiastic poetry in particular, see Kreutzer (1977, 49-52).