Anon Stríðk 1^III

Þess sitk, þægra hnossa
Þrúðr, ávalt, in prúða,
hverjum leik á hráka
hnugginn Gleipnis tuggu,
at urðhœings jarðar
ýtendr fyr mér nýtir
greipar svells ins gjalla
Gefn stríðkera nefni.

{In prúða Þrúðr þægra hnossa}, sitk ávalt, hnugginn hverjum leik, á {hráka {Gleipnis tuggu}} þess, at {nýtir ýtendr {jarðar {urðhœings}}} nefni {Gefn {ins gjalla svells greipar}} {stríðkera} fyr mér.

{Beautiful Þrúðr <goddess> of delightful ornaments} [WOMAN], I live always, deprived of every pleasure, in {the spittle {of Gleipnir’s <magic fetter’s> mouthful}} [= Fenrir > = Ván (ván ‘hope’)] of this, that {capable givers {of the earth {of the stone-heap salmon}}} [SERPENT > GOLD > GENEROUS MEN] may name {the Gefn <= Freyja> {of the ringing ice of the hand}} [SILVER > WOMAN] {a grief-prick} [WIDOW] in my presence.

Mss: 2368ˣ(116), 743ˣ(88r), 758ˣ(26v) (LaufE)

Readings: [3] hverjum: at hverjum 758ˣ;    leik: so all others, ‘lick’ or ‘leck’ 2368ˣ    [4] hnugginn: hnuggin 743ˣ    [5] urðhœings: ‘vr hængz’ 2368ˣ, ‘vrhængs’ 743ˣ, ‘urhængs’ 758ˣ    [7] gjalla: ‘[…]’ 758ˣ    [8] stríðkera: ‘[…]’ 758ˣ;    nefni: nafni 2368ˣ, 743ˣ, ‘[…]’ 758ˣ

Editions: Skj AI, 590, Skj BI, 591, Skald I, 288, NN §§2196B anm., 2495C, 3246; SnE 1848-87, II, 630, III, 194-5, LaufE 1979, 38, 375.

Context: See Introduction. The stanza is introduced with the words svá segir í Stríðkeravísum ‘so it says in Stríðkeravísur’.

Notes: [All]: The first helmingr of this complex stanza has to be understood as a direct address to a woman, in which the speaker claims he is deprived of ‘pleasure’ (leikr lit. ‘sport’), to be understood in the sense of sexual pleasure (cf. Anon (SnE) 2/2 where the noun is used in the same sense). He then expresses the wish that people might declare in his hearing that the woman in whom he is interested is a widow, thus presumably encouraging him in the hope that she might be available to him as a partner (see further Note to l. 8 stríðkera). — [2] in prúða Þrúðr ‘beautiful Þrúðr <goddess>’: Lit. ‘the beautiful Þrúðr’. — [3, 4] hráka Gleipnis tuggu ‘the spittle of Gleipnir’s <magic fetter’s> mouthful [= Fenrir > = Ván <river> (ván ‘hope’)]’: Magnús Ólafsson explains this ofljóst kenning in the prose immediately following the stanza (LaufE 1979, 375) and also alludes to it in a note to a poem he sent to Arngrímur Jónsson (LaufE 1979, 458 n. 4). Gleipnir is the name of a magic fetter with which the gods bound the wolf Fenrir (Gylf, SnE 2005, 27-9). They placed a sword between the captive wolf’s upper and lower jaws, and from his open mouth a stream of saliva ran out: þat er á sú er Ván heitir ‘that is the river called Ván’. As the common noun ván means ‘hope’, the whole kenning is ofljóst for this concept and the main clause of the helmingr is to be understood as sitk ávalt á ván þess, at … ‘I live always in hope of this, that …’. Ván is named in Grí 28/8 among mythic rivers, and listed in Þul Á 1/3. — [5] urðhœings ‘of the stone-heap salmon [SERPENT]’: The mss read urhængs, which does not make sense. Árni Magnússon added ‘ur urd’ above ‘vr’ (which he had underlined) in 743ˣ, and subsequent eds have adopted the hap. leg. cpd urðhœings, in which the first element is urð ‘heap of stones’; the salmon of the heap of stones is a snake; together with jarðar ‘of the earth’ a gold-kenning is formed, and the nýtir ýtendr ‘capable givers’ (l. 6) of gold are generous men. On the metrically necessary form urðhœings rather than urðhœngs, see Nj 1875-89, II, 315-16. — [6] fyr mér ‘in my presence’: Lit. ‘before me’. Some sort of formal declaration of the woman’s status as a widow seems to be envisaged. — [8] stríðkera ‘a grief-prick [WIDOW]’: The meaning of this hap. leg. cpd and the way in which it can mean ‘widow’, as Magnús Ólafsson indicated it must in his prose commentary to Stríðk (LaufE 1979, 375), has been a source of puzzlement to some eds. Magnús understood the word keri as like hæll ‘heel’ in Egill Lv 48/5-6^V (Eg 132), in that each had a double sense and that sense included the meaning ‘widow’ in each case. That is clearly why he followed the citation of Egill’s lines with Stríðk. He seems to have construed kera with jarðar ‘of the earth’ (l. 5), however, which cannot be correct, as LP (1860): stríðkeri points out. LP: stríðkeri confirms the sense of stríðkeri as parallel to hæll (‘heel’ and ‘widow whose husband has been slain’), but Finnur Jónsson admits he does not understand how this can be. Other compounds with ‑keri (cf. AEW: keri 2, 3) as second element indicate that this word, whose basic sense seems to be ‘pointed instrument, beam, probe’, comes to refer to a man or male creature; cf. gjaldkeri ‘steward’, sælkeri ‘wealthy man’, rjúpkeri ‘cock ptarmigan’ (Kock NN §2196B anm. comes to the same conclusion). The same must apply to stríðkeri, even though the cpd refers to a woman not a man. AEW: hæll 3 suggests that hæll got its poetic meaning ‘widow’ from skaldic word-play on homonyms (see Þul Kvenna I l/7 Note), but an alternative explanation that may help one to understand how stríðkeri can also mean ‘widow’ may be that when the noun hæll refers to a widow in poetry, it arguably depends on the prose sense ‘pole, pillar’, which this word has independently of the sense ‘heel’ (though ‘heel’ meaning the projecting hinder part of the foot also refers to a protruding part of the body). The two (or three) words are thus homonyms, whether or not they derive from the same or different roots, upon which opinion is divided (AEW: hæll 1, 2 and 3). Keri also has a base meaning of ‘pole, stick, pointed instrument’, just as hæll does. It also seems likely that keri has the extended sense of ‘male sexual organ, prick’ in all the Old Norse compounds in which it appears (as Fritzner: keri suggests; so also Kock NN §2196B anm. who makes the phallic connection even more obvious by proposing that stríð- is an error for stirð- ‘stiff, hard’). It could plausibly be argued that hæll ‘pole, pillar’ also had a phallic sense that was employed in the extension of the word’s meaning to ‘widow’. In the case of the cpd stríðkeri the first element, stríð ‘grief, sorrow’, makes the connection with the mourning process. It may seem perverse to refer to a woman who has lost her man as a ‘grief-prick’, but it is possible that, both in this case and in the ofljóst use of hæll, the reference to a woman in terms of masculine imagery may be a way of expressing that woman’s relative freedom from the constraints of the marriage relationship, which is in fact the very point of Anon Stríðk. The speaker of the stanza hopes that the woman he desires is a widow, because then he may have a better chance of entering into a relationship with her (cf. Grg Ib, 29-30; Dennis et al. 1980-2000, II, 29, 403). — [8] nefni ‘may name’: Pres. subj. 3rd pers. pl. of nefna ‘name’. Both 2368ˣ and 743ˣ read nafni, dat. sg. of nafn ‘name’ (758ˣ’s reading is illegible) but a verb is required here, and there is no other in the stanza’s second helmingr. Kock (NN §3246) proposes the mss’ nafni may derive from an otherwise unattested ON verb *nafna, but prints nefni in Skald.

References

1. Bibliography
2. SnE 1848-87 = Snorri Sturluson. 1848-87. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Edda Snorronis Sturlaei. Ed. Jón Sigurðsson et al. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Legatum Arnamagnaeanum. Rpt. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1966.
3. Nj 1875-89 = Konráð Gíslason and Eiríkur Jónsson. 1875-89. Njála: Udgivet efter gamle håndskrifter. Íslendingasögur udgivne efter gamle haandskrifter af Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldskrift-selskab 4. Copenhagen: Thiele.
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. LaufE 1979 = Faulkes, Anthony, ed. 1979. Edda Magnúsar Ólafssonar (Laufás Edda). RSÁM 13. Vol. I of Two Versions of Snorra Edda from the 17th Century. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1977-9.
7. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
8. 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.
9. LP (1860) = Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1860. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis. Copenhagen: Societas Regia antiquariorum septentrionalium.
10. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
11. Grg = Grágás.
12. SnE 2005 = Snorri Sturluson. 2005. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2nd edn. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
13. Internal references
14. (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=113> (accessed 3 May 2024)
15. Margaret Clunies Ross 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Stríðkeravísur’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 628. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1042> (accessed 3 May 2024)
16. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Á heiti 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 838.
17. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from Snorra Edda 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. 514.
18. Not published: do not cite ()
19. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2022, ‘Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar 132 (Egill Skallagrímsson, Lausavísur 48)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 389.
20. R. D. Fulk (ed.) 2022, ‘Njáls saga 18 (Skarpheðinn Njálsson, Lausavísur 3)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1243.