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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Anon Ól 3I

Kate Heslop (ed.) 2012, ‘Anonymous Poems, Poem about Óláfr Tryggvason 3’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1064.

Anonymous PoemsPoem about Óláfr Tryggvason
234

Fór í braut á báru
bauglestir af hesti
†… á … da …†
bekkjar herrekkir.
Satt var, að seggjum þótti
— sáz þeingils spor eingi —
— oft siez Ólafs gifta —
jöfurs ferð kynjum verða.

{Bauglestir} fór í braut á báru af hesti †… á … da …† bekkjar {herrekkir} … Satt var, að ferð jöfurs þótti seggjum verða kynjum; eingi spor þeingils sáz; gifta Ólafs siez oft.

{The ring-harmer} [GENEROUS MAN] went away on the wave from the horse … of the bench … {the troop-emboldener} [RULER] … It was true that the prince’s journey seemed to men to turn out miraculously; no footprints of the ruler were to be seen; Óláfr’s blessedness is often seen.

Mss: 61(71r) (ÓT)

Editions: Skj AII, 462, Skj BII, 494, Skald II, 270, NN §3346; Finnur Jónsson 1884-91, 115, 117-18, ÓT 1958-2000, III, xxxiii, AM 61 1982, 23-4.

Notes: [All]: The wording of the stanza is close to the prose (see Introduction), here especially to ÓTOdd (both have spor ‘footprint, track’), though this is presumably by chance as elsewhere the stanzas are much closer to ÓT. — [1] fór í braut á báru ‘went away on the wave’: This appears to suggest that Óláfr walked on the water. Given the poor state of the text and the fact that gekk ‘walked’ rather than fór ‘went, travelled’ might have been expected, this remains uncertain, and such a claim would be unique to this poem: ÓT (1958-2000, II, 231) only has engi uissi með hveriu moti hann for ꜳ land ‘no-one knew by what means he got to land’. Nevertheless, walking on water seems likely since it would match and justify the second helmingr and would allude to the Gospel story of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee (Matt. XIV. 22-33), with which the Þorkell episode shares several elements: Jesus/Óláfr is praying alone on land at night, while his companions are on a boat; Jesus/Óláfr walks on the water; Peter/Þorkell has to be rescued from the water by Jesus/Óláfr. A further possibility is that he was carried by an angel, as is reported elsewhere of Óláfr (cf. Flat 1860-8, I, 464). — [2] af hesti ... ‘from the horse ...’: Hesti ‘horse’ is certain, and in the context is most likely to be the base-word of a ship-kenning. The determinant may be a sea-kenning incorporating bekkjar ‘of the bench’ as determinant (see LP: 2. bekkr 1 for examples), or possibly bekkjar alone in the sense ‘ship’ (LP: 2. bekkr 2). Af ‘from’ is less clear: Finnur Jónsson reads ‘a’, which he takes as a scribal error for af, but Ólafur Halldórsson (AM 61 1982, 23) thinks the ms. has a ligature of ‘a’ + ‘f’, i.e. af. Kock (NN §3346) suggests emendation to ráhesti (m. dat. sg.) ‘sailyard-horse’, hence á ráhesti báru ‘on the sailyard-horse of the waves [SHIP]’, but this (overdetermined) kenning is not justified, given the fragmentary state of the text, and neither is his reading in Skald of af for á (l. 1). — [6-7]: The two intercalary sentences are paired to form an explanation of people’s conviction that Óláfr moved by supernatural means: while eingi spor sáz ‘no footprints were to be seen’, his blessedness siez oft ‘is often seen’. — [7] gifta ‘blessedness’: Here, as usual in late skaldic poetry (and in much prose devoted to the missionary kings), this word has specifically Christian connotations and means ‘grace, blessing from God’ (see Baetke 1951, 47-54; Lange 1958a, 50-2); the objections raised by Hallberg (1973) to this interpretation are not pertinent to the skaldic material.

References

  1. Bibliography
  2. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
  3. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
  4. 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.
  5. Flat 1860-8 = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and C. R. Unger, eds. 1860-8. Flateyjarbók. En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler. 3 vols. Christiania (Oslo): Malling.
  6. Lange, Wolfgang. 1958a. Studien zur christlichen Dichtung der Nordgermanen 1000-1200. Palaestra 222. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
  7. AM 61 1982 = Ólafur Halldórsson, ed. 1982. The Great Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf the Saint: AM 61 fol. EIM 14. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
  8. ÓT 1958-2000 = Ólafur Halldórsson, ed. 1958-2000. Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar en mesta. 3 vols. EA A 1-3. Copenhagen: Munksgaard (Reitzel).
  9. Baetke, Walter. 1951. Christliches Lehngut in der Sagareligion: Das Svoldr-Problem. Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Phil.-Hist. Kl. 98 (6). Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
  10. Finnur Jónsson. 1884-91. ‘5. Nogle skjaldevers om Olaf Tryggvessen, marginalier fra AM 61, fol.’. In Kålund et al. 1884-91, 114-26.
  11. Hallberg, Peter. 1973. ‘The Concept of gipta-gæfa-hamingja in Old Norse Literature’. In Foote et al. 1973, 143-83.
  12. Internal references
  13. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=60> (accessed 29 March 2024)
  14. (forthcoming), ‘ Oddr Snorrason, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar by Oddr Snorrason’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=66> (accessed 29 March 2024)
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