Cookies on our website

We use cookies on this website, mainly to provide a secure browsing experience but also to collect statistics on how the website is used. You can find out more about the cookies we set, the information we store and how we use it on the cookies page.

Continue

skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Menu Search

Bragi Rdr 1III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Ragnarsdrápa 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. 28.

Bragi inn gamli BoddasonRagnarsdrápa
12

Vilið, Hrafnketill, heyra,
hvé hreingróit steini
Þrúðar skalk ok þengil
þjófs ilja blað leyfa?

Vilið, Hrafnketill, heyra, hvé skalk leyfa {blað ilja {þjófs Þrúðar}}, hreingróit steini, ok þengil?

Do you wish, Hrafnketill, to hear how I shall praise {the leaf of the footsoles {of the thief of Þrúðr <goddess>}} [= Hrungnir > SHIELD], bright-planted with colour, and the prince?

Mss: R(34r), Tˣ(35v), W(78), U(33r), A(11r-v), C(5v) (SnE)

Readings: [1] Vilið: ‘Vnit’ A;    Hrafnketill: ‘hrafnk[…]ll’ C;    heyra: ‘he[…]’ U    [2] hreingróit: ‘hrein grot’ Tˣ, ‘rein griotinn’ C    [3] Þrúðar: ‘þurdar’ C;    ok: om. W, U;    þengil: þengils U, þengill C

Editions: Skj AI, 1, Skj BI, 1, Skald I, 1; SnE 1848-87, I, 426-7, II, 329, 440, 589, III, 80,  SnE 1931, 152, SnE 1998, I, 69.

Context: This helmingr and Rdr 2 are cited in sequence in a section of Skm (SnE 1998, I, 69-70) exemplifying kennings for weapons and armour. They provide examples of shield-kennings. Rdr 1 is preceded by the statement Ilja blað Hrungnis, sem Bragi kvað ‘The footsoles’ leaf of Hrungnir, as Bragi said’.

Notes: [1] Hrafnketill: The unsyncopated, older form of the pers. n. Hrafnkell (cf. ANG §359.2) is required by metre and present in all mss. The poet addresses this man directly and urges him to listen to his poem, which is evidently about both a painted shield (see below) and an unnamed prince. Internal evidence thus indicates that this is an opening helmingr of a shield poem. However, if it forms part of the same poem as st. 2, which seemingly alludes to Ragnarr loðbrók, and if both belong to Rdr, then who is Hrafnketill? It is unusual for an early Viking-Age skald to address a messenger, who has arguably brought the shield from his patron to the poet (so Gísli Brynjúlfsson 1860, 5; CPB II, 2; cf. Wood 1960a) in his opening stanza, rather than the patron himself, although this remains a possibility and presupposes either oral memorisation of the poem or a written text inscribed on a rune stick. There is early Viking-Age evidence for the use of runic message sticks from both Hedeby and Staraja Ladoga (cf. Liestøl 1971) and the missionary Ansgar, after a visit to Birka in 831, is said to have delivered a letter from the Swedish king, possibly in runes, to the Emperor Louis the Pious (Trillmich, Buchner and Scior 2000, 42). Another view (Marold 1986b, 445-6) is that Bragi and Hrafnketill are rival poets engaged in some form of competition. This idea is dependent upon the mention of a certain ‘Brahi’ and ‘Rankil’ in Saxo Grammaticus’s account of the battle of Brávellir (Saxo 2015, I, viii. 3. 10, pp. 540-1), where they are named as being among the Icelandic supporters of King Sigurðr hringr ‘Ring’ (see Note to st. 2/4). — [2] hreingróit steini ‘bright-planted with colour’: Bragi’s shield-kenning (see Note to ll. 3, 4 below) is elaborated by means of this adjectival phrase, which qualifies blað ‘leaf’ (l. 4). There is a pun on the noun steinn, which means both ‘stone’ and ‘mineral colour, paint’ (cf. LP: steinn), and points both in the direction of the Hrungnir myth (see below) and towards the immediate object of the poet’s gaze, the brightly painted shield covered with images of myths and legends, which he is about to turn into literary capital. The sense of gróa (p. p. gróit) ‘grow, cover with growth’ nicely carries through the image of the shield as a leaf (blað) in a clever nýgerving that plays on the antithesis between the animate and inanimate poles of the kenning. On Bragi’s use of nýgervingar, see Marold (1993b, 297-9). — [3, 4] blað ilja þjófs Þrúðar ‘the leaf of the footsoles of the thief of Þrúðr <goddess> [= Hrungnir > SHIELD]’: Skm’s commentary indicates that ‘the thief of Þrúðr’ (lit. ‘strength’) refers to the giant Hrungnir, who is the god Þórr’s antagonist in a myth narrated in Skm (SnE 1998, I, 20-2), which is also one subject of another shield-poem, Þjóð Haustl sts 14-20 (SnE 1998, I, 22-4). This myth tells how Hrungnir was persuaded to stand on his shield, which was made of stone, because, he was informed, Þórr was going to attack him from underground. Þrúðr is the name of Þórr’s daughter, so it seems that Hrungnir may have abducted her from her father. Although no telling of Hrungnir’s theft of Þrúðr has survived (but see Alv 2 for a possible allusion; Clunies Ross 1994a; Frank 1978, 113-14), the kenning requires us to understand that such a myth existed, which may in one version have motivated Þórr’s and Hrungnir’s single combat.

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. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 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. Frank, Roberta. 1978. Old Norse Court Poetry: The Dróttkvætt Stanza. Islandica 42. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
  6. ANG = Noreen, Adolf. 1923. Altnordische Grammatik I: Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter Berücksichtigung des Urnordischen. 4th edn. Halle: Niemeyer. 1st edn. 1884. 5th unrev. edn. 1970. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
  7. 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.
  8. SnE 1931 = Snorri Sturluson. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
  9. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
  10. Saxo 2005 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2005. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum / Danmarkshistorien. Trans. Peter Zeeberg. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Det danske sprog- og litteraturselskab & Gads forlag.
  11. Wood, Cecil. 1960a. ‘The Skald’s Bid for a Hearing’. JEGP 59, 240-54.
  12. Marold, Edith. 1993b. ‘Nýgerving und Nykrat’. In Nielsen et al. 1993, 283-302.
  13. Clunies Ross, Margaret. 1994a. ‘Þórr’s Honour’. In Uecker 1994, 48-76.
  14. Gísli Brynjúlfsson. 1860. ‘Bragi den gamles kvad om Ragnar Lodbrogs skjold’. ANOH, 3-13.
  15. Liestøl, Aslak. 1971. ‘The Literate Vikings’. In Foote et al. 1973, 69-78.
  16. Marold, Edith. 1986b. ‘Ragnarsdrápa und Ragnarssage. Versuch einer Interpretation der Ragnarsdrápa’. In Brogyanyi et al. 1986, 427-57.
  17. 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.
  18. Internal references
  19. (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál’ 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=112> (accessed 28 March 2024)
  20. Not published: do not cite (RloðVIII)
  21. Margaret Clunies Ross 2017, ‘ Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Ragnarsdrápa’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 27. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1130> (accessed 28 March 2024)
  22. Margaret Clunies Ross 2017, ‘ Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, Haustlǫng’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 431. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1438> (accessed 28 March 2024)
  23. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Ragnarsdrápa 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. 28.
  24. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Ragnarsdrápa 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. 30.
  25. Not published: do not cite ()
Close

Log in

This service is only available to members of the relevant projects, and to purchasers of the skaldic volumes published by Brepols.
This service uses cookies. By logging in you agree to the use of cookies on your browser.

Close

Stanza/chapter/text segment

Use the buttons at the top of the page to navigate between stanzas in a poem.

Information tab

Interactive tab

The text and translation are given here, with buttons to toggle whether the text is shown in the verse order or prose word order. Clicking on indiviudal words gives dictionary links, variant readings, kennings and notes, where relevant.

Full text tab

This is the text of the edition in a similar format to how the edition appears in the printed volumes.

Chapter/text segment

This view is also used for chapters and other text segments. Not all the headings shown are relevant to such sections.