Bragi Rdr 10^III

Letrat lýða stillir
landa vanr á sandi
— þá svall heipt í Hǫgna —
hǫðglamma mun stǫðva,
es þrymregin þremja
þróttig Heðin* sóttu,
heldr an Hildar svíra
hringa þeir of fingi.

{Stillir lýða}, vanr landa, letrat stǫðva mun {hǫðglamma} á sandi – þá svall heipt í Hǫgna –, es {þróttig {þremja þrym}regin} sóttu Heðin*, heldr an þeir of fingi hringa svíra Hildar.

{The controller of men} [RULER], lacking lands, does not hold back from stopping the desire {of battle-wolves} [WARRIORS] on the sand – then hatred swelled in Hǫgni –, when {the enduring gods {of the noise of sword-edges}} [(lit. ‘noise-gods of sword-edges’) BATTLE > WARRIORS] attacked Heðinn, rather than accept the rings of the neck of Hildr.

Mss: R(34v), Tˣ(36r), W(79) (SnE)

Readings: [4] glamma: so all others, ‘‑glammrr’ apparently corrected from ‘‑glamms’ R;    mun: so W, man R, Tˣ    [5] ‑regin: so Tˣ, ‑reginn R, W    [6] Heðin*: Heðins all    [7] heldr an: so all others, ‘[…]n’ R;    svíra: so W, svika R, om. Tˣ    [8] fingi: fingu R, Tˣ, fengu W

Editions: Skj AI, 3, Skj BI, 2-3, Skald I, 2, NN §§156, 1936C; SnE 1848-87, I, 436-9, III, 84-5, SnE 1931, 155, SnE 1998, I, 73.

Context: As for st. 8.

Notes: [1] letrat ‘does not hold back’: From letja ‘resist, hold back from’ with suffixed negative. Kock (NN §156) reads lættrat ‘does not cause’ (with mun ‘desire’ l. 4). — [1-2] stillir lýða, vanr landa ‘the controller of men [RULER], lacking lands’: The phrase vanr landa ‘lacking lands’ is understood here as functioning adjectivally to identify the kind of ruler in question, one whose domain is the sea. The name Hǫgni appears in a list of sea-kings’ names (Þul Sækonunga 3/2). Most of the analogues to the legend of the Hjaðningar represent both Hildr’s father and her abductor as travelling by ship and fighting on an island (cf. á sandi ‘on the sand’ l. 2, í holmi ‘on the island’ st. 11/1). — [3] Hǫgna (dat.) ‘Hǫgni’: Not uncommon as a pers. n., especially in legendary sagas. Cognates appear in the Old English (Hagena) and Middle High German (Hagene) versions of the Hildr legend, and in Saxo’s Lat. Høginus; for Old Norse, cf. particularly RvHbreiðm Hl 46/7. — [4] hǫðglamma ‘of battle-wolves [WARRIORS]’: The cpd hǫðglammi ‘battle-wolf’ (lit. ‘battle-howler’) is a hap. leg.  Hǫð ‘battle’ does not occur as a simplex, but is found as constituent of the name of the god Hǫðr, while glammi is a wolf-heiti (cf. Þul Vargs 1/7). Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) construes hǫðglamma mun as three separate words, with hǫð, dat. or instr. of hǫð ‘battle’ being understood as an adverbial phrase ‘in battle’. Other eds have understood the cpd hǫðglamma differently, Kock taking it with mun (as a kenning) and lætrat stǫðva to mean ‘[Hǫgni] does not cause the desire of the battle-wolf [BATTLE] to stop’. Such a kenning is unprecedented. Reichardt (1928, 94-5 n. 26) interpreted hǫðglammi as a sword-kenning, part of a battle-kenning hǫðglamma mun ‘desire of the battle-wolf [SWORD > BATTLE]’. LP: hǫð, following a suggestion of Krause, proposed that hǫð could be acc. and glamma mun in apposition to it. — [6] þróttig ‘enduring’: This adj. may possibly allude to the nature of the battle as an ongoing one, with the dead warriors being revived every evening to fight again on account of Hildr’s magical powers. — [6] Heðin* (acc.) ‘Heðinn’: The reading of all mss, Heðins (gen.), must be emended to provide a direct object for sóttu ‘attacked’. The name, which probably means etymologically ‘skin-clad one’ (AEW: heðinn 1 and 2), varies across versions of the legend (OE Henden, MHG Hetele, Saxo Hithinus); for Old Norse, cf. particularly RvHbreiðm Hl 45/5. — [7] svíra (gen.) ‘of the neck’: Ms. R has svika which could be gen. pl. of svik ‘treachery’, but the metre requires a long vowel here, so the Tˣ, W reading has been adopted by all eds. — [8] fingi ‘accept’: Lit. ‘they should accept’. All mss’ indic. verb fingu/fengu has been emended to subj. fingi after heldr an ‘rather than’ (l. 7); so Skj B and Skald, cf. NS §§310-13. Both R and Tˣ record the earlier form fingu (beside fengu) of the 3rd pers. pl. pret. indic. of fá ‘receive, accept, get’ (cf. ANG §504 and Anm. 1 and 5), which is necessary to provide aðalhending.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. 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.
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. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. NS = Nygaard, Marius. 1906. Norrøn syntax. Kristiania (Oslo): Aschehoug. Rpt. 1966.
10. SnE 1931 = Snorri Sturluson. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
11. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
12. Reichardt, Konstantin. 1928. Studien zu den Skalden des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts. Palaestra 159. Leipzig: Mayer & Müller.
13. Internal references
14. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Sækonunga heiti 3’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 681.
15. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Vargs heiti’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 902. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3216> (accessed 26 April 2024)
16. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Rǫgnvaldr jarl and Hallr Þórarinsson, Háttalykill 45’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1053.
17. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Rǫgnvaldr jarl and Hallr Þórarinsson, Háttalykill 46’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1054.