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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Gamlkan Has 39VII

Katrina Attwood (ed.) 2007, ‘Gamli kanóki, Harmsól 39’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 106-7.

Gamli kanókiHarmsól
383940

Fnyk þola flærðar auknir
fleygjendr þrimu leygjar
— þar liggr elds á ǫldum
íma — frost með bríma.
Mǫrgs ǫnnur þar manna
meiri ógn ok fleira
angr, an ór megi tunga,
óvegs, frá því segja.

{Fleygjendr {leygjar þrimu}}, auknir flærðar, þola fnyk, frost með bríma; þar liggr íma elds á ǫldum. Mǫrgs ǫnnur meiri ógn óvegs manna þar ok fleira angr, an tunga ór megi segja frá því.

{Flingers {of the flame of battle}} [SWORD > WARRIORS], swollen with falsehood, endure stench, frost with flame; there lie embers of fire upon men. Many another greater terror for dishonourable men is there and more sorrow than our [my] tongue is able to describe.

Mss: B(13r), 399a-bˣ

Readings: [4] bríma: so 399a‑bˣ, ‘[...]ma’ B    [5] Mǫrgs: mǫrg eru B

Editions: Skj AI, 567-8, Skj BI, 558, Skald I, 271, NN §§21, 2806; Sveinbjörn Egilsson 1844, 25-6, Kempff 1867, 12, Rydberg 1907, 27, Black 1971, 238, Attwood 1996a, 231.

Notes: [1] auknir flærðar ‘swollen with falsehood’: Kock (NN §21) suggests that flærð means ‘folly’, and that, in a religious text, it should be interpreted as ‘godlessness’ or ‘recklessness’. — [2] fleygjendr ‘flingers’: Skj B normalises B’s ‘fleygendr’ to fleygjendr, nomen agentis from fleygja (weak class 1) ‘to make fly’. All subsequent eds have adopted this form. — [3-4] þar liggr íma elds á ǫldum ‘there lie embers of fire upon men’: The problem here concerns both the case and meaning of ms. ‘ima’. There is a complex of semantically related nouns in ON: ím n. ‘dust, ashes’, íma f. ‘battle, she-wolf’ (‘dusky one’), and ímr m. ‘wolf’ (‘dusky’) (see LP: íma, ímr). Sveinbjörn Egilsson (cf. LP (1860): íma) and Kempff retain the ms. reading íma, taking this as the nom. form of íma f. in the sense ‘embers’, for which there is no other attested example in either poetry or prose. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) emends to ímu, and arranges þar liggr frost með bríma á ímu elds ǫldum ‘there lies frost with flame on the men of the fire of battle [SWORD > WARRIORS]’. He takes íma f. to mean ‘battle’, a sense attested in several poems, whose eldr is a sword (see also LP: íma, ǫld). Kock accepts this emendation without comment. — [5] mǫrgs: B’s reading eru must be emended both from a grammatical point of view (ógn is f. nom. sg.) and from a metrical point of view (in a type E l.).

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. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
  4. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
  5. 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.
  6. LP (1860) = Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1860. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis. Copenhagen: Societas Regia antiquariorum septentrionalium.
  7. Attwood, Katrina. 1996a. ‘The Poems of MS AM 757a 4to: An Edition and Contextual Study’. Ph.D. thesis. University of Leeds.
  8. Black, Elizabeth L. 1971. ‘Harmsól: an edition’. B. Litt. thesis. University of Oxford.
  9. Rydberg, Hugo, ed. 1907. ‘Die geistlichen Drápur und Dróttkvættfragmente des Cod. AM 757 4to.’. Ph.D. thesis. University of Lund. Copenhagen: Møller.
  10. Kempff, Hjalmar, ed. 1867. Kaniken Gamles ‘Harmsól’ (Sol i Sorgen): isländskt andligt qväde från medeltiden med öfversättning och förklaringar. Uppsala: Edquist & Berglund.
  11. Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1844. Fjøgur gømul kvæði. Boðsrit til að hlusta á þá opinberu yfirheyrslu í Bessastaða Skóla þann 22-29 mai 1844. Viðeyar Klaustri: prentuð af Helga Helgasyni, á kostnað Bessastaða Skóla. Bessastaðir: Helgi Helgason.
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