RvHbreiðm Hl 75^III

Mætr rauð Magnús hneiti;
mildr fylkir vann hildi;
snjallr gerði styr stillir;
stóð ógn af gram þjóðar.
Dunðu dǫrr á brynju;
drótt hilmis rak flótta;
egg brast hǫrð í hǫggvi;
hjǫrr beit … gǫrva.

Mætr Magnús rauð hneiti; mildr fylkir vann hildi; snjallr stillir gerði styr; ógn stóð af {gram þjóðar}. Dǫrr dunðu á brynju; drótt hilmis rak flótta; hǫrð egg brast í hǫggvi; hjǫrr beit … gǫrva.

Splendid Magnús reddened the sword; the generous leader waged war; the clever prince caused battle; terror exuded from {the lord of the people} [RULER]. Spears resounded against the byrnie; the ruler’s retinue pursued those who fled; the hard edge burst as it struck; the sword bit … thoroughly.

Mss: papp25ˣ(39r), R683ˣ(133v)

Readings: [5] Dunðu: ‘dunde’ papp25ˣ, R683ˣ;    dǫrr: ‘dor’ papp25ˣ, ‘daur’ R683ˣ;    brynju: brynjur R683ˣ    [6] hilmis: hilmir papp25ˣ, R683ˣ

Editions: Skj AI, 526, Skj BI, 506, Skald I, 248, NN §3396U; Hl 1941, 30, 93.

Context: The caption is áttmælt (‘Attmælt’) ‘eight-times spoken’ (cf. SnSt Ht 10). The metre is dróttkvætt, and each line forms an independent clause.

Notes: [All]: As with sextánmælt ‘sixteen-times spoken’ (see sts. 41-2), this syntactic pattern is not uncommon in dróttkvætt poetry, and it is not necessary (with Holtsmark, Hl 1941, 127) to look for Latin models for this variant. — [All]: The king is Magnús inn góði ‘the Good’ Óláfsson (d. 25 October 1047), the son of Óláfr Haraldsson. See Anon Nkt 33-5^II and his Biography in SkP II. — [1] hneiti ‘the sword’: See Note to st. 17/2. — [5]: The line recalls Þham Magndr 3/1^II dunði broddr á brynju ‘the arrow-point resounded against the byrnie’, which commemorates Magnús berfœttr ‘Barelegs’ Óláfsson’s famous battle against two Norman earls in the Menai Strait (1098). The present poet must have known Þorkell’s stanza, and the borrowing is clearly intentional. — [5] dunðu (3rd pers. pl. pret. indic.) ‘resounded’: Dunði (3rd pers. sg. pret. indic.) ‘resounded’ has been emended to the pl. to agree with the pl. subject dǫrr ‘spears’. It is unlikely that the forms ‘dor’ and ‘daur’ could represent the sg. darr ‘spear’ orthographically, whereas the final syllable in ‘dunde’ (so both mss) could well reflect Norwegian vowel reduction in final syllables (-u > -e; see Note to st. 74/5-8 and Hl 1941, 110). For the loss of final -r in ‘dor/daur’, see Note to st. 5/2. — [5] á brynju ‘against the byrnie’: So papp25ˣ. Brynjur ‘byrnies’ (R683ˣ) is also possible, and preferred by previous eds. — [6] hilmis (m. gen. sg.) ‘the ruler’s’: With earlier eds, hilmir (m. nom. sg.) ‘ruler’ has been emended to the gen. sg. to provide a qualifier for drótt ‘retinue’. Rugman (or an earlier copyist) must have understood this clause in the sense hilmir rak flótta drótt ‘the ruler pursued the fleeing retinue’ (cf. Rugman’s translation Rex fugavit timidos ‘The king routed the fainthearted’ in R683ˣ). See Hl 1941. — [7] í hǫggvi ‘as it struck’: Lit. ‘in the strike’. — [8]: The line is incomplete and cannot be restored. The missing words must be a prep. or connective (in metrical position 3) followed by a short, bimoraic noun, a pronoun or a finite verb in metrical position 4 (e.g. at þat, í því ‘at that’, ok skar ‘and cut’). Jón Helgason (Hl 1941) suggests í styr ‘in battle’, which is metrically correct but unlikely, since styr also occurs in l. 3.

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. Hl 1941 = Jón Helgason and Anne Holtsmark, eds. 1941. Háttalykill enn forni. BA 1. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
5. SkP II = Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Ed. Kari Ellen Gade. 2009.
6. Internal references
7. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2009, ‘Anonymous Poems, Nóregs konungatal 33’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 782.
8. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 10’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1115.
9. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2009, ‘Þorkell hamarskáld, Magnússdrápa 3’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 411-12.