Anon Leið 16^VII

Reiddi rǫngum studdan
ramn þjóðtraðar Glamma
flóð, áðr foldu næði
fjǫlkœnn Nói grœnni,
en, þás ǫrk á landi
ólesta vel festi,
þjóð af þram-Val prúðum
— þat vas dróttins dag — sótti*.

Flóð reiddi {rǫngum studdan ramn {þjóðtraðar Glamma}}, áðr fjǫlkœnn Nói næði grœnni foldu, en, þás ǫrk festi vel ólesta á landi, sótti* þjóð af {prúðum þram-Val}; þat vas dróttins dag.

A flood tossed {the rib-supported raven {of the highway of Glammi <sea-king>}} [SEA > SHIP], before very wise Noah could reach green land, and once the Ark was moored quite unbroken to the land, the people proceeded from {the magnificent rim-Valr <horse>} [SHIP]; that was on the Lord’s day.

Mss: B(10v), 624(88)

Readings: [2] ramn: ‘rann’ B, ‘ran’ 624    [5] þás (‘þa er’): þá 624    [7] ‑Val: vel 624    [8] sótti*: ‘sottizt’ B, 624

Editions: Skj AI, 621, Skj BI, 626, Skald I, 304, NN §2983; Sveinbjörn Egilsson 1844, 61, Rydberg 1907, 6, Attwood 1996a, 64, 174.

Notes: [All]: The story of Noah’s flood is recounted in Gen. VI.9-IX.17. The exodus from the Ark is described in Gen. VIII.13-IX.17. Although the Noah story appears in the Sunday Lists preserved in Pseudo-Wulfstan Sermon XLV and the OIr. Cáin Domnaig, the Flood and the exodus from the Ark occur together, apart from here, only in the MHG homilies (see Introduction; Attwood 2003, 73). — [2] ramn ‘raven’: B has ‘ran̄’, which one would expect to be expanded ‘rann’, nom. or acc. sg. of rann ‘house’. The 624 scribe, whose exemplar is B, writes ‘ran’. It is not possible to make sense of rann here, and m is required for aðalhending with Glamma. Sveinbjörn Egilsson first made the emendation to ramn in a marginal note to Jón Sigurðsson’s transcript of the 624 text, suggesting that the nasal stroke might have been misplaced, and that the exemplar read ‘rān’. A similar spelling variant (hramn) of hrafn m. ‘raven’ occurs in GSvert Hrafndr 7/3^IV. Hramn is probably to be construed as a horse-heiti, after King Áli’s horse of that name; cf. LP: 2. Hrafn. — [5] ǫrk ‘[Noah’s] ark’: The only reference to Noah’s Ark in skaldic poetry. — [7] þram-Val ‘rim Valr <horse>’: The cpd is hap. leg., but Valr is named in Anon Kálfv 2/1^III as the horse of one Vésteinn, and appears very frequently in ship-kennings (see LP: Valr 2). The word is clearly related to valr, cognate with the first element in OE wealhhafoc ‘hawk, falcon’ (AEW: valr 2). The ornithological resonances shared by the two ship-kennings in this st. make for an interesting parallelism between the helmingar. — [8]: B’s ‘sottizt’, indicating m.v. sóttisk ‘to be advanced (of a work in hand), be passed (of a road or distance)’, does not fit the context here. Skj B (following a suggestion of Konráð Gíslason mentioned in a n. to Skj A) and Skald emend to sótti* and this is followed here.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj A = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15a. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. A: Tekst efter håndskrifterne. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1967. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
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. Attwood, Katrina. 1996a. ‘The Poems of MS AM 757a 4to: An Edition and Contextual Study’. Ph.D. thesis. University of Leeds.
9. Attwood, Katrina. 2003. ‘Leiðarvísan and the “Sunday Letter” Tradition in Iceland’. In Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir et al. 2003, 53-78.
10. Rydberg, Hugo, ed. 1907. ‘Die geistlichen Drápur und Dróttkvættfragmente des Cod. AM 757 4to.’. Ph.D. thesis. University of Lund. Copenhagen: Møller.
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.
12. Internal references
13. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Hrafns saga Sveinbjarnarsonar in sérstaka’ in Guðrún Nordal (ed.), Poetry on Icelandic History. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 4. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=42> (accessed 16 April 2024)
14. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Kálfsvísa 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. 666.
15. Not published: do not cite (GSvert Hrafndr 7^IV)