Skúli Lv 1^III

Glens beðja veðr gyðju
goðblíð í vé síðan
(ljós kemr gótt) með geislum
(gránserks ofan Mána).

Síðan veðr {goðblíð beðja Glens} með geislum í vé gyðju; gótt ljós {gránserks Mána} kemr ofan.

Then {the divinely gentle bedmate of Glenr <mythical being>} [= Sól (sól ‘sun’)] strides with her beams into the goddess’s sanctuary; the good light {of the grey-shirt of Máni (‘Moon’)} [SKY] comes down.

Mss: R(26v), Tˣ(27v), W(57), U(30r), B(5r), 744ˣ(32v) (SnE)

Readings: [1] Glens: corrected from ‘Gleins’ R;    veðr: venr B;    gyðju: ‘g[…]’ U, gyðjur B    [2] goð‑: ‘[…]vþ‑’ U;    í vé: ‘vie’ U    [3] gótt: ‘gort’ U;    með: meðr U    [4] ‑serks: ‑setrs Tˣ, 744ˣ, ‑setr W, ‘[…]trs’ U, ‘set[…]’ B

Editions: Skj AI, 306, Skj BI, 284, Skald I, 145, NN §771; SnE 1848-87, I, 330-1, II, 317, 530, III, 54, SnE 1931, 118, SnE 1998, I, 39.

Context: This helmingr is the first of two verse quotations exemplifying sun-kennings in Skm, here beðja Glens ‘bedmate of Glenr’ (see Note).

Notes: [All]: Earlier eds have arranged the words in this helmingr in various ways with little effect on the overall meaning (the sun sets; the moon rises). Finnur Jónsson (Skj B, followed by Faulkes in SnE 1998) takes the adv. síðan ‘then’ (l. 2) with the second clause; however, that arrangement violates the word order in independent clauses since it results in two preposed sentence elements (síðan, ljós ‘light’, l. 3) before the finite verb kemr ‘comes’ (l. 3). Kock (Skald; NN §771) construes each line-pair as a self-contained unit (‘then the sun goes to the goddess’s sanctuary; the good light of the moon comes down in beams’), which is a viable alternative (but see Note to l. 4 below). — [All]: For medieval Norwegians’ and Icelanders’ interest in cosmology and in the movements of the heavenly bodies, including the sun, moon, planets and stars, see Clunies Ross and Gade (2012). — [1] beðja Glens ‘bedmate of Glenr <mythical being> [= Sól (sól ‘sun’)]’: Glenr is the husband of the sun, Sól, according to Gylf (SnE 2005, 13), the only other extant source to mention him (see Kock 1898, 264-5, for the etymology of the name). For the goddess Sól, see Þul Ásynja 2/3 and Note there. — [1, 2] vé gyðju ‘the goddess’s sanctuary’: Vé ‘sanctuary’ would usually suggest a space sanctified to the goddess, but here it seems to refer to Sól’s bed, where the personified sun rests at night. — [4] gránserks ‘of the grey-shirt’: The only other skaldic attestation of this cpd is in the mailshirt-kenning gránserkr Hamðis ‘grey shirt of Hamðir’ (Anon Krm 17/10^VIII). Earlier eds take gránserkr as an adj., gránserkr Máni ‘grey-shirted Máni’, which LP: gránserkr explains as ifört grå særk … om månens gråblege udseende ‘dressed in a grey shirt … of the pale grey appearance of the moon’. The noun serkr ‘shirt’ is not otherwise attested as an adj. (neither as a simplex nor as a second element in compounds; the relevant adj. is gráserkjaðr ‘grey-shirted’, cf. Grott 13/8), and in Gamlkan Has 18/2^VII élserkr ‘storm-shirt’ is a kenning for ‘sky’. All mss other than R have gránsetr m. ‘grey-seat, ‑home’ (or gránsetrs gen. ‘of the grey-seat’), which can be construed as another kenning for ‘sky’ (gránsetrs Mána ‘of the grey-seat of Máni’). Possibly the unusual solar imagery of the helmingr led to scribal replacement of the unexpected serkr m. ‘shirt’ with a word common in sky-kennings (setr sólar ‘seat of the sun’, etc.) as well as in words like sólsetr, dagsetr ‘sunset’. — [4] Mána ‘of Máni (‘Moon’)’: Máni, the personification of the moon, is Sól’s brother according to Gylf (SnE 2005, 13) and Vafþr 23/1-3.

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. 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.
7. SnE 1931 = Snorri Sturluson. 1931. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Ed. Finnur Jónsson. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
8. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
9. SnE 2005 = Snorri Sturluson. 2005. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2nd edn. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
10. Kock, Axel. 1898. ‘Studier i de nordiska språkens historia’. ANF 14, 213-70.
11. Internal references
12. (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 26 April 2024)
13. (forthcoming), ‘ Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning’ 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=113> (accessed 26 April 2024)
14. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Krákumál 17’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 751.
15. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Ásynja heiti 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. 765.
16. Not published: do not cite ()
17. Katrina Attwood (ed.) 2007, ‘Gamli kanóki, Harmsól 18’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 89.
18. Not published: do not cite ()