Þjsk Lv 5^I

Hrollir hugr minn illa;
hefr drengr skaða fengit
sér * á sléttri eyri,
svarri, báts ok knarrar.
Enn, þeims upp réð brenna
ǫldu fíl fyr skaldi,
hverr veit, nema kol knarrar
kǫld fýsi mik gjalda?

Hugr minn hrollir illa; drengr hefr fengit sér * skaða báts ok knarrar á sléttri eyri, svarri. Enn hverr veit, nema kǫld kol knarrar fýsi mik gjalda þeims réð brenna upp {fíl ǫldu} fyr skaldi?

My mind shivers badly; the man has [I have] suffered damage to boat and ship on the level gravel-spit, lady. But who knows but that the cold coals of the ship might urge me to repay the one who had {the elephant of the wave} [SHIP] burned up [as an act] against the skald [me]?

Mss: Flat(27vb) (Flat); 4867ˣ(100v), 563aˣ(2) (ÞorlJ)

Readings: [1] Hrollir: ‘Hrellest’ 4867ˣ, 563aˣ    [3] sér *: sér ek Flat, 4867ˣ, sé ek 563aˣ;    sléttri: svartri 4867ˣ, saltri corrected from svart 563aˣ    [4] svarri báts: svar til brands 4867ˣ, svart til brands 563aˣ    [5] Enn þeims: hinn er Flat, hann er 4867ˣ, 563aˣ    [7] hverr: ‘hvør’ 4867ˣ, hvor 563aˣ    [8] kǫld: so 4867ˣ, 563aˣ, kald Flat;    gjalda: at gjalda 4867ˣ, 563aˣ

Editions: Skj AI, 143, Skj BI, 134, Skald I, 74; SHI 3, 96, Flat 1860-8, I, 209, ÞorlJ 1883, 119, 156-7, ÍF 9, 218, ÍS III, 2269 (ÞorlJ).

Context: Hákon jarl, incensed at Þorleifr’s refusal to sell his goods to him, sacks and burns his ship and hangs his crewmates.

Notes: [2, 3] fengit sér * ‘suffered’: Lit. ‘received for himself’. Ek ‘I’ following sé(r) in the mss seems to be based on a misreading of sér as a verb. — [3, 4]: The readings svartri in 4867ˣ or saltri in 563aˣ (l. 3) and ‘svar/svartt til brands’, read as svárt til brands in 563ˣ (l. 4), could yield: drengr hefr svárt fengit sér skaða til brands ok knarrar á svartri/saltri eyri ‘the warrior has grievously suffered damage to ship’s beak and ship on the black/salty gravel-spit’. — [5] enn ... þeims ‘but ... the one who’: The emendation of ms. hinn er or hann er to en(n) þeims adopted here was proposed by Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) and followed by most subsequent eds. It is necessary since the line is evidently corrupt, as it lacks one alliterative stave and is syntactically unsatisfactory, and an original conj. enn could have been misunderstood as the article hinn. With the Flat reading hinn er (normalised es) ‘that one who’ the helmingr forms two syntactically viable couplets, but the rel. hinn es has no credible antecedent. It cannot be drengr ‘man, fellow, warrior’ (l. 2), since that is the man who suffered damage, whereas ll. 5-6 refer to the one who burned the ship. The variant hann er/es ‘he who’ is little better since it produces a subordinate clause without a main one. — [6] fíl ǫldu ‘the elephant of the wave [SHIP]’: The word fíll ‘elephant’ is believed to be of ultimately Turkish or Persian origin (AEW: fíll). Elephants occur elsewhere in the skaldic corpus only in C13th poetry (LP: fíll), and this kenning may also be late (ÍF 9, xcviii). Ship-kennings with exotic animals as base-words are rare. The only other certain example is léon bôru ‘lion of the billow’, which is also from a stanza unique to ÞorlJ, but attributed to King Sveinn tjúguskegg (Svtjúg Lv 1/8; Arn Hryn 2/1^II has an uncertain example). This could suggest that the two stanzas were composed by the same person, who was thus probably not Þorleifr (see also Almqvist 1965-74, I, 193, 198). — [7-8]: The Text above diverges from Skj B and Skald in taking kǫld kol ‘cold coals’, the remains of the ship, as the subject of fýsi ‘might urge’ rather than object of gjalda ‘repay, pay back’: they urge the skald to revenge. — [8] fyr skaldi ‘[as an act] against the skald [me]’: Fyr here has the sense ‘to the disadvantage or disfavour of’ (LP: fyr, fyrir B4).

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. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
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. Flat 1860-8 = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and C. R. Unger, eds. 1860-8. Flateyjarbók. En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler. 3 vols. Christiania (Oslo): Malling.
7. ÍF 9 = Eyfirðinga sǫgur. Ed. Jónas Kristjánsson. 1956.
8. SHI = Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1828-46. Scripta historica islandorum de rebus gestis veterum borealium, latine reddita et apparatu critico instructa, curante Societate regia antiquariorum septentrionalium. 12 vols. Copenhagen: Popp etc. and London: John & Arthur Arch.
9. ÍS = Bragi Halldórsson et al., eds. 1987. Íslendinga sögur og þættir. 3 vols. Reykjavík: Svart á hvítu.
10. Almqvist, Bo. 1965-74. Norrön niddiktning: Traditionshistoriska studier i versmagi. I: Nid mot furstar. II: Nid mot missionärer: Senmedeltid nidtraditioner. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
11. ÞorlJ 1883 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1883. ‘Þáttr Þorleifs’. In Guðmundur Þorláksson et al. 1880-3, III, 117-63.
12. Internal references
13. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Þorleifs þáttr jarlaskálds’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=50> (accessed 24 April 2024)
14. Matthew Townend (ed.) 2012, ‘Sveinn tjúguskegg Haraldsson, Lausavísa 1’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 379.
15. Diana Whaley (ed.) 2009, ‘Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, Hrynhenda, Magnússdrápa 2’ 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. 184-5.