Án Lv 4^VIII (Án 4)

Þat muntu finna,         er þú flór mokar,
at þú eigi ert         Án bogsveigir.
Þú ert brauðsveigir         heldr en bogsveigir
ostasveigir         en eigi * álmsveigir.

Muntu finna þat, er þú mokar flór, at þú ert eigi Án bogsveigir. Þú ert brauðsveigir, heldr en bogsveigir, ostasveigir, en eigi * álmsveigir.

You will find that out, when you muck out the floor, that you are not Án bogsveigir (‘Bow-bender’). You are a bread-bender rather than bow-bender, a cheese-bender, but not a bow-bender.

Mss: 343a(84r), 109a Iˣ(9r) (Án)

Readings: [8] en eigi * álmsveigir: ‘en eigi b alm sueigir’ 343a, en ek heiti álmsveigir 109a Iˣ

Editions: Skj AII, 320, Skj BII, 339, Skald II, 182; FSN 2, 341, FSGJ 2, 383; Edd. Min. 97.

Context: Án speaks this stanza when he confronts King Ingjaldr’s man Ketill, who is making advances to a young girl by pretending to be Án. Án turns up just at the right moment and seizes Ketill by the forelock. Before he mishandles Ketill by pulling out his hair, tarring him, putting out one of his eyes and castrating him, Án speaks this stanza, in which he makes it clear that Ketill is only fit to perform the most menial farmyard or kitchen tasks, not to be a warrior like Án.

Notes: [All]: This stanza is in the metre fornyrðislag. Both the stanza itself and the surrounding prose passage contain several examples of word-play (FSGJ 2, 382-4; Hughes 1972, 222 nn. 37-8). — [All]: The demeaning characterisation of Ketill as a brauðsveigir ‘bread-bender’ (i.e. ‘kneader of bread’) and an ostasveigir ‘cheese-bender’ has many parallels in Old Norse literature, e.g. in a stanza from LaufE (Anon (LaufE) 5^III), in which a man-servant is called an ostmýgir ‘oppressor of cheese’ and a saupstríðir ‘tormentor of buttermilk’, while the maid-servant for whom he pines is called brauðgýgr ‘ogress of bread’ (i.e. ‘woman who consumes bread’) and saurug flot-Gríðr ‘the filthy Gríðr <giantess> of fat’ (i.e. a woman who consumes the fat that swims on the surface of the soup); cf. Edd. Min. lxxxiv and LP: flotgríðr). Heusler and Ranisch also cite a parallel from Saxo (Saxo 2015, I, vi, 9. 14, pp. 436-7). Cf. the hostile exchange between Kormákr and Narfi in Korm ch. 4, in the course of which Kormákr refers to his opponent as Áli orfa ‘Áli <sea-king> of the scythe-handle’ (KormǪ Lv 12/1^V (Korm 13), ÍF 8, 216). — [2] er þú mokar flór ‘when you muck out the floor’: The word flórr (not used elsewhere in Old Norse poetry) designates the passageway in the middle of a cow barn between the two rows of stalls for the individual cows where their dung and urine collect (Valtýr Guðmundsson 1889, 135; Stigum and Kristján Eldjárn et al. 1959, 399-401). The verb moka ‘muck out, shovel, cleanse by shovelling’ occurs in Bjhít Lv 3/2, 4^V (BjH 3), a derogatory lausavisa in which Bjǫrn says that his beloved Oddný told her husband ganga at moka kvíar innan ‘to go and muck out from inside the pens’; cf. BjH ch. 12 (ÍF 3, 140). — [8] en eigi * álmsveigir ‘but not a bow-bender’: Ms. 343a reads en eigi b álmsveigir. Apparently the scribe first wrote an abbreviation for the word bogsveigir, which occurs in the previous line of the stanza, before he wrote the synonymous word álmsveigir, which alliterates with ostasveigir and is thus clearly correct. The word álmr ‘elm’ is often used metonymically for ‘bow’, since bows were made of elm-wood (LP: almr 2; Falk 1914b, 92).

References

1. Bibliography
2. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. 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.
5. ÍF 3 = Borgfirðinga sǫgur. Ed. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson. 1938.
6. Falk, Hjalmar. 1914b. Altnordische Waffenkunde. Videnskapsselskapets skrifter, II. Hist.-filos. kl. 1914, 6. Kristiania (Oslo): Dybwad.
7. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
8. Edd. Min. = Heusler, Andreas and Wilhelm Ranisch, eds. 1903. Eddica Minora: Dichtungen eddischer Art aus den Fornaldarsögur und anderen Prosawerken. Dortmund: Ruhfus. Rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
9. ÍF 8 = Vatnsdœla saga. Ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson. 1939.
10. Hughes, Shaun F. D. 1972. ‘Áns rímur bogsveigis: Two Nineteenth Century Icelandic Metrical Romances. Edited from Manuscripts ÍB. 38, 8vo and Lbs. 2466, 8vo of the Landsbókasafn Íslands’. Ph.D. thesis. University of Washington…
11. Valtýr Guðmundsson. 1889. Privatboligen på Island i Sagatiden samt delvis i det øvrige Norden. Copenhagen: Høst.
12. Saxo 2015 = Friis-Jensen, Karsten, ed. 2015. Saxo Grammaticus: Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes. Trans. Peter Fisher. Oxford Medieval Texts. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
13. Internal references
14. 2022, ‘ Anonymous, Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 60-121. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=72> (accessed 27 April 2024)
15. 2022, ‘ Anonymous, Kormáks saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 1031-1181. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=83> (accessed 27 April 2024)
16. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from Laufás Edda 5’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 642.
17. Alison Finlay (ed.) 2022, ‘Bjarnar saga Hítdœlakappa 3 (Bjǫrn Hítdœlakappi Arngeirsson, Lausavísur 3)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 64.
18. Edith Marold (ed.) 2022, ‘Kormáks saga 13 (Kormákr Ǫgmundarson, Lausavísur 12)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1048.
19. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Laufás Edda’ 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=10928> (accessed 27 April 2024)