Busla Busl 3^VIII (Bós 3)

Villiz vættir,         verði ódæmi,
hristiz hamrar,         heimr sturliz,
vestni veðrátta,         verði ódæmi,
nema þú, Hringr konungr,         Herrauð friðir
ok honum Bósa         bjargir veitir.

Vættir villiz, ódæmi verði, hamrar hristiz, heimr sturliz, veðrátta vestni, ódæmi verði, nema þú, Hringr konungr, veitir Herrauð friðir ok honum Bósa bjargir.

May spirit beings become lost, may the monstrous become reality, may the cliffs falter, may the world become disturbed, may the weather become chaotic, may the monstrous become reality, unless you, King Hringr, make peace with Herrauðr and grant freedom to Bósi.

Mss: 586(14r), 577(53v), 510(11r), 340ˣ(271), 361ˣ(11r) (Bós)

Readings: [6] ódæmi: ‘orőe’ 340ˣ    [7] konungr: om. 510, 340ˣ, 361ˣ    [8] friðir: friði 577, ‘fryer’ 340ˣ    [9] honum Bósa: Bögubósa 577, 361ˣ    [10] veitir: veiti 577

Editions: Skj AII, 330, Skj BII, 351, Skald II, 189; Bós 1666, 18, FSN 3, 203, Bós 1893, 16, FSGJ 3, 292, Bós 1996, 13; Edd. Min. 123-4.

Notes: [All]: In stanzas three to six, three different areas are named in which the curse exerts its power: Nature will fall into chaos, the king’s body will be battered and contact with the outside world will be cut off, as travelling in ships and horseback riding will be rendered impossible. These four stanzas are bound together through refrain-like repetition in the four final lines of each, in which both prisoners are named in reverse order. All four are longer than the normal eight lines of a fornyrðislag stanza, st. 3 having ten lines and sts 4-6 having twelve. — [1] vættir villiz ‘may spirit beings become lost’: Vættir (archaic Engl. ‘wights’) are lesser mythological beings (cf. Dillmann 2007). Like landvættir ‘guardian spirits of a country’ they are evidently attributed a protective function. These beings are meant to be so confused by Busla’s magic that they lose their orientation. The goal of this operation is to provoke them in this manner against the king. There is a comparable passage in Eg (ÍF 2, 170-1), in which Egill forces the landvættir to drive King Eiríkr blóðøx ‘Bloodaxe’ and his wife, Gunnhildr, out of Norway by setting up an insult-pole (níðstǫng, cf. Almqvist 1965-74, I, 89-118). A stanza which has wording similar to Busl 3 is located at the end of the so-called Allra flagða þula ‘Reckoning of all trolls’ in VSj (Loth 1962-5, 4, 66-8; the stanza is at p. 68). — [9] Bósa ‘to Bósi’: Relation to OE Bōsa, OS Bōso, Old Frankish Boso, OHG Buoso as well as the m. name Bosi in a Danish runic inscription (DRI 268) is uncertain (cf. AEW: bósi), as is the etymology. Sverrir Tómasson (Bós 1996, 51) discusses the possibility that the name may originally have referred to þann sem klappaði kvið og rass ‘someone who stroked the belly and arse’, which would have been appropriate to Bósi’s role as a womaniser in the saga. Ms. 577 regularly provides the form Bögu-Bósi, abbreviated to ‘bb’ or ‘bba’ for the protagonist’s name. Baga ‘bent, twisted’ was the nickname of Bósi’s shield-maiden mother Brynhildr, which she acquired as a result of serious injuries Bósi’s viking father had inflicted on her in a fight in their youth. The idea that the name Bósi is an abbreviation for [Giovanni] Boccaccio, author of the Decameron, and known for his outspoken narratives, seems far-fetched (Jørgensen 1997, 104-5).

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. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
5. DRI = Jacobsen, Lis and Erik Moltke. 1941-2. Danmarks Runeindskrifter. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
6. ÍF 2 = Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar. Ed. Sigurður Nordal. 1933.
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. Almqvist, Bo. 1965-74. Norrön niddiktning: Traditionshistoriska studier i versmagi. I: Nid mot furstar. II: Nid mot missionärer: Senmedeltid nidtraditioner. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
10. Loth, Agnete, ed. 1962-5. Late Medieval Icelandic Romances. 5 vols. EA B 20-4. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
11. Jørgensen, Jon Gunnar. 1997. ‘“Bósi hét annarr son þeirra”’. In Bergljót S. Kristjánsdóttir et al. 1997, 101-6.
12. Bós 1996 = Sverrir Tómasson, ed. 1996. Bósa saga og Herrauðs. Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
13. Bós 1666 = Verelius, Olaus, ed. 1666. Herrauds och Bosa saga Med en ny vttolkning iämpte Gambla Götskan. Uppsala: Henrich Curio.
14. Bós 1893 = Jiriczek, Otto L., ed. 1893. Die Bósa-Saga in zwei Fassungen nebst Proben aus den Bósa-Rímur. Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner.
15. Dillmann, François-Xavier. 2007. ‘Vættir’. In RGA, 35, 326-34.
16. Internal references
17. 2022, ‘ Anonymous, Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar’ 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. 162-389. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=14> (accessed 23 April 2024)
18. Wilhelm Heizmann (ed.) 2017, ‘Bósa saga 3 (Busla, Buslubæn 3)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 30.