Bjǫrn Lv 1^VIII (Frið 9)

Erat sem ekkja
á þik vili drekka,
björt baugvara
biði nær fara.
Sölt eru augu,
sitkak í laugu;
bálskorð arma,
bítr mér í hvarma.

Erat sem ekkja vili drekka á þik, {björt baugvara} biði fara nær. Augu eru sölt, sitkak í laugu; {{arma bál}skorð}, bítr mér í hvarma.

It it not as if a woman would want to drink to you, [or that] {a bright ring-bearer} [WOMAN] would ask [you] to come close. [My] eyes are salty, I am not sitting in a bath; {prop {of the fire of arms}} [(lit. ‘fire-prop of arms’) GOLD > WOMAN], my eye-lids are stinging.

Mss: 510(93r), 568ˣ(100v), 27ˣ(135r), papp17ˣ(359r), 109a IIˣ(147r), 1006ˣ(584), 173ˣ(85r) (Frið)

Readings: [1] Erat: so 27ˣ, papp17ˣ, 109a IIˣ, 1006ˣ, 173ˣ, er em at 510, væra 568ˣ;    ekkja: so 568ˣ, papp17ˣ, 109a IIˣ, 1006ˣ, 173ˣ, ekki 510, ‘ölga’ 27ˣ    [2] á þik vili drekka: so papp17ˣ, 109a IIˣ, 1006ˣ, 173ˣ, ‘at austur fir oss drekkie’ 510, at ek drekka 568ˣ, ‘aur at drecka’ 27ˣ    [3] baugvara: ‘baugvarit’ 568ˣ, 27ˣ    [5] Sölt: ‘so ilt’ 568ˣ;    augu: nú 27ˣ    [6] sitkak (‘sitka ek’): so 568ˣ, ‘ef soka’ 510, ‘sickiu’ 27ˣ, sikkuð papp17ˣ, 109a IIˣ, 1006ˣ, 173ˣ;    í laugu: ekki lógi 27ˣ    [7] bálskorð: ‘bilskorðs’ 510, ‘bilskord’ 568ˣ, ‘bil skortt’ 27ˣ, bil sterka papp17ˣ, 109a IIˣ, 1006ˣ, 173ˣ    [8] bítr: so all others, birtiz 510

Editions: Skj AII, 271, Skj BII, 293-4, Skald II, 154-5, NN §§1474, 2387; Falk 1890, 73-4, Frið 1893, 14, 44-5, 71, Frið 1901, 21, Frið 1914, 13; Edd. Min. 98.

Context: Friðþjófr’s foster-brother Bjǫrn wonders whether the women of Sogn will weep over him, while the storm continues to rage. He speaks this stanza.

Notes: [All]: This is the only runhent stanza in Frið, though the end-rhyme of ll. 1-2 is not exact. The text is very difficult to make sense of in the A redaction mss, and not very easy in the others. It is clear that a great deal of scribal corruption has affected the stanza’s transmission, with the consequence that there are a number of possible interpretations of the various readings in both redactions. Because the A mss are particularly hard to understand, readings from the B mss have been selected in ll. 1 and 2. Even so, the interpretation offered here is tentative. Line 7 is particularly difficult to understand. Kock (NN §1474) suggests a possible parallel between this stanza and Krm 20, in which some of the same vocabulary occurs (ekkja ‘woman’, laug ‘bath’), and where a contrast is drawn between men fighting in battle and a woman bringing basins of warm water. The present stanza (in the reading offered here) seems to suggest that the bitter struggle at sea that Friðþjófr and his men now encounter has made them unattractive to the women back home, and this is consistent with Bjǫrn’s expressed scepticism in the prose text of both redactions. — [2]: Á þik vili drekka is the reading of the B redaction mss. The text of the A mss is inconsistent, but may allude to the women of Baldrshagi situated east of where the men now are on their Orkney voyage. Skj B presents the following text of ll. 1-2: Erat sem ekkja | austr á þik drekki … ‘It is not as if a woman is drinking to you in the east …’. — [3] baugvara ‘a ring-bearer [WOMAN]’: Or possibly ‘a ring-adorner’. This hap. leg. cpd is treated as a woman-kenning, but the meaning of the second element is uncertain. Mss 568ˣ and 27ˣ have the p. p. -varið which would make better sense, if the second element derives from verja ‘wrap, dress, adorn’ (cf. HHund II 35/7, NK 158, brúðr baugvarið ‘woman adorned with rings’), and this reading is adopted in Skj B and Skald, though the end-rhyme with fara (l. 4) is then lost. The cpd in -vara may be a secondary formation derived from -varið. — [4] fara nær ‘to come close’: Or possibly ‘to come closer’, as nær could be either positive or comparative degree of the adv. nær. Skj B emends the line to biði vel fara ‘and wishes you a good journey’. Frið 1901, 21 n. suggests the phrase might mean ‘wish you success’. — [6] sitkak ‘I am not sitting’: Both Skj B and Skald and this edn adopt 568ˣ’s sitkak ‘I am not sitting [in a bath]’. The B redaction mss read sikkuð ‘sunken (?)’ which may possibly be a form of the p. p. of an unrecorded *sikka ‘sink’ (cf. Falk 1890, 74, who suggests a parallel with Norwegian dialect sikka ‘sink’). However, this interpretation then requires laug to be understood in the extended sense of ‘salt water, sea’. — [7-8]: The interpretation of these lines is uncertain. The first word or words of l. 7 have not been authoritatively explained, and most eds emend, following the B redaction, to either bilar sterka arma ‘[my] strong arms fail’ (Frið 1901, 21) or bilar styrk arma ‘the strength of my arms fails’ (Skj B). The prose of the B text endorses the notion that baling the ship is hard work for the men’s arms. Relying on the A text, Wenz (Frið 1914, 13) has bilskorð arma but does not explain what it may mean. All known compounds in which -skorð ‘prop, support’ is the second element are women-kennings in which the first element denotes either ornament or clothing (cf. LP: skorð). Hence the bil- of the cpd’s first element is anomalous, as the word’s normal meaning is ‘delay, moment’. Edd. Min. emends to bálskorð ‘fire-prop’, which, together with arma ‘of arms’, can be understood as an inverted, two-part woman-kenning, ‘prop of the fire of arms’ [GOLD > WOMAN]’. This seems the only feasible interpretation of the A mss’ readings, and has been adopted here. Kock (Skald; NN §1474) has Bil skortir arma, in which Bil is a goddess-heiti (cf. LP: Bil) and skortir is an emendation, depending on 27ˣ’s reading ‘skortt’, with the second <t> supposedly mistaken by the scribe for an <ir> abbreviation. Kock does not, however, explain what he thinks ll. 7-8 mean in this interpretation. In this edn the woman-kenning arma bálskorð is taken as a direct address to a woman, and the speaker complains of his miserable situation, not taking a warm bath, but being buffeted by salty seas, which are stinging his eyes. With Skj B, l. 8 is understood as an impersonal construction, bítr mér í hvarma, lit. ‘it bites me on the eyelids, my eyes are stinging [with the salt sea]’. The alternative is to take the kenning (?) of l. 7 as the subject of the verb bítr ‘bites’ (l. 8), ‘the woman bites me on the eyelids’, but the scenario conjured up by this interpretation is either ludicrous or improbable, unless one imagines the hostile sea-deity Rán as the kenning referent (cf. Frið 11/5-6).

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
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. NK = Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn (1899), eds. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. 2 vols. I: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Winter.
7. 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.
8. Frið 1893 = Larsson, Ludvig, ed. 1893b. Sagan ock rimorna om Friðþiófr hinn frækni. SUGNL 22. Copenhagen: Malmström.
9. Frið 1901 = Larsson, Ludvig, ed. 1901. Friðþjófs saga ins frœkna. ASB 9. Halle: Niemeyer.
10. Frið 1914 = Wenz, Gustaf, ed. 1914. Die Friðþjófssaga in ihrer Überlieferung untersucht und der ältesten Fassung kritisch herausgegeben. Halle: Niemeyer.
11. Falk, Hjalmar. 1890. ‘Om Friðþjófs saga’. ANF 6, 60-102.
12. Internal references
13. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Friðþjófs saga ins frœkna’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 190. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=8> (accessed 24 April 2024)
14. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Krákumál 20’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 757.
15. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Friðþjófs saga ins frœkna 11 (Friðþjófr Þorsteinsson, Lausavísur 9)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 208.