Bǫðmóðr Lv 3^VIII (Ket 32)

Reyndr ertu, fóstri,         at ganga hervígis til
        ok berjaz við Framar til fjár.
Á léttum aldri         gaf honum Óðinn sigr;
        mjök kveð ek hann vígum vanan.

Ertu reyndr, fóstri, at ganga til hervígis ok berjaz við Framar til fjár. Óðinn gaf honum sigr á léttum aldri; ek kveð hann mjök vanan vígum.

You are experienced, foster-father, in going to army-slaughter and in fighting with Framarr for wealth. Óðinn gave him victory in his youth; I say that he is very accustomed to killings.

Mss: 343a(57v), 471(55v) (Ket)

Readings: [4] Á: enn á 471

Editions: Skj AII, 285, Skj BII, 306, Skald II, 162, NN §794, FF §43; FSN 2, 135, FSGJ 2, 176-7, Anderson 1990, 57, 105; Edd. Min. 83.

Context: When Ketill gets up to descend from the mound he slips, and Bǫðmóðr evidently interprets this as a bad omen. He warns Ketill that, when Framarr was a young man, Óðinn promised him victory. This stanza is introduced by the words: Þá kvað Böðmóðr vísu ‘Then Bǫðmóðr spoke a stanza’.

Notes: [1] reyndr ‘experienced’: Lines 1-2 contain no words that alliterate, and some previous eds have introduced or suggested various emendations to replace the p. p. reyndr ‘experienced’ with a word that alliterates with ganga or hervígis: Finnur Jónsson emends reyndr to gamall ‘old’ (Skj B), but other eds suggest words beginning with <h>: the p. p. hremdr (‘badly treated, anxious’, Valdimar Ásmundarson 1885-9, 2, vii; cf. Edd. Min. 83 n.), the adj. hrumr ‘weak, feeble’, Edd. Min. 83 n., or the p. p. *heyndr ‘felled’ (Skald), a word not attested in Old Norse but which Kock postulates on the grounds that there are corresponding words in Gothic and Old English (NN §794). Since the mss all have the reading reyndr, it is useless to speculate about the original wording of the passage (neither CPB II, 559 nor FSGJ emend the line). — [1] fóstri ‘foster-father’: This mode of address refers to Ketill’s age in relation to that of Bǫðmóðr (the son of Ketill’s opponent), and is not to be taken literally. In Ket 33 Ketill himself says that he has lived a long time. — [2] hervígis ‘army-slaughter’: The cpd hervígi can be translated lit. as ‘slaughter/battle (vígi) of an army (herr)’ and is attested in prose texts (Fritzner, ONP: hervígi); a very similar poetic cpd (hervíg) is used in this sense in skaldic poetry from C11th onward (see LP: hervíg). Finnur Jónsson seems to regard hervígis (gen. sg.) as a form of hervíg (LP: hervíg), but Heusler and Ranisch (Edd. Min. 140 and Heggstad et al. 2008: hervíg and hervígi) regard hervíg and hervígi as two separate words; the ONP database regards all occurrences in prose texts as forms of hervígi n. — [3] ok berjaz við Framar til fjár ‘and in fighting with Framarr for wealth’: This line is apparently inconsistent with the reason the saga names for the battle between Ketill and Framarr: Ketill’s refusal to give his daughter to Framarr in marriage against her will. However, Ket 38/4 refers to Ketill as ‘the father of the maiden’, suggesting the marriage motif. The line could also be understood to mean that Ketill had fought Framarr previously, although no other battle between them is mentioned in the saga. Framarr is a fairly common name in fornaldarsögur (Lind 1905-15) and is considered to be etymologically related to the adv. fram ‘forward’ and the adj. framr ‘pre-eminent, superior, prominent’ (Naumann 1912, 34). — [4-5]: As it stands aldri and Óðinn are the alliterating words in this long-line. Since the adj. léttum is the first nominal form in the first half-line and therefore should alliterate (cf. von See 1967, 19), some eds regard the line as corrupt: Jón Þorkelsson suggested the emendation of léttum to ungom ‘young’; see Edd. Min. 83 n.; Kock changes the word order to Á aldri léttom (FF §§12A, 43). Óðinn’s function as a god who grants victory is mentioned in many texts (see Kommentar III, 700-1 to Hyndl 3/1). — [4] á léttum aldri ‘in his youth’: Lit. ‘at a light age’, i.e. as a young man, when most things come easily to one. The adj. léttr is not used of age elsewhere in poetry, but it occurs in this sense in prose texts (cf. Fritzner: léttr 2; ONP: aldr 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. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
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. CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
8. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
9. ONP = Degnbol, Helle et al., eds. 1989-. A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose / Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. 1-. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission.
10. Kommentar = See, Klaus von et al. 1997-2012. Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda. 7 vols. Heidelberg: Winter.
11. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
12. Lind, Eric Henrik. 1905-15. Norsk-isländska dopnamn ock fingerade namn från medeltiden. Uppsala: Lundequist and Leipzig: Harrassowitz.
13. 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.
14. See, Klaus von. 1967. Germanische Verskunst. Sammlung Metzler 67. Stuttgart: Metzler.
15. Anderson, Sarah M. 1990. ‘The Textual Transmission of Two Fornaldarsögur: Ketils saga høings and Gríms saga loðinkinna’. Ph.D. thesis. Cornell University…
16. Naumann, Hans. 1912. Altnordische Namenstudien. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.
17. FF = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1922. Fornjermansk forskning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 18:1. Lund: Gleerup.
18. Valdimar Ásmundarson, ed. 1885-9. Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda. 3 vols. Reykjavík: Sigurður Kristjánsson and Sigmundur Guðmundsson. 2nd edn of Vol. I 1891.
19. Internal references
20. Not published: do not cite ()
21. Beatrice La Farge (ed.) 2017, ‘Ketils saga hœngs 33 (Ketill hœngr, Lausavísur 19)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 585.
22. Beatrice La Farge (ed.) 2017, ‘Ketils saga hœngs 38 (Framarr víkingakonungr, Lausavísur 3)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 593.