EirRagn Lv 3^VIII (Ragn 13)

Bera skuluð orð it efra,
— nú eru órir firar lagðir —
at mær hafi mína
mjó, Áslaugu, bauga.
Þá mun mest af móði,
er mik spyrja dauðan,
mín stjúpmóðir mildum
mögum sínum til segja.

Nú eru firar órir lagðir; skuluð bera orð Áslaugu it efra, at mjó mær hafi bauga mína. Þá mun stjúpmóðir mín segja mildum mögum sínum til, mest af móði, er mik spyrja dauðan.

Now our men are laid low; you are to bring word to Áslaug by land that a slender maiden may have my rings. Then, when they hear that I am dead, my stepmother will tell her generous sons about it, in the greatest grief.

Mss: 1824b(64r) (Ragn); Hb(105v) (RagnSon)

Readings: [1] Bera skuluð: Þau berið Hb    [2] nú eru órir firar lagðir (‘nv ero orrrir firar lagþir’): eru austrfarar liðnar Hb    [3] mær: ‘meirr’ Hb    [4] mjó: so Hb, mik 1824b    [6] er: ef Hb    [7] mildum: so Hb, sínum 1824b    [8] sínum til: so Hb, þögul 1824b

Editions: Skj AII, 235, Skj BII, 254, Skald II, 132, NN §1455; FSN 1, 262-3 (Ragn ch. 9), Ragn 1891, 196 (ch. 9), Hb 1892-6, 460 (RagnSon ch. 2), Ragn 1906-8, 140, 204-5 (ch. 10), Ragn 1944, 64-5 (ch. 10), FSGJ 1, 250 (Ragn ch. 10), Ragn 1985, 124 (ch. 10), Ragn 2003, 35 (ch. 10), CPB II, 348.

Context: After taking a ring from his arm, Eiríkr sends messengers to Áslaug, with the instruction that a slender maiden may have his rings. He confidently expresses the view that his stepmother (Áslaug) will convey to her sons the news of his death.

Notes: [1] skuluð bera orð ‘you are to bring word’: The present edn here follows FSN, Ragn 1891, and Ragn 1985 in adopting the 1824b reading; all other eds (apart from those of CPB, see below) follow Hb with Þau berið orð ‘Bring these tidings’. — [1] it efra ‘by land’: Here the comp. adj. efra, preceded by the def. art., is to be taken as n. acc. sg. and adverbial, meaning ‘by the upper route’ i.e., by land, with land thought of as above sea level. The present ed. follows Edzardi (1855-80, III, 277), Finnur Jónsson (Hb 1892-6; Skj B), Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 205) and Herrmann (1923b, 164), in understanding the phrase this way. There is no ms. authority for CPB ’s replacement of either þau, pl., with þat, sg., or the comp. efra with sup. œfsta. — [2] nú eru firar órir lagðir ‘now our men are laid low’: The present ed. follows FSN and Ragn 1891 in adopting the 1824b reading, which makes just as good sense as the Hb reading eru austrfarar liðnar ‘journeys eastward (i.e. to Sweden) are a thing of the past’, which all other eds adopt, some of them adding nú ‘now’ from 1824b at the beginning of the line. — [3-4]: These lines raise the question of who is meant by the mjó mær ‘slender maiden’ to whom Eiríkr bequeaths his rings. Is it Áslaug, as some have thought, or some unknown, unnamed figure? (a) Most previous eds apart from those of CPB and Kock leave open the question of the slender maiden’s identity and the present ed. adopts the same position. (b) Finnur Jónsson (Hb 1892-6, 460) adopts Hb’s reading ‘meirr’, i.e. meir ‘(ever)more, hereafter’ in l. 3 (cf. Kock, to be discussed in (d), below), and takes the adj. mjó ‘slender’ in l. 4 as f. nom. sg. and substantival, giving the meaning ‘she, the slender one (hun den slanke) may have my belongings hereafter’. (c) In Skj B, however, Finnur adopts from 1824b the reading mær ‘maiden’ in l. 3 and from Hb the reading mjó (in place of mik, 1824b) in l. 4, taking mjó here, f. nom. sg., as an attributive adj., and producing the meaning ‘that the slender maiden may have my rings’. (d) Kock (NN §1455) adopts the Hb readings meir ‘hereafter’ and mjó ‘slender’, and emends Áslaugu in l. 4 to Áslaug um, thus making Áslaug nom., supplying a pleonastic um to fill out the line, and giving the meaning ‘that the fair (slender) Áslaug may have my rings hereafter’. The emendation seems unjustified, however; the oblique case of Áslaugu is sufficiently marked and syntactically out of place in l. 4 to suggest a syntactic link with an earlier part of the half-stanza. — [5] mest af móði ‘in the greatest grief’: Mest ‘in the greatest degree’ is here adverbial: ‘in grief (af móði; cf. Akv 9, NK 241) in the greatest degree’. — [6] er ‘when’: Ms. 1824b’s reading here gives marginally better sense than Hb’s ef ‘if’ in the context, and is adopted by all eds with the exception of Finnur Jónsson in Hb 1892-6 (as opposed to Skj B). — [7-8]: The Hb reading of these two lines, adopted by all previous eds (apart from those of CPB, who follow Hb but omit sínum from l. 8, without replacing it, and Rafn (FSN), who simply follows 1824b), is undeniably preferable to that of 1824b as far as alliteration and (in l. 8) syllable-count are concerned and has also been followed here. The 1824b text lacks in l. 7 the double alliteration that would be expected in a dróttkvætt odd line, since ‑móðir, the second element in stjúpmóðir and bearing only secondary stress, cannot be regarded as alliterating with mín, at least for the purposes of dróttkvætt (cf. Russom 1998, 64); and l. 8, in which resolution of the two syllables of mögum (if not those of þögul) would be expected (Poole 2005e, 271), is short of the six syllables required in a dróttkvætt line. For an alternative treatment of these two lines, still taking account of the readings of 1824b, see McTurk (2014b, 110‑13).

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. 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.
7. 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.
8. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
9. Hb 1892-6 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1892-6. Hauksbók udgiven efter de Arnamagnæanske håndskrifter no. 371, 544 og 675, 4° samt forskellige papirshåndskrifter. Copenhagen: Det kongelige nordiske oldskrift-selskab.
10. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
11. Edzardi, Anton, ed. 1855-80. Altdeutsche und altnordische Helden-Sagen. Uebersetzt von Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen. Stuttgart: Heitz.
12. Ragn 1944 = Eskeland, Severin, ed. and trans. 1944. Soga om Ragnar Lodbrok med Kråka-kvædet. Norrøne bokverk 16. 2nd ed. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. [1st ed. 1914].
13. Hermann, Paul. 1923b. ‘Die Geschichte von Ragnar Lodbrok’. In Hermann 1923a, 139-95.
14. McTurk, Rory. 2014b. ‘Rattus rattus as a Beast of Battle? Stanza 12 of Ragnars saga’. In Chase 2014, 102-13.
15. Poole, Russell. 2005e. ‘Metre and Metrics’. In McTurk 2005, 265-84.
16. Russom, Geoffrey. 1998. Beowulf and Old Germanic Metre. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
17. Ragn 1985 = Örnólfur Thorsson 1985, 101-53.
18. Ragn 1891 = 2nd edn (pp. 175-224) of Ragn as ed. in Valdimar Ásmundarson 1885-9, I.
19. Ragn 2003 = Ebel, Uwe, ed. 2003. Ragnars saga loðbrókar. Texte des skandinavischen Mittelalters 4. Vol. II of Ebel 1997-2003.
20. Internal references
21. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ragnars saga loðbrókar’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 616. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=81> (accessed 25 April 2024)
22. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ragnars sona þáttr’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 777. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=85> (accessed 25 April 2024)
23. Not published: do not cite ()