KrákÁsl Lv 11^VIII (RagnSon 1) (Kráka/Áslaug)

Sitja veiðivitjar
vals á borgar hálsum;
böl er, þat er hefr um hafnat
hrafn Sigurðar nafni.
Blási nýtinjótar
nás í spán at hánum;
ofsnemma lét Óðinn
álf valmeyjar deyja.

{Veiðivitjar vals} sitja á hálsum borgar; böl er, þat er hrafn hefr um hafnat nafni Sigurðar. Blási {nýtinjótar nás} í spán at hánum; Óðinn lét {álf {valmeyjar}} deyja ofsnemma.

{Hunting-visitors of the slain} [RAVENS] sit on the heights of the fortress; it is a misfortune that the raven has forsaken the name of Sigurðr. Let {the devourers of the dead} [RAVENS/EAGLES] whistle for him; Óðinn caused {the elf {of the carnage-maiden}} [VALKYRIE > WARRIOR] to die too early.

Mss: Hb(107r) (RagnSon)

Editions: Skj AII, 242, Skj BII, 261, Skald II, 136, NN §§182, 1469; RagnSon 1773, 283-4 (ch. 58), FSN 1, 358 (RagnSon ch. 5), RagnSon 1891, 241 (ch. 5), Hb 1892-6, 466 (RagnSon ch. 5), FSGJ 1, 301-2 (RagnSon ch. 5); Rafn 1822, 247-8, CPB II, 352.

Context: Áslaug speaks this stanza on hearing from Helgi hvassi ‘the Keen’ of the death of one of her sons by Ragnarr, Sigurðr ormr-í-auga ‘Snake-in-eye’, in a battle against the emperor Ǫrnúlfr.

Notes: [1-2] veiðivitjar vals ‘hunting-visitors of the slain [RAVENS]’: This hap. leg. cpd is interpreted here to refer to ravens rather than birds of prey in general in view of the sense of the rest of the stanza. The cpd’s first element, veiði- ‘hunting’, is a verbal noun from veiða ‘hunt’, while the second, vitjar ‘visitors’, is a m. nom. pl. agent noun from vitja ‘visit’ (cf. LP: veiðivitja). — [2] á hálsum borgar ‘on the heights of the fortress’: The basic sense of háls is ‘neck’ (of a human or animal), but it also has the transferred sense of ‘hill, ridge, mountain pass’, describing a feature of the landscape (Fritzner, ONP: hals). Finnur Jónsson appears to have understood the word in the latter sense (på borgens höje ‘on the hills of the fortress’), in Hb 1892-6, as does the present ed.; in Skj B, however, Finnur emends borgar ‘of the fortress, rampart’ (LP: borg) to bragna, gen. of m. pl. bragnar ‘men’, and translates ‘on the necks of men’, evidently understanding the ravens to be perched on the bodies of the slain. Kock (NN §1469A) suggests either ‘fortress’ or ‘mountain’ for borg as its meaning in the present instance. The translation ‘the heights of the fortress’ is adopted here with an admission that this leaves unexplained which fortress (or (fortified) mountain?) is in question. The prose context in RagnSon gives no help on this point. — [3-4]: Now that Sigurðr is dead, the raven no longer takes his name into account when wondering who might provide it with sustenance in the shape of the slain in battle. — [3]: As it stands, this line is unmetrical, reading böl er þat hefr um hafnat. It is likely that, in this C14th ms., the rel. particle er after þat has been omitted. In pre-1250 normalisation it would have scanned as a regular A-line, bǫls, þats hefr of hafnat. The rel. particle has been restored here in line with normalisation to the period 1250-1300. — [3] um: The expletive particle which, like of in similar contexts, occurs before verbs (especially the p. p., as here), and sometimes nouns or adjectives, in place of a lost prefix, is comparable in the present case to ge- in Modern German.See further Note to Ásm 1/3, 5. — [4] Sigurðar ‘of Sigurðr’: The line is unmetrical as it stands, but would become metrical if the older form of the name, Sigvarðar, were restored (cf. Kuhn 1939, 199-203). See Bragi Rdr 2/3-4^III and Note there. — [5-6] blási … í spán at hánum ‘let … whistle for him’: Lit. ‘Let [birds of prey] blow into wood-shavings towards him’. The expression blása í spán at with dat. is of uncertain meaning, but is clearly idiomatic. Kock (NN §182) and the present ed. accept Finnur Jónsson’s understanding of this (in Skj B and in LP: spônn; cf. Hb 1892-6) as meaning ‘go without, wait in vain for’; Kock quotes (with its German and Dutch equivalents) the Modern English expression ‘whistle for’, understood in the sense of ‘seek or expect in vain’. Old Norse spánn m. has several meanings, including ‘wood-shavings, matchwood, spoon (what is left after the shavings have been removed (?)’ (LP: spônn). There is no need, as Kock (NN §1469B) indicates, to emend this 3rd pers. pres. subj. blási to indic. blása, as do Finnur Jónsson in Hb 1892-6 and Skj B and Guðni Jónsson in FSGJ. — [5] nýtinjótar nás ‘the devourers of the dead [RAVENS/EAGLES]’: Lit. ‘great enjoyers of the corpse’. The hap. leg. nýtinjótar is a cpd noun, whose second element is ‑njótar, m. nom. pl., meaning ‘enjoyers, users’ (CVC: njótr) and its cognate first element nýti- (from nýta ‘make use of, enjoy’) is an intensifier (LP: nýtinjótr). It forms the base-word, with nás ‘of the corpse’ as its determinant, in a kenning for birds or beasts of battle, most probably the ravens of ll. 1-2. — [7-8]: Óðinn is here seen in his capacity as a god of war (Turville-Petre 1964, 50-5), causing warriors to die in battle as part of the process of selection for admission to Valhǫll (cf. SnE 2005, 21, 30). — [7]: This is the only line in the stanza that lacks an appropriate hending, in this case skothending. — [8] álf valmeyjar ‘the elf of the carnage-maiden [VALKYRIE > WARRIOR]’: The noun álfr m. ‘elf’, is a reasonably common base-word in warrior-kennings (see LP: alfr) in which the determinant (here valmeyjar, gen.) refers to some aspect of battle, as in this instance. Valmey f. ‘carnage-maiden’, clearly refers to a valkyrie, i.e. one of the handmaids of Óðinn whose function was to choose warriors slain in battle for admission to Valhǫll (see SnE 2005, 30; Eyv Hák 1/1^I and Note there). On elves in Old Norse tradition, see Turville-Petre (1964, 230-2), Gunnell (2006), and Hall (2007, 21-53).

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. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
8. 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.
9. Turville-Petre, Gabriel. 1964. Myth and Religion of the North. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
10. 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.
11. ONP = Degnbol, Helle et al., eds. 1989-. A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose / Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. 1-. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission.
12. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
13. 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.
14. Kuhn, Hans (1899). 1939. ‘Westgermanisches in der altnordischen Verskunst’. BGDSL 63, 178-236. Rpt. in Kuhn (1899) 1969-78, I, 485-527.
15. SnE 2005 = Snorri Sturluson. 2005. Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2nd edn. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
16. Gunnell, Terry. 2006. ‘How Elvish Were the Álfar?’. In McKinnell et al. 2006, 321-8.
17. Hall, Alaric. 2007. Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity. Woodbridge: Boydell.
18. RagnSon 1891 = 2nd edn (pp. 229-43) of RagnSon as ed. in Valdimar Ásmundarson 1885-9, I.
19. Rafn, Carl Christian, trans. 1822. Ragnar Lodbroks Saga, Krakemaal, Fortælling om Norna Gest, og Brudstykkke om dansk-norske Konger, efter islandske Haandskrifter fordanskede med oplysende Anmærkninger. Nordiske Kæmpe-Historier 1C. Copenhagen: Popp.
20. RagnSon 1773 = Langebek et al. 1772-1878, II (ed. Jacob Langebek), 270-86.
21. Internal references
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 19 April 2024)
23. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Ragnarsdrápa 2’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 30.
24. R. D. Fulk (ed.) 2012, ‘Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finnsson, Hákonarmál 1’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 174.
25. Peter Jorgensen (ed.) 2017, ‘Ásmundar saga kappabana 1 (Hildibrandr, Lausavísur 1)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 16.