Anon (Vǫlsa) 9^I

Víst eigi mætta ek         við um bindast
í mik at keyra,         ef vit ein lægum
í andkætu.
Þiggi Maurnir         þetta blæti!
En þú, Grímr, gestr várr,         gríp þú við Vǫlsa!

Víst mætta ek eigi um bindast við at keyra í mik, ef vit lægum ein í andkætu. Þiggi Maurnir þetta blæti! En þú, Grímr, gestr várr, gríp þú við Vǫlsa!

Certainly I would not be able to resist driving [it] into myself, if we two were lying alone in mutual pleasure. May Maurnir receive this offering! But you, Grímr, our guest, you grab Vǫlsi!

Mss: Flat(122ra) (Flat); 292ˣ(55r) (Vǫlsa)

Readings: [5] andkætu: ‘andketu’ Flat, 292ˣ    [6, 7] Þiggi Maurnir þetta: abbrev. as ‘.þ. m. þ.’ Flat

Editions: Skj AII, 220, Skj BII, 238-9, Skald II, 124; Flat 1860-8, II, 334 (Vǫlsa); Guðbrandur Vigfússon 1860, 136, CPB II, 382, Edd. Min. 125, Schröder 1933, 82.

Context: The maid accepts Vǫlsi enthusiastically, enfolding and stroking it, and speaking a stanza in which she takes up the obscene challenge of st. 2/5-8 and st. 8/9-10. The guest to whom she passes Vǫlsi next is identified in the following prose text as Finnr Árnason.

Notes: [All]: The stanza appears to have a superfluous half-line, which, judging from the alliterative scheme, is either the present l. 3 (which Heusler and Ranisch omit in Edd. Min.) or l. 5 (which they print in a footnote); cf. Note to st. 8/3-4.  — [5] andkætu ‘mutual pleasure’: A minor emendation of ‑ketu to ‑kætu yields f. dat. sg. andkætu, which, although a hap. leg., is plausible as a cpd of and- ‘mutual’ and ‑kæta from kátr ‘happy, cheerful’ (LP: andkæta). See also Note to [All]. — [8] Grímr: The prose text tells that King Óláfr and his two followers all call themselves Grímr (see Context to st. 3). According to Steinsland, the name refers to Óðinn. She sees in the story a conflict between the younger patriarchal religion of Óðinn and an older matriarchal fertility religion connected with the ritualistic worship of giantesses (Steinsland and Vogt 1981, 91-2, 104; Steinsland 1997, 90). However, Grímr (from gríma ‘face mask’) is a popular assumed name, and the motif occurs several times in the fornaldarsögur (Norna-Gests þáttr, Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar, Helga þáttr Þórissonar), so that this, rather than a name for Óðinn, may be present here. The number three, the number of the guests, is conspicuous; it is paralleled in the number of the males of the household (farmer, son, servant) and of the females (housewife, daughter, maid). Eitrem (1924, 88) suggests a ritualistic meaning behind it.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Flat 1860-8 = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and C. R. Unger, eds. 1860-8. Flateyjarbók. En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler. 3 vols. Christiania (Oslo): Malling.
6. 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.
7. Eitrem, Sam. 1924. ‘Lina Laukar’. In Festskrift tilegnet Førstebibliothekar A. Kjær av venner, 26. September 1924. Christiana (Oslo): Cammermeyer, 85-94.
8. Schröder, Franz Rolf. 1933. Quellenbuch zur germanischen Religionsgeschichte. Trübners philologische Bibliothek 14. Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter.
9. Steinsland, Gro. 1997. Eros og død i norrøne myter. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
10. Steinsland, Gro and Kari Vogt. 1981. ‘“Aukinn ertu Uolse ok vpp vm tekinn”. En religionshistorisk analyse av Vǫlsa þáttr i Flateyjarbók’. ANF 96, 87-106.
11. Internal references
12. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Vǫlsa þáttr’ 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. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=28> (accessed 26 April 2024)