Cookies on our website

We use cookies on this website, mainly to provide a secure browsing experience but also to collect statistics on how the website is used. You can find out more about the cookies we set, the information we store and how we use it on the cookies page.

Continue

skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Menu Search

Sigv Frag 2III/4 — vǫrr ‘the wake’

Brýnd vôru dǫrr;
boga fylgði hǫrr;
sparn rastar knǫrr
rádýris vǫrr.

Dǫrr vôru brýnd; hǫrr fylgði boga; knǫrr rastar sparn vǫrr rádýris.

Spears were whetted; the bowstring went with the bow; the ship of the league [HORSE] pounded the wake of the roe-deer [LAND].

notes

[4] vǫrr rádýris ‘the wake of the roe-deer [LAND]’: Vǫrr m. is ‘oar-stroke, wake’, hence ‘sea’ (LP: 2. vǫrr). Here it forms a land-kenning belonging to a rare but recognised pattern (see Meissner 87) in which the base-word refers to sea and the determinant to a land-animal, inverting the more common conceit of the sea as the land of sea-creatures. As a further complication, the determinant , taken as normalised f., could be the word for ‘sailyard’ and hence rôdýri ‘sailyard-animal’ could be a kenning for ‘ship’. Thus the underlying image is comparable with knǫrr rastar ‘ship of the league [HORSE]’ (l. 3), and the two kennings form a harmonised metaphorical scheme, but both with a slight twist back in a maritime direction. For a similar kenning, see Eil Þdr 6/4 ver gaupu ‘sea of the lynx [MOUNTAINS]’.

kennings

grammar

case: acc.

Close

Log in

This service is only available to members of the relevant projects, and to purchasers of the skaldic volumes published by Brepols.
This service uses cookies. By logging in you agree to the use of cookies on your browser.

Close

Word in text

This view shows information about an instance of a word in a text.