Eil Þdr 11III/2 — dolgs ‘of animosity’
Né djúpakǫrn drôpu
dolgs vamms firum glamma
stríðkviðjǫndum stǫðvar
stall við rastar falli.
Ógndjarfan hlaut arfi
Eiðsfjarðar hug meira;
skalfa Þórs né Þjalfa
þróttar steinn við ótta.
Né drôpu stall djúpakǫrn dolgs stríðkviðjǫndum firum vamms stǫðvar glamma við falli rastar. Arfi Eiðsfjarðar hlaut meira ógndjarfan hug; steinn þróttar Þórs né Þjalfa skalfa við ótta.
Nor did the sea-acorns [STONES] of animosity [HEARTS] of the attack-prohibitors of the disgraceful men of the place of wolves [MOUNTAINS > GIANTS] falter when facing the torrent of the river. The heir of Eidsfjorden [= Hákon jarl?] got even more battle-daring courage; the stone of valour [HEART] of neither Þórr nor Þjálfi shook with fear.
readings
notes
[1, 2] djúpakǫrn dolgs ‘the sea-acorns [STONES] of animosity [HEARTS]’: Hearts are often paraphrased in kennings with the base-word ‘stone’ (Meissner 138). Here, the base-word is replaced by the kenning ‘sea-acorns’ whose referent is ‘stones’. Resorting to tmesis by combining djúp- with ‑rǫst (djúp-rǫst, so Sveinbjörn Egilsson 1851, 8, 14) or ‑fall (djúp-fall, so Finnur Jónsson 1900b, 389; Skj B, followed by Davidson 1983, 608) is unnecessary. The determinant of djúpakǫrn is dolgs ‘of animosity’, and just like the determinant ‘valour’ in the heart-kenning steinn þróttar ‘stone of valour’ (l. 8), it refers to an intense feeling (cf. Meissner 138). The present interpretation follows ms. R, in which the first two words of l. 2 are separate. Mss Tˣ and W have what would be the metrically more correct cpd dolgvamms ‘of hostile disgrace’ for this A2k-line (on the filler of this type of line, see Gade 1995a, 119). A cpd like ‘disgrace of animosity’ (Kiil 1956, 129), however, is not a suitable determinant for a heart-kenning that refers to Þórr’s and Þjálfi’s hearts. The cpd dolgvamms could be combined with firar ‘men’, the base-word of the giant-kenning (as in NN §454), but the heart-kenning would then lose its determinant because djúpakǫrn ‘acorns of the deep’ alone cannot be a kenning for ‘hearts’ (NN §454).
kennings
- djúpakǫrn dolgs — the sea-acorns of animosity [HEARTS]