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

ÞjóðA Magn 6II/1 — landi ‘the land’

Hrindr af hróka landi
hregg af eikiveggjum
— sunnr leikr eldr of unninn
óðr — í lopt upp glóðum.
Bœr logar hǫlfu hæra
hjónum nær á Fjóni;
ræfr þola nauð ok næfrar;
Norðmenn sali brenna.

Hregg af landi hróka hrindr glóðum af eikiveggjum upp í lopt; óðr eldr leikr sunnr of unninn. Bœr logar hǫlfu hæra nær hjónum á Fjóni; ræfr ok næfrar þola nauð; Norðmenn brenna sali.

A storm from the land of cormorants [SEA] flings embers from oak walls up into the air; to the south raging fire sports, once kindled. The settlement blazes twice as high hard by the households on Fyn; roof and shingles endure distress; Norwegians burn down halls.

notes

[1] af landi hróka ‘from the land of cormorants [SEA]’: Hence a storm or wind (hregg, l. 1) off the sea. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson in ÍF 28 (followed by Hkr 1991) adopts the reading á ‘on’ and takes hróka landi as a word-play yielding sjár m. ‘sea’ and hence the p. n. Sjáland (Sjælland, Zealand; Selund in st. 4/4, ÞjóðA Sex 24/2). This has the advantages of avoiding two instances of af ‘from’ and providing a comparison between incidents on Sjælland and Fyn which makes sense of hǫlfu hæri ‘twice as high’ in l. 5. However, the interpretation rather implausibly assumes that landi counts twice, and since the prose context makes no mention of a Sjáland, this seems not to have been the way the medieval compilers read the st.

kennings

grammar

case: dat.

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.