Sveinn Norðrdr 2^III/2 — synir ‘sons’

readings

[2] synir: ‘so᷎nir’ Tˣ

notes

[2] ljótir synir Fornjóts ‘the ugly sons of Fornjótr <giant> [WINDS]’: Fornjótr appears in a number of Old Norse sources as a giant, apparently a personification of weather phenomena. His son or sons are the winds (see Notes to Þul Jǫtna I 3/5, Þul Elds 1/3-4 and Þul Veðra 1/8). Snorri Sturluson calls him the brother of Ægir and of fire (SnE 1998, I, 39). In Þjóð Yt 21/5, 7^I glóðfjalgr sonr Fornjóts ‘the ember-hot son of Fornjótr’ is clearly a kenning for ‘fire’. The notion of a family of hostile giants, the offspring of a mythical king Fornjótr, an inhabitant of the most northerly parts of the Scandinavian peninsula, who produced bad weather on land and sea and other dangerous things like fire seems to have been traditional in early Scandinavia, but it was adopted and embellished by learned historiographers and appears in works that trace the ancestry of several ruling families of Norwegian origin, notably the jarls of Orkney. Cf. ÍF 34, 3-7 and Flat 1860-8, I, 21 and 219-20. For studies of the prose uses of this myth, see Clunies Ross (1983), Meulengracht Sørensen (1993b) and Rowe (2005, 316-36).

kennings

• ljótir synir Fornjóts — the ugly sons of Fornjótr <giant> [WINDS]

grammar

case: nom.
number: pl.