Gríml Lv 3VIII (GrL 5)/6 — mellur ‘The female lovers’
Skal ek ykr báðum skjótliga heita
oddi ok eggju í upphafi.
Munu þá reyna Hrungnis mellur,
hvárt betr dugir broddr eða krumma.
Ek skal heita ykr báðum oddi ok eggju skjótliga í upphafi. Mellur Hrungnis munu þá reyna, hvárt broddr eða krumma dugir betr.
I will quickly promise you both at the outset weapon-point and blade. The female lovers of Hrungnir <giant> [GIANTESSES] will discover then whether weapon-point or claw is more effective.
notes
[6] mellur Hrungnis ‘the female lovers of Hrungnir <giant> [GIANTESSES]’: The word mella is used as a giantess-heiti in several skaldic poems, as a determinant in kennings for Þórr or for giants, e.g.: dolgs mellu ‘of the enemy of the giantess [= Þórr]’ (Eyv Lv 8/7-8I); mellu mǫgfellandi ‘the feller of the kinsman of the giantess [(lit. ‘kinsman-feller of the giantess’) GIANT > = Þórr]’ (Steinunn Lv 2/3V). In the kenning mellur Hrungnis in this stanza and in mellu grams hellis ‘mella of the lord of the cave [GIANT > GIANTESS]’ (EGils Selv 14/4IV), however, mella is the base-word of a giantess-kenning and thus cannot itself have been understood to mean ‘giantess’; mella hellis grams is a designation for the sea-giantess Selkolla ‘Seal-Head’ (Meissner 398). Finnur Jónsson interprets mella in these two late instances as ‘female lover’ (LP: 1. mella). A passage in Flj ch. 5 (ÍF 11, 228) can be adduced to lend support to this interpretation: a giant refers to a human maiden he has abducted as his melluefni lit. ‘material for a mella’, by which he evidently means his future wife.
kennings
- Mellur Hrungnis — The female lovers of Hrungnir <giant> [GIANTESSES]
grammar
case: nom.
number: pl.