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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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ESk Lv 12III/4 — fjalli ‘the mountain’

Hrynja lét in hvíta
hausmjǫll ofan lausa
strind aurriða strandar
stalls af svarðar fjalli.

In hvíta strind stalls aurriða strandar lét hausmjǫll hrynja lausa ofan af fjalli svarðar.

The white land of the resting-place of the trout of the beach [SERPENT > GOLD > WOMAN] let the skull’s powder-snow [HAIR] fall loose down from the mountain of the scalp [HEAD].

readings

[4] svarðar fjalli: ‘[…]’ W

notes

[4] af fjalli svarðar ‘from the mountain of the scalp [HEAD]’: Ms. W ends with the word af ‘from’ and fjalli svarðar ‘the mountain of the scalp’ is conjectural. Fjalli (n. dat. sg.) ‘mountain’ is partly secured by the internal rhyme (-all : ‑all-), but aside from the fact that it must be a determinant in a kenning for ‘head’, the preceding word cannot be established with any certainty. Following Sveinbjörn Egilsson, SnE 1848-87, II, 500 suggests the reading skarar fjalli ‘hair’s mountain’ (see ESk Frag 2/4), which is unmetrical (the metre requires a long first syllable in position 3 and skar- is short). Skj B supplies reikar fjalli ‘the parting of the hair’s mountain’ (so also Skald). Both svǫrðr ‘scalp’ and reik ‘parting of the hair’ occur elsewhere in kennings for ‘head’ (see LP: reik; svǫrðr) but, whereas reik is used more commonly as pars pro toto for ‘head’ (see LP: reik 2), svǫrðr is often a determinant in head-kennings, e.g. land svarðar ‘land of the scalp’, stofn svarðar ‘stump of the scalp’, strǫnd svarðar ‘beach of the scalp’; see LP: svǫrðr 1. Svǫrðr also occurs in the two stanzas directly preceding this stanza in W and LaufE (SnSt Lv 7/3, 4 (twice) and Árni Lv 1/8IV).

kennings

grammar

case: dat.

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