Sigv Knútdr 10^I/6 — suman ‘some’

notes

[5, 6] rauf af suman veg ‘enjoyed some of the glory’: The basic meaning of rjúfa is ‘to break, tear’, and af must be adverbial, hence ‘enjoyed’, lit. ‘broke off’, with suman veg as the acc. sg. object. There are two identical nouns vegr, both m., one meaning ‘way’ and the other ‘glory’. (a) Finnur Jónsson (Skj B; LP: rjúfa 5) assumes the former, and so interprets the clause ‘quickly put behind him some of the way’, i.e. ‘quickly travelled some of the way’. (b) Kock prefers the latter (NN §652), and so offers skördade en del av Roms berömmelse ‘reaped a portion of the glory of Rome’. Kock’s reading is preferred here, as it avoids the potential illogicality of Finnur’s reading (why did Knútr not travel all of the way to Rome?), and more appropriately emphasises Knútr’s glory and European horizons. In his 1027 Letter Knútr declares that in Rome the pope, the emperor, and the attendant nobles omnes me et honorifice suscepere et muneribus pretiosis honorauere ‘all both received me with honour and honoured me with precious gifts’ (Darlington and McGurk 1995-, II, 514-15). — [7-8]: As Frank (1994b, 118) points out, all three of the alliterating words in this couplet are loanwords. Kærr ‘dear’ is from French (Fischer 1909, 80), keisari ‘emperor’ from Lat. via OE or Ger. (Fischer 1909, 59), and klúss ‘close’ probably also from Lat. via OE or Ger. (though Fischer 1909, 79 suggests French), while the fourth word, Pétrús(i), is a Biblical name in Latinate form. As Frank (loc. cit.) states, ‘The four words, linked by rhyme and consonance, re-enact, recapitulate, Cnut’s successful “networking” with the two great political powers of Western Europe’. For all four words, this is their first recorded occurrence in skaldic verse.

grammar