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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Egill Frag 1III/2 — varrar ‘of the wake’

Vrǫngu varrar Gungnis
varrar lungs of stunginn.

Vrǫngu … varrar Gungnis … varrar lungs … of stunginn.

Awry … the lips of Gungnir <spear> [SPEAR-BLADES] … of the wake of the longship … pierced.

readings

[2] varrar: so A, varar W

notes

[1, 2] varrar … varrar ‘the lips … of the wake’: Adopting A’s reading, this word, repeated in each line, must be gen. sg. or nom. or acc. pl. of vǫrr f. ‘lip’ or gen. sg. or nom. pl. of vǫrr m. ‘the pull of an oar, the wake created by an oar’. Given that lung ‘longship’ (l. 2) has a nautical sense, the second meaning seems more probable than the first in l. 2. Finnur Jónsson (TGT 1927, 100) suggested that varrar Gungnis ‘the lips of Gungnir’ in l. 1 might be a kenning for the edges of a spear, and that suggestion has been adopted tentatively here. If W’s reading is adopted, Várar might be the gen. sg. of the proper noun Vár, name of a goddess (cf. Gylf, SnE 2005, 29).

grammar

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