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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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ǪrvOdd Ævdr 14VIII (Ǫrv 84)/7 — rauðan ‘red’

Skjótt nam kynda         í skóg þykkum
eld brennanda         uppi á landi.
Svá við lopti         létum leika
hávan ok rauðan         hrottgarm viðar.

Skjótt nam kynda brennanda eld í þykkum skóg uppi á landi. Svá létum hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar leika við lopti.

Quickly I kindled burning fire in a thick wood up in the countryside. So we [I] caused the towering and red howling hound of wood [FIRE] to play against the sky.

readings

[7, 8] hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar: svá með lopti létum leika 471, hávan heldr hrottgarm viðar 173ˣ

notes

[7-8] hávan ok rauðan hrottgarm viðar ‘the towering and red howling hound of wood [FIRE]’: With Skj B and Skald, but not Ǫrv 1888, which has hrótgarm ‘roof-hound’, the mss’ ‘hrot(t) garm’ is understood as a cpd noun whose first element is judged (cf. LP: hrotgarmr) to be the otherwise unrecorded hrot ‘howling’, assumed to be related to the verb hrjóta ‘fall, fly, snore, make a rough sound’. A very similar pair of lines occurs in a variant to Helr 10/4 (NK 221 and notes; Kommentar VI, 550-1) in Norn, hávan brenna | hrottgarm viðar. The context is the burning of Brynhildr’s hall. The element hrott- is otherwise unrecorded and is difficult to relate to hrjóta, but several ms. spellings of this cpd, including the present instance, have the double <t>. The fire-kenning hár hrótgarmr ‘the towering roof-hound’ occurs in Þjóð Sex 21/8II, and it is possible that hrótgarmr ‘roof-hound’ may have been intended as the base-word of the kenning here also. For fire-kennings with ‘hound, dog’ as base-word, see Meissner 101.

kennings

grammar

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