KrákÁsl Lv 5VIII (Ragn 15)/8 — roð ‘reddening’
Hvat segið ér ór yðru,
— eru Svíar í landi
eða elligar úti? —
allnýtr konungs spjalli?
Fregit hefi ek hitt, at fóru,
— en fremr vitum eigi —
ok hildingar höfðu
hlunnroð, Danir sunnan.
Hvat segið ér ór yðru, allnýtr spjalli konungs? Eru Svíar í landi eða elligar úti? Ek hefi fregit hitt, at Danir fóru sunnan, ok hildingar höfðu hlunnroð; en fremr vitum eigi.
What have you to relate for your part, most worthy friend of the king? Are Swedes in the land, or, on the other hand, abroad? What I have heard is that the Danes travelled from the south and the warriors experienced a roller-reddening; but we know no more.
readings
[8] hlunnroð Danir sunnan: ‘(hlunro)d danir sunna(n)’(?) 147
notes
[8] hlunnroð ‘a roller-reddening’: This translation reflects the explanation of the term given under LP: hlunnroð, i.e. the reddening with blood of a launching roller that could occur when someone was killed by accident as a result of happening to be in front of a ship when it was pushed on rollers out to sea. Blood is not actually mentioned in the prose passage to which this stanza ostensibly refers (or indeed in the LP entry), though the spilling of blood seems to be implied. The passage in question, occurring near the beginning of ch. 10 of Ragn, in which Ragn 11-22 are quoted, offers an explanation of the word hlunnroð, indicating that it was a term with which the saga writer did not expect his audience to be familiar. The passage is (Ragn 1906-8, 137): Nu verdr þat, at skip Agnars skauzt af lunne, ok vard þar madr fyrir, ok fęʀ sa bana, ok kaulludu þeir þat hlunrod ‘What now occurred was that Agnarr’s ship started from its launching-roller, and a man happened to be in the way, and he met his death; and they called that a roller-reddening’. Vigfusson and Powell, who translate ‘sacrificial-launch’ here (CPB II, 349), see this kind of killing (in CPB I, 410) as part of a blood-sprinkling consecration ritual carried out at the launching of a new ship or when the ship was setting out on an important voyage. Falk (1912, 28-9), on the other hand, relates the ‑roð element in hlunnroð not to ON rjóða ‘redden’, but rather to a Norwegian dialect word rod, meaning ‘slippage’, and to the ‑roð element in ON flóttaroð ‘scattering of troops in flight’, seeing hlunnroð as referring to the accidental slipping away of one or more rollers under a ship, which might well have fatal results. Dillmann (2009) has since called into question both Falk’s view and the idea that hlunnroð in this instance has to do with sacrifice.