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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Sigoa Lv 1VIII (Ragn 19)/8 — Eysteinn ‘Eysteinn’

(Þat) skal þriggja nátta
(ef þik tregar, móðir)
— leið eigu vér langa —
leiðangr búinn verða.
Skal Uppsölum eigi,
þó at ófafé bjóði,
ef oss duga eggjar,
Eysteinn konungr ráða.

Leiðangr skal verða búinn þriggja nátta, ef þat tregar þik, móðir; eigu vér langa leið. Eysteinn konungr skal eigi ráða Uppsölum, þó at bjóði ófafé, ef eggjar duga oss.

An expedition will be prepared within three nights, if that is what is causing you grief, mother; we have a long way to go. King Eysteinn will not rule Uppsala, though he may offer excessive payment, if sword-blades serve us well.

readings

[8] Eysteinn konungr ráða: ‘eystein (beli) rada’(?) 147, Eysteinn beli ráða Hb

notes

[8] Eysteinn konungr ‘King Eysteinn’: In RagnSon and the X version of Ragn, preserved in Hb and 147 respectively, Eysteinn is given the byname beli, which appears in the 147 and Hb readings of this line. (The byname does not appear in the Y version of Ragn, preserved in 1824b, however.) Its origin and meaning are uncertain. It may be related to the giant name Beli which is in turn related to the verb belja ‘bellow’, or possibly to the noun belgr, meaning ‘animal-skin’ or ‘skin bag’ (Lidén 1928, 361-4; McTurk 1991a, 114-17). All previous eds apart from those of CPB (who have Eysteinn Beli) and Finnur Jónsson in Hb 1892-6 (as opposed to Skj B) adopt the 1824b reading here. Eysteinn beli is listed in Skáldatal (SnE 1848-87 III, 251-2, 259-60, 270-1), along with Ragnarr loðbrók and Bjǫrn at Haugi, as a patron of the C9th poet Bragi Boddason, to whom the poem Ragnarsdrápa (Bragi RdrIII) is attributed. Given Snorri Sturluson’s association of this poem with Ragnarr loðbrók (SnE 1998 I, 72-3), and Bragi’s sobriquet inn gamli ‘the Old’, applied to him by Snorri and in Skáldatal (see McTurk 2003, 112-13), and indicating that in C13th Iceland Bragi was regarded as a figure of the distant past, it is of some interest to find the nickname beli applied to Eysteinn in Hb (early C14th) and in 147 (c. 1450) in connection with Ragnarr loðbrók, raising the question of whether this Eysteinn’s connection with Bragi as well as with Ragnarr was common knowledge in late medieval Iceland.

grammar

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