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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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ÚlfrU Húsdr 11III/3 — of

Fullǫflug lét fjalla
framm haf-Sleipni þramma
Hildr, en Hropts of gildar
hjalmeldum mar felldu.

Fullǫflug Hildr fjalla lét haf-Sleipni þramma framm, en of gildar Hropts felldu mar hjalmeldum.

The exceedingly strong Hildr <valkyrie> of the mountains [GIANTESS] made the sea-Sleipnir <horse> [SHIP] lumber forward, and the companions of Hroptr <= Óðinn> killed the steed with helmet-fires [SWORDS].

notes

[3] of: Of is an expletive particle that cannot be translated. It occurs before verbs, seldom before an adj. or adv. and even more seldom before nouns as here. Accepted opinion is that the particle of developed from earlier prefixes. It is therefore possible that it here replaces an old ga-/ge- prefix which had communal sense; cf. OE gegilda ‘member of a guild’. — [3] of gildar Hropts ‘the companions of Hroptr <= Óðinn>’: Gildar is the pl. of either gildi m. ‘guild-brother, companion’ or gildir m. ‘one who lets sth. have its due’ (LP: gildir). (a) The present edn adopts gildar in the sense ‘companions’. It is difficult to decide whether the companions (or warriors) of Óðinn ought to be interpreted as Óðinn’s berserks or as einherjar (see Anon Eirm 1/5I). Gildi ‘guild-brother, companion’ is admittedly a word that is attested late in written texts (see Fritzner: gildi, gildisbróðir etc.), but it does appear several times in Swedish runic inscriptions from the Viking Age (900-1050) (Ög 64, Bjälbo kyrka; Ög MÖLM 1960; 230, Törnevalla kyrka; U 379 Sigtuna). In these inscriptions the word always refers to a member of a group erecting a memorial stone for a deceased member of the same group. Gildi m. is a collective noun derived from gildi n. ‘guild’. The history of the word gildi ‘guild’, its semantic development and the social organisation called gildi are highly controversial (Rooth 1926, 74-98; Düwel 1987, 337-41; Anz 1998; Oexle 1998). It is likely that the guilds as trading organisations, along with the noun gildi m. ‘member of a gildi’ (cf. OE gegilda, gilda, OFris. gildo), were brought to Scandinavia from Germany and England at a relatively early time (C10th). Both words were likely current at Scandinavian trading centres and hence also known to Icelanders. (b) If gildar is interpreted as the pl. of gildir ‘one who lets sth. have its due’ (LP: gildir) as most previous scholars have done (Mogk 1880, 327-8; Skj B; Skald; Turville-Petre 1976, 70), the word requires a determinant; hence hjalmeldar (A) has been emended to hjalmelda ‘of helmet-fires’ (m. gen. pl.), to form the kenning of gildar hjalmelda Hropts ‘users of helmet-fires [SWORDS > WARRIORS] of Hroptr <= Óðinn>’.

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