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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Anon Sól 55VII/1 — Sólar ‘of the sun’

Sólar hjört        leit ek sunnan fara;
        hann teymðu tveir saman;
fætr hans        stóðu foldu á,
        en tóku horn til himins.

Ek leit hjört sólar fara sunnan; tveir saman teymðu hann; fætr hans stóðu á foldu, en horn tóku til himins.

I saw the hart of the sun journey from the south; two together had bridled him; his feet stood on the earth, and his horns reached to heaven.

notes

[1] hjört sólar ‘the hart of the sun’: In Christian iconography the hart is a symbol of Christ. This significance was well known in Iceland from an early date, witness the Icel. Physiologus (Halldór Hermannsson 1938, 20) and the legend of S. Eustace/Plácitus, available in Icel. translation and poetry from at least the late C12th. See further Introduction to Anon Pl and Note to Pl 7/7-8. A hjartarhorn ‘hart’s horn’, most likely signifying Christ’s Cross, is mentioned in 78/4. The hart is also a symbol of nobility in eddic poetry, cf. HHund II 38 where Helgi is compared to an animal whose horn glóa við himinn siálfan ‘horns glow up to the very sky’, as also Guðr II 2/5. The image, like many others in the poem, clearly partakes both of Christian and indigenous mythological associations; see Amory (1985, especially 9-12 and 1990, 258-60).

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