Cookies on our website

We use cookies on this website, mainly to provide a secure browsing experience but also to collect statistics on how the website is used. You can find out more about the cookies we set, the information we store and how we use it on the cookies page.

Continue

skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Menu Search

Þskakk Erldr 1II/6 — jǫrnum ‘the irons’

Hjoggu øxar eggjum
ugglaust hvatir glugga
— því vas nennt — á nýju
Norðmenn í kaf borði.
Eyðendr sôu yðrar
arnar hungrs á jǫrnum
vágfýl*ingi vélar;
vígskǫrð ofan bǫrðuð.

Hvatir Norðmenn hjoggu ugglaust glugga á nýju borði í kaf eggjum øxar; því vas nennt. Eyðendr hungrs arnar sôu vélar yðrar á jǫrnum vágfýl*ingi; bǫrðuð vígskǫrð ofan.

The brave Norwegians fearlessly struck openings in the new ship-side under the water with the edges of the axe; that was accomplished with vigour. The destroyers of the eagle’s hunger [WARRIORS] saw your cunning [standing] on the irons of the sea-fulmar [SHIP]; you struck embrasures in the upper part.

notes

[6] á jǫrnum ‘[standing] on the irons’: Taken here to refer to the iron beam on which Auðun and the other men were standing while they were hacking away at the planking of the warship. The anchor-stock (akkerisstokkr) is the vertical piece on the top of the anchor which protrudes in the opposite direction to the anchor-flukes (see Falk 1912, 79). However, it is inconceivable that the Norsemen could have been standing on an anchor-stock, because anchors were small and a ship would have carried quite a few of them (see Pryor and Jeffreys 2006, 210-11). It is possible that what the Norsemen mistook for an anchor-stock was the spur of the ship, a ‘long wooden beam, perhaps sometimes sheathed in iron, attached to the stempost … and suspended by a chain or coupling from its head’ (Pryor and Jeffreys 2006, lvi, see also pp. 203-4, 448). Orkn (ÍF 34, 225) mentions that the warship had a protective iron covering (járnafarit), and the compiler of that saga, if he knew Þorbjǫrn’s poem, most likely interpreted jǫrnum as iron covering. However, there is no evidence that Mediterranean warships had such protective covers (John H. Pryor, pers. comm.). Skj B separates the prep. from the following noun. Finnur construes á ‘on, at’ with vélar ‘cunning’ (su á vélar yðrar ‘looked at your cunning’), and he takes jǫrnum as an instr. dat. lit. ‘with irons’ with the second cl. of the helmingr, translated as I slog ovenfra med jærn skibets skanser ned ‘You struck the ship’s fortifications down from above with iron’. However, a proclitic prep. cannot be separated from the following nominal phrase (see NN §902). The quantity of the vowel in jǫrnum (rather than jrnum) is established by the internal rhyme -arn- : -ǫrn (see ANG §133b.2). Note that there is no vowel alliteration on the j-.

grammar

Close

Log in

This service is only available to members of the relevant projects, and to purchasers of the skaldic volumes published by Brepols.
This service uses cookies. By logging in you agree to the use of cookies on your browser.

Close

Word in text

This view shows information about an instance of a word in a text.