The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse Mythology (Garland Medieval Casebooks) by

Language: eng
Format: azw
ISBN: 9781136601354
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2002-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

Notes

1. See e.g. Moltke, 180 ff. and on the Rök stone, Jansson, 32ff.

2. Konstantin Reichardt dates Hymiskviða to the third decade of the thirteenth century (152 ff.). F. R.Schröder thinks that the poem may be older, or rather that there were earlier variants (6 ff.). Einar Ól. Sveinnson suggests the eleventh century (1962, 347 ff.).

3. See e.g. Dumézil, 23 ff.; Schröder, especially 29 ff.

4. See Gschwantler and references there; cf. Kabell.

5. Cf. Neckel, 72 ff.

6. See Jόnsson 1895; cf. Lie, 5ff.

7. The term “diagnostic feature” is from Margeson, whose essay also discusses the problem of verification. Cf. Weber, 324ff. and Schier.

8. With reference to the Snorra-Edda’s Þulur, Kabell interprets Litr in Bragi’s kenning “ëngull fangboð a forns Litar flotna” [hook of the combat-offerer of the men of old Litr (a giant), i.e. hook of Þόrr] (st. 18) as a heiti for “ox”, which would mean that the ox is mentioned there.

9. Cf. Jansson in Upplands Runskrifter, 616.

10. An interpretation of the Altuna stone’s pictures in conjunction with the inscription is given in Weber.

11. Wolf (13) thinks that Snorri took this detail over from the pictures. This is possible, but it cannot be proven.

12. Numbering according to Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning.

13. Ed. Faulkes, 44–5; tr, Faulkes, 47. Wolf’s suggestion (13) that Snorri was the first to combine Þόrr looking at the serpent with the serpent looking at Þόrr is incorrect. The combination is found in Húsdrápa sts. 4 and 5.

14. Cited from Neckel & Kuhn; translation supplied from Larrington.

15. Schier (433 ff.) thinks that the earliest form of the myth is preserved in Húsdrápa, where Þόrr kills the World Serpent.

16. de Boor does not consider Þόrr’s fight with the Miðgarðsormr to have been an original element in the Ragnarǫk myth (141). Cf. de Vries, 2:143 and Schier, 435.

17. The concepts of reversibility and irreversibility, the horizontal and the vertical in the world picture of Nordic mythology are discussed by Melitinskij and Hastrup (1981a; 1985). In Meltinskij’s opinion: “The name itself ‘The Serpent of Midgard’ indicates perhaps that it was earlier thought of as a positive element of the cosmic system, but that in the strongly ‘eschatologically’ structured Scandinavian mythology, Jǫrmungandr became only one of the chaotic forces which had been brought temporarily under control by the gods” (47). Hastrup writes that “in the horizontal model the serpent of Miðgarðr, Miðgarðsormr forms a kind of negative boundary between earth and the world-ocean” (1985, 150).

18. A description of the Icelandic kinship system is given in Meulengracht Sǫrensen 1977a, 30 ff.; and in Hastrup 1981b and 1985, 72 ff.

19. Vogt 211; cf. Reichardt, 147 ff. and Wolf, 10. In Schröder’s opinion, however, Hymiskviða’s “sveinn” means only that Þόrr is a young god (4).

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