Re: Ellisifjardrápa

> I've been chuckling like a maniac
> here reading through your poem :)
> There's some criticism below so I'll
> start by saying that I enjoy your work
> immmensely.

Thanks! My ego says thanks too. As you might have guessed, I´ve
been going round all this week with a distant expression, muttering
Old Norse and counting syllables on my fingers.

> "Spýtum nú vals vætu
> víss Kvasis fyr gulls Dísi.
> Biðk til Temsar Boðnar,
> bragnir, hljóðs: of móður -
> hvé niðr hrönnum – nenni -
> námumönnum – Önnu –
> sló Sága Sílægju -

>
> Line 7 sounds off to my Icelandic ears. It's the dreaded
> 'ofstuðlun'; "too much alliteration". It's a strange thing,
> alliteration, it's got to be just so. One can be forgiven
> for dropping the hendingar (rhyme) now and then but if the
> alliteration is wrong the scholars will assume the text of
> your poem is corrupt :)

I didn´t know that. I'll ponder a replacement. Till now I'd
assumed the only limitation on alliteration was in the
second 'vísuorð' of the couplet, if that's the right term. The
skaldic verses I've met in some legendary sagas have been much less
rigorous with rhyme than those in Gordon & Taylor, but I assumed
this was just a later medieval development. But is it possible to
have too much rhyme? Especially at first I found it weirdly easier
to come up with 'aðalhendingar' "full rhymes", so I often have these
even in the odd lines, but I have seen examples of this elsewhere,
on a more modest scale.

Also, would there be a tendency to avoid unexpected rhymes in extra
places, like in Stanza 12:

Fold blómfölduð feldar
felldi fjöld (menn hennar)

There's a nice Old Irish metre which has this rhyme scheme between
the end of one line and the beginning of the next. And as far as I
can tell the earlier Irish poetry liked as much alliteration as they
could get.

>
> Usually each half of a dróttkvætt stanza is
> independent in meaning. You're going pretty far
> with the scrambling to make 'of móður' in the first
> half fit with 'Önnu' in the second one :) Anyhow,
> I'll try to translate.

I've always wondered if there were any rules to limit the
scrambling, e.g. conventional ways of placing the parenthetical
words. Because I've seen some pretty insane examples. But maybe
books for beginners like to print the more exceptional examples so
as to generate a sense of abject terror, conducive to learning.
Those lines from Sighvat´s Knútsdrápa on Ivar the Boneless are
completely mixed up: as I recall, when Rory McTurk quotes them in
his book on Ragnar, they´re printed with a comma between every
single word! But maybe there's a skill to devising something that
can actually be said in a random order but still avoid ambiguity.

Any tips on punctuation? I think the ideal way would be to do it in
different colours.

>
> Should 'bragnir' be 'bragnar? Nice touch working
> the Thames in here ;)

Oh yes, so it should be. I guess 'bragnir' would be the
hypothetical singular, if that ever occurs.

>
> "Spýtum nú valsvætu víss Kvasis, fyrir Dísi gulls.
> Bragnir, ek bið (yðr) hljóðs til Temsar Boðnar."
>
> Let us now spew forth the wetness of the slain [blood]
> of the wise Kvasir [poetry] for the Dís of gold [woman],
> I bid you be silent for the Thames of Boðn [poetry].
>
> "(Ek) nenni segja of móður Önnu, hvé Sága báls
> Sílægju sló niðr námumönnum hrönnum með álum vígs."
>
> I want to tell of Anna's mother [Elizabeth], how the
> Sága of the bonfire of the sea [gold] [woman] beat
> down the miners in heaps with eels of killing [swords].

Exactly what I wanted to say. Wow, it worked! Except that Anna =
Princess Anne, and "Dís" was supposed to be Dísi, a proper name for
a norn which appears in the þulur:

Nornir heita,
þær er nauð skapa,
Nift ok Dísi
nú mun ek telja.


But it makes no difference to the kenning. Wow, it's is a really
strange experience seeing this stuff come back at me in English!

>
> I don't recognize the phrase "slá niðr + dat."
> Got to love the eels of killing - it sounds like
> something out of Monty Python but it's actually
> a perfectly normal sword-kenning :)

Dative probably an accident. Most likely I had the dative from some
other phrase, then changed to verb and forgot to do anything about
it because the rhyme was just too damn convenient. Checking Zoega
now, I see that with the meaning "strike down" it´s accusative, but
there is another expression given: slá niðr e-u "put an end to". Do
you reckon I could get away with this? Or would we have to make the
object something inanimate. Except that makes "in heaps" sound a
bit odd, so maybe not. Incidentally, is 'námumaðr' an old word?

>
> "Hrísla vís glæs geisla
> gladdi hræs ok saddi
> þeista, þá rym reisti
> randa í Serklandi.
>
> Vís hrísla geisla glæs gladdi þeista hræs ok saddi (hann), þá er
> (hún) reisti rym randa í Serklandi."
>
> The wise tree of the beam of the sea [gold] [woman]
> gladdened the tystie of the corpse [raven/eagle] and
> gave it its fill when she raised the roar of shields
> [battle] in Northern Africa.
>
> The Suez, I suppose.

Well, I was actually thinking of more recent grisliness, but it
could be, couldn't it. Or any of a half dozen other late-imperial
entanglements...

>
> I'm going to sleep now. I'll proceed tomorrow :)

Good luck with the rest - don't have nightmares. Or if you do, may
they all be spectacular ones,

Llama Nom