[norse_course] Re: Ellisifjardrápa

> 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.

Hehe, I know that state of mind :)

> 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.

Early poets, like Bragi, often played it
fast and loose when it came to rhyme.

> 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.

That's okay. According to Snorri that's a minor
blemish and he sure was a stickler for form.

> Also, would there be a tendency to avoid unexpected rhymes in extra
> places, like in Stanza 12:
>
> Fold blómfölduð feldar
> felldi fjöld (menn hennar)

Yes, I think this is usually avoided.
But the alliteration is a much more
serious problem in these two lines :)

> 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.

What bad taste the Irish have! ;)

> 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.

The permissible word order in dróttkvætt has been
researched by scholars but I'm not well read there.
I go with what feels right to me or follow an example.

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

Agreed. I'm never sure about the best way myself.
When I have a whole sentence inserted I think it's nice
to isolate it with some punctuation but commas after
every other word don't really help the reader much.

> Exactly what I wanted to say. Wow, it worked!
> Except that Anna = Princess Anne

Ah, sorry :) We tend to use native forms of the names
of European royalty.

Elísabet Bretadrottning
Karl Bretaprins
Jóhann Karl Spánarkonungur

I just didn't realize that HRH actual name is Anne
and not Anna.

> 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.

Ah, I don't remember either Dís or Dísi in a kenning
but I think it's good enough anyhow. Later Icelandic
poets kept adding names that could be used for this
purpose.

>> 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?

I'm not sure. Yes, I see Zoega has an example:

"Nú er niðr slegit allri vináttu."

I'm not familiar with the phrase and don't know
if it was ever used in the sense of putting an
end to people.

> Incidentally, is 'námumaðr' an old word?

Funny that you should ask. I've been playing
a computer game from Microsoft - Age of Mythology -
where you can play the Norse. They've got some
Icelanders to read phrases so when you click on
a peasant he goes: "Tilbúinn!" or "Hver er þar?"
When you tell him to hunt he says "Veiðimaður!"
and when you tell him to mine gold he says "Grjótsveinn!".

That's not a word I've ever heard before and it
gives no hits on Google. I don't know if it was
someone's idea of an archaic word for "námumaður".
I don't know how old that word is. I can't seem
to find 'náma' in Zoega.

>> 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...

Ah, I suppose you're thinking of some of the recent
unpleasantness in Mesopotamia. I assumed the poem would
relate HM's deeds in chronological order and the Suez war
is near the start of her reign...

But then again I suppose the miners were making trouble
sometime in the 80's. Or was there an earlier episode?

Some lunch now and then I'll dig into the next stanza.

Kveðja,
Haukur