Re: Her Majesty's Exploits

> With shields did the light-sister of Ella
> [queen of England?] deprive nations of lands.
> A horrible waterfall of missiles flew from
> the elm-trees [bows] in the field of shields
> [battle] when the fierce grandmother of
> William [Elizabeth] gave battle - very
> red blood burst out on the ground.
>
> Yup, that's the idea. According to Zoega, 'lind' can also
> be "spear" in poetry. I'm more familiar with the idea of it being
> a "shield", but I guess that doesn't really affect the meaning
> here. "Light-sister" I was aiming for the idea "fair kinswoman",
> using 'nipt' rather loosely. Egill calls Aðalsteinn the kinsman of
> Játmundr, who I mention too. I took Ella as an archetypal king of
> England, that any queen of England might be assumed to be related
> too.

That was what I had guessed. I hope Queen Elizabeth
will be spared Ella's fate, though.

> Incidentally, I don´t think you could trace a literal family
> connection between Elizabeth and Ella, but you could with Edmund,
> and so theoretically Queen Elizabeth´s family tree can be traced
> back to Odin.

Or to king Priam of Troy :)

> Do you know when the
> lengthening occured?
>
> "Sitja veiðivitjar
> vals á borgar halsum"
>
> This is from Ragnarsonar þáttr, in Hauksbók (near the beginning of
> the 14th c.). According to the introduction in Finnur & Eiríkur
> Jónsson's 1892-96 edition, the verses probably aren't much older.

I thought that this change was over by the
early 13th century. This couplet sounds strange
to my ears but the short consonant does seem to
be bound by the rhyme.

> I shall have to look into this more closely. 'n' and 'r' seemed to
> be acceptable additions to a consonant cluster in these examples
> from Þórmóðr in Fóstbroeðrasaga:
>
> djúp ok Danskra vápna
>
> skínn á skildi mínnum
>
> vígreifr með Áleifi

True. Although I'm not sure what you mean
with the second line.

> I wondered if this applied to all continuants, including 'l'. And
> here´s one from the same source which you might not consider rhyme
> at all:
>
> rekin bitu stál - á Stikla-

Well, it's certainly a very poor rhyme with
the modern pronunciation but I suppose it might
have worked when it was composed.

> Or would all of these be considered (acceptably) defective rhymes.
> Incidentally, how exactly do the rhyme rules work when it comes
> to "resolution" of short syllables, as in 'rekin' here?

I'm out of my league there, I'm afraid.
There are two recent books in English dealing
with the metrics of dróttkvætt:

Kristján Árnason. The Rhythms of Dróttkvætt
and Other Old Icelandic Metres. 1991.

Kari Ellen Gade. The Structure of Old Norse
Dróttkvætt Poetry. 1995.

I understand Kristján and Gade hate each
others' guts.

> Well, this is *possibly* the least conventional pair of kennings I
> attempted. "Black butterflies of blood" are meant to be ravens. I
> figured if any bird can stand for raven, why not other flying things!
>
> 'Beita' + dative was supposed to be "grazed" or "set to graze",
> Zoega's definition (1), although it could also be (3) "set the black
> butterflies of blood on them" (in the sense of setting dogs on
> someone, to chase or attack them).
>
> Yes, spotted battle flowers was meant to be wounds. Unconventional
> I'm afraid, but I wanted something to go with butterflies, to avoid
> being 'nykrat' "monsterized"!

Indeed! That's actually a rather pretty simile
(in its own gory way). It is what Snorri
called a 'nýgjörving'.

Kveðja,
Haukur