Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

451 Pages·2001·22.186 MB·English

by  Guðrún Nordal

Tools of Literacy
The Role ofSkaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture
of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
This page intentionally left blank
Tools of Literacy
The Role ofSkaldic Verse in
Icelandic Textual Culture of the
Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
GuSrun Nordal
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2001
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-4789-0
Printed on acid-free paper
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Nordal, Gudrun
Tools of literacy : the role of skaldic verse in Icelandic textual
culture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8020-4789-0
1. Scalds and scaldic poetry - History and criticism. 2. Scalds
and scaldic poetry - Social aspects. I. Title.
PT7172.N67 2000 839'.61009 COO-930588-2
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Icelandic
Research Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents
List of Tables, Maps, and Figures viii
Preface ix
Introduction 3
PART ONE: SKALDIC VERSE AND LEARNING 17
1. The Twelfth Century 19
Drottkv&tt and the study of grammatica 19
The grammatical literature 25
Hdttalykill 29
A twelfth-century poet: Bishop Klceingr I>orsteinsson 36
2. Snorra Edda and the Study of Grammatica 41
Manuscript textuality 41
The medieval codices of Snorra Edda 44
The manuscripts of Snorra Edda and the grammatical literature 46
Conclusion 68
PART TWO: THE SOURCES AND THE THIRTEENTH-CENTURY
POET 73
3. Sources of Skaldic Verse 75
Textbooks and treatises 77
Translations from Latin 88
vi Contents
A saint's life 89
Historical writing 90
Biographies 99
Conclusion 114
4. The Poet's Profession 117
Professional poets 120
Aristocratic poets in Iceland 138
Clerics as poets 141
Conclusion 142
EXCURSUS: The Thirteenth-Century Poet 144
Unknown thirteenth-century poets listed in both versions of
Skdldatal and their patrons 144
Twelfth-century poets in Sturlunga saga 147
Known thirteenth-century poets 156
PART THREE: THEORY AND PRACTICE IN SKALDIC POETICS 197
5. Theoretical Discussion of the Kenning 199
The kenning in vernacular literary theory 200
The fusion of vernacular and Latin traditions 206
The kenning in grammatica 210
Categories of meaning in Skdldskaparmdl and Litla Skdlda 213
Pulur 232
Conclusion 235
6. Theory and Practice in Skaldic Verse 237
The poetic treatises 237
The human body dismembered in skaldic diction 239
Conclusion 263
PART FOUR: SOURCES OF INSPIRATION 269
7. Cosmology, Learning, and Body Imagery 271
Neoplatonist ideas and the world-body 273
Ymir's body in Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning 277
The poetic landscape in body imagery 283
Cosmological imagery 285
Contents vii
Natural landscape 296
Flora 304
The human body 306
Conclusion 306
8. Digging for Gold in Skaldic Verse 309
The Danish material 311
Gold myths in Skdldskaparmdl 319
Gold-kennings in thirteenth-century verse 327
Conclusion 335
Conclusion 339
Genealogies 347
Notes 359
Abbreviations 389
Bibliography 393
Index 411
Tables, Maps, and Figures
Table 3.1: Skaldic citations in Codex Wormianus's dkend heiti 80
Table 3.2: Skaldic citations in the Third Grammatical Treatise 85
Table 3.3: Skaldic citations in the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 87
Table 3.4: Skaldic verse in Sturlunga saga 92-3
Table 3.5: Skaldic verse in Hdkonar saga Hdkonarsonar 98
Table 3.6: Skaldic verse in Gudmundar sogur 104-5
Table 3.7: Skaldic verse in Hrafns saga (A and B version) 112
Table 4.1: Icelandic aristocrats and their poets 134
Table 4.2: Verse citations in the Sagas of Icelanders 135
Table 4.3: Poets belonging to the elite 139
Table 4.4: Unknown thirteenth-century poets listed in both versions of
Skdldatal and their patrons 145
Table 4.5: Twelfth-century poets cited or noted in Sturlunga saga 148
Table 4.6: Known thirteenth-century poets 157
Table 5.1: The arrangement of Skdldskaparmdl in R, W, U, A, B, C 216-21
Table 5.2: The classification of the kennings in A, B, C 224
Table 5.3: The classification of the heiti in U, A, B 230
Table 8.1: Gold myths in Skdldskaparmdl 322-3
Map 1 Map of Iceland 18
Figure 1: Photograph from Codex Upsaliensis, fol. 26V 52
Figure 2: Photograph from AM 748 Ib 4to, fol. 26r 61
Preface
During the years 1993 to 1996 I held a research scholarship from the
Icelandic Research Council that enabled me to conduct the research for
this book. The council also supported the book for publication. The
greatest part of the work was done at the Stofnun Arna Magnussonar
in Reykjavik, which provided me with the working environment and
library facilities that inspired me in my work. Jonas Kristjansson and
Stefan Karlsson, the directors of the institute at this time, supported me
in every way.
A few words need to be said on the spelling of Old Icelandic. I have
endeavoured to cite the most reliable editions of the texts discussed in
the book. They are either normalized or diplomatic editions. In the
latter case I have normalized the spelling of citations to a thirteenth-
century standard. Only rarely is it important to give manuscript read-
ings. When I use a normalized edition I have not changed the spelling,
even though the editors use various ways of normalizing the manu-
script readings (e.g., okennt and okent, it and hit, § and a, o and 0, or
6). Finnur Jonsson organized the skaldic corpus in his edition of skald-
ic poetry, and throughout the book I refer to his A-volume in the refer-
ences to skaldic poetry, even though more reliable editions of the
sources for some of the verse may be available. I also refer to Finnur
Jonsson's edition of Skdldskaparmdl; Anthony Faulkes's 1998 edition of
Skdldskaparmdl appeared when this book was near completion, but his
practice of normalizing the text of Snorra Edda is followed. I cite
Faulkes's edition of the Prologue and Gylfaginning, and Hdttatal, and
rely on his translation of the whole work, which appeared in 1987.
Titles of sources are spelled according to the edition used; therefore
different spelling may occur in the titles; e.g., in biskup in Pals saga