Litla Skálda: English Translation
Rendered by Lyonel Perabo, Denise Vast, and Ann Sheffield, March 2024, Mimisbrunnr.info
Poetry is called ship of dvergar and of jӧtnar (1) and of Óðinn, and their discovery and their drink, and it is also correct to kenn, if wished, by both ship and drink as elsewhere in poetry and to name [it] after them, and ships one may call by the names of animals and of birds and of horses and kenn with the sea and all that belongs to a ship, but to call [them] by names of horses only if they are kenned with sea-kings (2).
Drink may be called by all names of the sea, of fjords and of all churning waters, and kenned as vats or horns, mouth or teeth or tongue.
It is correct to call dvergar and jӧtnar by all the names of peoples and sea-kings, and also a ruler or leader and all such, and to kenn dvergar as stones or stone-heaps, but jӧtnar as mountains or cliffs.
Stones may be called bones of the earth and of the sea and of waters, and houses of dvergar, and harm of Hamðir and Sörli (3).
[Something] shall not be kenned by its proper name itself, but [shall] be kenned by that which is the name of something other than its own name.
Battle may be called by the name of something loud [or] spectacular, clamour or noise, kenned with armor or weapons or shields, and in addition, it shall then be kenned with Óðinn or sea kings, if [one] wishes.
A shield may be called by names of the sun and the moon, of sky and of cloud; [it] may also be called wall and enclosure, partition and plank, door and door-sill, paneling and gate, portal and sail, bed-curtains (4) and wall-hanging, and shall always be named after battle or Oðinn or sea-kings.
All armor is the clothing of Óðinn and of sea-kings.
All cutting weapons may be called by names of fire or other brightness, lightning or light, [and] kenned with Óðinn or battle or sea-kings, armor or corpses, wounds or blood.
All weapons are trolls and wolves and hounds of armor and of shields, and thrusting weapons may be called by names of fishes and of serpents, and kenned with armor and shields, wounds or blood (5).
Blood is called by names of the sea and of waters, and kenned with corpses or gashes, injuries or wounds.
The sea may be called the enclosure and necklace of lands, [their] band and belt, lock and fetter, ring and bow ; [it] may also be called home and house of sea-beasts, earth and road of sea-kings and ships.
That serpent which lies around the outside of all lands is called the Miðgarðr Serpent; therefore it is correct to kenn all serpents of land or sea thus: to call [them] band or ring of the earth.
It is correct to call serpents by the names of fishes or whales if they are kenned with some land, with lava-field, grass, or gravel, rocky slope or heath.
Gold is the earth of serpents, their bed and path. One way gold shall be kenned is to call [it] fire and sun and moon and star and torch and candle, day and lightning-flash, beam and gleam and all light, of the hand and of the sea and of all waters. Also, gold may be kenned as snow or ice, and that is kenned by hand (6). A ring is the fetter and clasp and loop of the hand. Gold is the grain or flour of King Fróði, and the work of his two slave-women Fenja and Menja, and the seed-corn of King Kraki and seed of Fýrisvellir; Grani’s burden, Sif’s hair, and Mardöll’s tears; speech of jötnar. An arm-ring was called Draupnir: every ninth night dripped from it a ring just as heavy as itself; therefore, gold is its sweat.
The arm is the earth of hawks, their ground and road, and [their] horse, ship and pedestal. The arm is also called “hand.” The arm is the ruin or the need of the bow or the tongs. It may be called the leg or the limb of the shoulder. It is correct to call the arm by names of living creatures, if they are kenned with the shoulder; the arm may also be called tongs of the shoulder.
Horns may also be called thus: by tree-names, if they are kenned with drink or that from which they grow. Horns and other ale-vessels may be called ship or house of all drink.
Ice is the sky or house of the sea and of all waters, and their helmet.
A dog is a wolf or troll of bones. The troll of [something] is everything that may behave so. Livestock is the troll of its fodder, but fire of that which it destroys and of wood, gravel and rust of soils, waters of earth and of fire, rain or shine (7) of snow and of ice, storms of the herd (8).
Night is the grief or sickness of all birds.
Snow is the sickness of serpents; winter also.
Winter is the night of the bear, and summer is his day.
Troll-women’s horses are wolves, and their reins are snakes. The drink of wolves is blood.
Hawks and ravens are carrion-birds; so also [are] eagles. It is correct to name [them] after other birds and to name [them] after Óðinn or to kenn with battle or corpses or blood.
Each male person may be called the fatness or feeder of carrion-birds and of wolves, also their foot-reddener or gum-painter. Men may also be called by names of masculine tree-names (9) and of Óðinn and of all the Æsir, whether one wishes to praise or vituperate, and be kenned with armor or weapons, shields or battle, ships or gold. But if you shall make an insulting kenning, then one may call him by names of all evil masculine (10) creatures and jӧtnar, and kenn as certain foods - one may also then call him a feeder of swine and of all livestock, [and] also of dogs. One may also call him by names of kings and kenn with various implements or else that he is steersman [of them], call [him also] breaker and diminisher of everything useful.
It is right to call a woman by feminine tree-names (11), and also by the names of goddesses and of feminine (12) islands and lands, also names of battles, also names of kings, leader or ruler and all such, and to kenn always with gold or the glimmer thereof, and with all which they have in [their] possession and with all of their handicrafts, also with ale-vessels and drink, [and] to kenn with sea and stone if desired.
Heathen gods are named regin, bönd and rögn (13). A woman may be called by their names and kenned, and if it shall be insulting, then she is kenned with anything wretched, that which she is controller of, soap and kerchief, spittoon and piss-trough, skin-bag and bag of all misdeeds. Each woman is the bed-fellow of the one who marries her.
A person’s hair may be called by the names of all trees and that which grows on the earth, kenned with the scalp or the crown or the nape of the neck or the forehead or the hair-parting or the side of the head.
A person’s skull is called house of the brain, and ground of helmets.
A person’s ears are called ships or eyeballs of cheeks or of the sides of the head, hearing or ear canal. A person’s ear is called the eye or sight of the ear canal.
A person’s eyes may be called shield or ship or names of heavenly bodies or of other radiance, kenned with the eyebrows or eyelids, cheeks or eyelashes.
A person’s nose is called dwelling or ship of snot or of sneezes.
A person’s mouth is called dwelling or ship of all knowledge.
Also, the breast is called dwelling or ship of life and of thought and of heart and of everything which is flesh-grown within the ribs.
Teeth are called gravel of the gums.
The tongue is called oar or rudder or the name of a weapon and kenned as words or gums or teeth.
The heart is called stone or grain, nut or apple, and kenned as mind. The heart is also called acorn and “cold ember” (14). That which is nearest a person’s heart is called the pericardium.
Nuts are called kernels.
The world is called the house or vat of winds, but sky the labor of four dvergar, those who are called North, South, East, West. The sky is called helmet or hall of lands, and road of heavenly bodies.
The sun is called by the names of fire and kenned as sky.
A bucket is called Sægr, and a pole Simul - Bil and Hjúki carry it; it is said that they are in the moon.
Out of Ymir’s flesh
was earth shaped (15),
but sea out of the sweat of his wounds (16);
mountains out of bones,
timber out of hair,
sky out of his skull.
But out of his eyelashes
the amiable regin (17) made
Miðgarðr for the sons of men,
but out of his brain
were they, the storm-wracked (18)
clouds, all shaped.
It is correct to call the earth Ymir’s flesh, and sea his blood, Miðgarðr his eyelashes, and clouds his brain.
A quern that King Fróði owned is called Grótti; it ground gold and peace, whatever he wanted (19). The slave-women who ground were called Fenja and Menja. Then the sea-king Mysingr took Grótti and had it grind white salt on his ship, until they sunk at Pétlandsfjörðr. There is a whirlpool since then where the sea falls into the eye of Grótti. Then the sea grates; and when it grates, then the sea became salty.
About Fenrisúlfr (20)
A lake is named Ámsvartnir, and Lyngvi an island in the lake, and Síglitnir a hill on the island. And an anchoring peg which stands in the hill is named Þviti (21), and Gnjöll (22) a hole which is drilled in the peg, and a cable with which Fenrisúlfr is tied is named Hræða, and it is thrust through the hole, and a pin which is stuck in front is named Gelgja. The fetter which holds him is named Gleipnir. Two fetters were made for him first, Drómi and Læðingr, and neither held. Then Gleipnir was made afterwards out of six things:
out of a cat’s din
and out of a woman’s beard,
out of a fish’s breath
and out of birds’ milk (23),
out of a mountain’s root
and a bear’s sinews:
out of this was Gleipnir made.
Because it was all used then, there is none left since. Two rivers flow from his mouth; one is named Ván (24), and the other Víl (25), and it is thus correct to call waters his spittle. And his whiskers are named Gjölnar.
Notes
(1) dvergar and jötnar are two types of supernatural beings. These terms are usually translated “dwarves” and “giants,” respectively, but we have chosen to retain the Old Norse terms because the usual translations have misleading connotations in English: jötnar were not necessarily large, nor were dvergar always short in stature, especially in the earliest sources.
(2) We have chosen to Anglicize the Norse verb kenna, which has no precise English equivalent, throughout this translation. To “kenn” means to use something as the determinant in a kenning; for example, the paragraph above indicates that a kenning for “ship” (the referent) may be constructed by calling it a “horse” (base-word) kenned with “sea” (determinant). I.e., “horse of the sea” is a kenning for “ship.” See the Introduction for further discussion of kennings.
(3) In st. 25 of the eddic poem Hamðismál, the brothers Hamðir and Sörli, who are impervious to edged weapons, are killed by stoning (Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason (eds.) 2014b: 412). The episode is also referred to in st 5 of Bragi inn gamli (“the old”) Boddason’s skaldic poem Ragnarsdrápa (Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017: 35–36).
(4) Old Norse tjald has a range of possible meanings: “tapestry,” “curtain,” “bed-curtain,” “cover,” or “screen,” plus additional meanings (“tent,” “tarp”) that seem less appropriate to the context.
(5) This section on “all weapons” is absent from the A manuscript of Litla Skálda and thus is found only in the B manuscript.
(6) Old Norse hönd can mean either “hand” or “arm.” We have translated it “hand” here, but “arm” in the following paragraph, as these seemed to us to fit the context best.
(7) I.e., sunshine.
(8) Of livestock.
(9) In Old Norse, as in many other languages, nouns have a grammatical gender that may have no relation to actual gender (for example, several terms for “woman” are grammatically neuter). So, Litla Skálda is saying here that tree-names that are grammatically masculine nouns can be used in kennings for male human beings.
(10) I.e., grammatically masculine, not literally male.
(11) Again, the text is referring to grammatical, not literal, gender.
(12) I.e., grammatically feminine.
(13) Regin perhaps means something like “the advising ones” (de Vries 1977: 436). Bönd literally means “bonds” and presumably refers to the gods’ power to constrain events. Rögn may be a variant of regin.
(14) Tentative translation of the obscure term eisköld; see Introduction for discussion.
(15) Here, Litla Skálda quotes two stanzas (40 and 41) of the eddic poem Grímnismál. The text varies slightly from that of the Codex Regius manuscript (GKS 2365 4to) of the poetic Edda.
(16) In Old Norse, sveit can mean either "blood" or "sweat." The Codex Regius text of Grímnismál 40 says that the sea was made from Ymir's sveit (Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason (eds.) 2014a: 376), and it's clear both from Snorri's Edda and the prose text of Litla skálda that sveit means blood in this instance. In Litla skálda, the expression for the source of the sea is expanded to "sveit of his [Ymir's] wounds." This could be either a literal description - "blood of his wounds" - or a kenning, "sweat of his wounds" (i.e., blood).
(17) regin is a term for the gods (see note 13, above).
(18) The Codex Regius has harðmóðgu, “harsh-tempered,” in place of hríðfelldu, “storm-wracked” (Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason (eds.) 2014a: 376).
(19) Snorri tells a longer version of this tale in Skáldaskaparmál (Faulkes (ed.) 1998: 51–52).
(20) The title frá Fenrisúlfi appears in manuscript A. Literally “the wolf of Fenrir,” Fenrisúlfr (Fenrisúlfi in the dative) consistently appears as an alternative name for the wolf Fenrir himself. Snorri tells a version of this story in Gylfaginning (Faulkes (ed.) 2005: 27–29)
(21) “Þota” in MS A.
(22) Spelled “Gjöll” by Snorri (Faulkes (ed.) 2005: 29) and “Ginöl” in MS A.
(23) Gylfaginning has “bird’s spittle” (fogls hráki; Faulkes (ed.) 2005: 28); see Males for discussion of why this difference may have arisen (2020: 142).
(24) Ván literally means “hope, expectation.”
(25) Víl literally means “misery, wretchedness.”