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"From the Hull of Laughter" Egill Skalla-Grimsson's "Hpfuölausn" and Its Epodium in Context

2016; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 74; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2163-8195

Susanne Kries, Thomas Krömmelbein,

Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism

SAGA AND Snorra Edda research, like other areas of medieval textual studies, are increasingly turning toward questions of reception rather than seeking the state of a text. Accordingly, Old Norse texts are viewed as open or flexible and the conditions of their preservation are seen as important clues to their interpretation. This fact is also, and in many ways, especially true of skaldic poetry. One problem is that of transmission, since skaldic stanzas are usually scattered throughout a prose text. Many of these stanzas have been separated and combined, often misunderstood, but have nevertheless been recorded in written form. And the chronological gap between the composition and the recording of a text in the high Middle Ages opens up further questions. The present article deals with a poem of one of the most famous Icelandic skalds of the heathen period: Egill Skalla-Grimsson's Hofudlausn. After some introductory remarks about previous research on the poem, we will look closely at the transmitted manuscript versions. One of the major points in question is whether the notion of textual flexibility undermines attempts to analyze the overall structure of the poem. Second, we will offer an interpretation of Hofudlausn based on a close reading of the text in its transmitted versions. Third, we will contextualize the poem within the general frame of Egill's poetic work as well as its manuscript context, Egils saga. Next we will examine the so-called epodium of Hofudlausn, a stanza that is always transmitted with the poem but seems in fact to be a later addition to the text. Finally we will suggest an interpretation of the epodium in its relation to Hofudlausn. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS Egils saga recounts the story of the composition of Hofudlausn as follows. Egill, on his third voyage to King AEpelstan of England, is shipwrecked at the mouth of the Humber (see Egils saga chapter 60). Egill decides to surrender himself to Eirikr blodox, the Norwegian ruler of the Scandinavian kingdom of York, who, back in Norway, had proclaimed Egill an outlaw. Death at the hands of the angry king is prevented by Egill's composing and reciting a drapa about Eirikr, Hofudlausn. In this way and with the help and mediation of his friend Arinbjorn, Egill manages to save his life. The drapa that Egill presented at York is still considered a conventional laudatory poem with little that is original since the poem's content seems to stand well behind its form (Noreen 196; Jonas Kristjansson 100; Weber 54; Bjarni Einarsson 154). In the main, scholars simply refer to the poem on account of its exceptional use of end rhyme in skaldic laudatory poetry (see Hallberg 127-8). And the exceptionality of the poem's meter is indeed evident when taking a closer look at all skaldic poetry of the ninth to the eleventh centuries since only Hofudlausn manifests end rhyme. As we will see, this is only one of the exceptional features characterizing the poem. One might even speculate that the use of end rhyme was so much identified with Hofudlausn that this precluded its use elsewhere. Apart from discussing the poem's unusual meter, scholars have long neglected the skillful structuring of Hofudlausn. Instead, features like the rigid conventionality of the kennings, which stand in stark contrast to the highly acclaimed mythological kennings of Egill's poem Sonatorrek (see Krommelbein, Skaldische Metaphorik, 130-69), were criticized. Thus scholarly consensus has ranked Hofudlausn (1) after Sonatorrek, and critical commentaries addressing the content of the drapa are scarce. The aim of this article is, therefore, to show how skillfully the contents and structure of Hofudlausn are arranged to allow for an interpretation that reads the poem as a strong statement on the very art of poetic composition itself. THE TRANSMISSION OF HOFUDLAUSN In his remarkable article Variants and Variability in the text of Egill's `Hofudlausn,' Russell Poole introduces the concept of the flexible text to skaldic research. …