Gripla - 01.01.1990, Qupperneq 266

262
GRIPLA
of Mary in heaven, if the name Sólkatla encodes the designation for
her in Revelations XII, 1, ‘mulier amicta sole.’42
The biblical scene behind the second half of stanza 78 is central to
our understanding of the religious role of the sun-stag. Outwardly, the
poet seems to be retelling an anecdote from the fornaldar sögur of a
grave robbery43: a being wise in runic lore, by the name of Vígdvalinn,
fetched from a burial mound a stag horn which had runes carved on it
. . . The name Vígdvalinn -the ‘warlike Dvalinn’ - can be either a
dwarf’s name, or a stag’s, which is more appropriate to the (human?)
bearer of the horn. Unlike the two nameless leaders of the sun-stag,
Vígdvalinn is evidently a prominent follower of that stag. Against the
biblical background of the scene he stands out most recognizably as
the apostle Peter and founder of the Roman Church. For the scene,
ostensibly of a Viking grave robbery, is in Luke XXIV, 12, and John
XX, 3-10, the familiar one at the empty tomb of Christ where Peter
pondered over the resurrection of our Lord.
The horn by itself has a potency of its own. Apart from any allegor-
ical meanings which were attached to an animal horn, such as salva-
tion (Luke I, 69),44 or divinity,45 or pride and fortitude,46 stag antlers
functioned in the medieval Physiologus as instruments of physical re-
newal and moral regeneration, enabling the stag that had swallowed a
poisonous snake to eliminate the poison from its body. In Honorius
Augustodunensis’ exposition of the Physiologus episode of the fight
between the stag and the snake,47
Fertur quod cervus, post[quam] serpentem deglutiverit ad
aquam currat, ut per haustum aquae venenum ejiciat; et tunc
cornuam [sic] et pilos excutiat et sic denuo nova recipiat. Ita nos,
karissimi, post peccatum, debemus ad fontem lacrymarum cur-
42 Cited by Paasche, Hedenskap og kristendom, p. 196, and Falk, Sljð. I, p. 53.
43 Cf. Björn M. Ólsen’s scenario in Sljð. II, pp. 61-62, and the line from Málshátta-
kvœði, st. 8, ‘Niðjungr skóf af haugi horn,’ in which Falk, Sljð. I, pp. 51-52, mis-
apprehends the word ‘horn’ for the horn of an animal, instead of the comer of a how.
44 Cited by Falk, Sljð. I, p. 52.
45 Alan of Lille’s distinctio in MPL CCX, col. 737B, quoted by Paasche, Hedenskap
og kristendom, p. 196.
46 Theobaldus, Physiologus, ed. P. T. Eden, Leiden and Köln 1972, p. 49, and Hon-
orius Augustodunensis, Speculum Ecclesiae in MPL CLXXII, col. 847D, quoted below.
47 Ibid. in op. cit., col. 847 C-D.