Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1967, Síða 59

Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1967, Síða 59
the poetry of egill skalla-grimsson 41 the pole repeating this whole for- rnula.” (Hollander). Though the saga does not say so h is not unlikely that what Egill ^ctually cut on the spite-pole were the stanzas listed as 27 and 28 in his saga. The brilliant scholar Magnus Olsen has shown that, if 'WTitten' in runic orthography, each half of these verses contains ex- actly 24 syllables and 72 runes. But the number of the runic alphabet (fuþark) was magic: it was 24 and ^2 is 3 times 24. Any multiple of the fuþark would have magic prop- erty. I shall quote stanza 28 in Hol- lander’s translation: May the powers repay the prince and drive him from his realm, for wrouth are at the robber all gods and Odin: put to flight the oppressor of people, Freyr and Niorð, the foe of free men, who defiled the holy thing-meet. This was the second time Egill fesorted to the use of runes against ^unnhildr, and this indeed con- stituted the climax in his fight against her and King Eiríkr. He r e P o r t s the incidents of this episode in stanzas 28-31 in the saga, ^hile stanza 32 describes his steady t>oat on the rough seas homeward bound. Egill ever had any misgivings ab°ut his magic powers, he must bave been convinced of their exist- ehce when he heard of the effect of his curse on King Eiríkr and Queen ^unnhildr. They had to flee from Norway and go to Northumbria Where Eiríkr managed to eke out an existence as a King in York. is tempting to assume that aier on when Egill began to feel restless at his home in Iceland he may have suspected that Queen Gunnhildr’s magic was responsible for his feeling of uneasiness. Ac- cording to Egils saga this uneasi- ness brought on by magic motivated his journey to England, where he wrecked his ship at the mouth of the Humber and decided to take the bull by the horns by going to York to visit his trusted friend Arinbjörn who was King Eiríkr’s equally trusted retainer. Arinbjörn decided that there was nothing Egill could do other than give him- self up to King Eiríkr and then compose a poem of praise about the King. This poem could then become a veritable head-ransom, Höfuð- lausn in the same way as another poem by Arinbjörn’s illustrious ancestor the poet Bragi the Old had done on a previous o c c a s i o n . Egill agreed to his friend’s sug- gestion and composed a poem in one night. This poem was a drápa of twenty stanzas. While Egill was composing, his friend Arinbjörn sat up and protected him against the magic sendings of Gunnhildr. Of all Egill’s poems Höfuðlausn is the most splendid in form. It is a drápa of 20 stanzas divided by two refrains into a beginning (1-5), first middle part (7-8), second middle part (10-11), third middle part (13-14) and an end (16-20). The meter is runhenl, the running rime meter, probably the first genuine instance of that meter. One stanza by Egill’s father composed in the same meter is of questionable authenticity. Very likely Egill learned this meter in England either from church hymns
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