Gripla - 20.12.2009, Qupperneq 260

GRIPLA260
first half of the ninth century, despite the time and space separating them
and despite great formal differences. Both of course are a father’s memo­
rial for a predeceased son. unlike many later memorial stones, Rök tells
nothing about the deeds of the honored dead, vámóðr,12 nothing even
about his character except that he was ‘death-doomed,’ faigian, on feigr,
while Egill’s Bǫðvarr is characterized vaguely as a support to his father but
principally by the negative fact that the ‘stuff,’ efni, of a bad man had not
grown in him.13 neither of these paternal monuments fulfills our modern
stereotyped expectation that a funeral elegy should elaborate on the accom­
plishments and good qualities of the dead, and both authors could be said
to treat their early­dead son mainly in terms of potential: Bǫðvarr had ‘the
makings of a man’ or was mannsefni– if only he had been allowed to grow
up before Odin plucked him – while Vámóðr was fated, perhaps from the
outset.
Sonatorrek offers clues to a few specific words of Rök. Egill’s title itself
looks to be a nonce creation on the basis of the word torrek, which appears
elsewhere only once but then in an intensely elegiac context where it is
interpreted by finnur jónsson as ‘heavy loss’ or ‘something difficult to
replace’.14 varinn’s mǫgminni may have been such a nonce formation based
on greppaminni, but could varinn also have intended it as a kind of theme
word or even a title? More reliable is the help Sonatorrek’s phrase vamma
varr offers in explanation of Rök’s via vari (l. 27); in both cases we have the
adjective varr complemented by a gen. pl., and since Sonatorrek’s is also the
only example of this structure among the many instances of varr in Lexicon
Poeticum, it may well be an archaic formula.15
The richest verbal connections between the two works are to be found
in comparison with Sonatorrek’s crucial st. 17 (jón Helgason 1962, 36):
Þat er ok mælt
at engi geti
12 I adopt this form of the name from Widmark 1993 with the further etymology offered in
Harris 2009, 13, n. 7.
13 Sonatorrek 11: Veit ek þat siálfr / at í syni mínum / vara ills þegns / efni vaxit, / ef sá randviðr /
røskvask næði / unz her­Gauts / hendr of tœki. See the discussion in Harris 2009, 43, n. and
81.
14 finnur jónsson 1931, s.v. torrek: “en vanskelig erstattelig genstand, svært tab.”
15 finnur jónsson 1931, s.v.; Harris 2006b, 71–73.