Gripla - 20.12.2009, Blaðsíða 262
GRIPLA262
l 2 3 4 5
hvaim se burinn niðr drængi
5 2 3 4 5
er ǫðrum sé borinn maðr í sonar stað
I have argued that Sonatorrek, along with some neglected grammar, can
help us to disambiguate this sentence in Rök, and with that clarification to
move a step nearer to understanding the mythic content.18
Genre
for all its difficulties, Sonatorrek is much better understood than Rök.
from Egils saga and from his large body of authentic verse, we know Egill
as we will never know Varinn; from the saga context, analogues elsewhere
in the sagas, and other poems with similar occasion we can begin to say
something about the genre and function of Sonatorrek, even if egill’s poem
towers over other poems of its kind like the leek among the grasses. It is
the saga author, not Egill, who calls the poem an erfikvæði, and this occur
rence of the word is unique; still, it is rightly taken as a genre term, along
with erfidrápa and erfiflokkr, though less specific as to form. ottar Grønvik
in particular has been successful in exploring the word family of erfi and
the institutions of inheritance, but the actual institutional or ritual role of
the erfikvæði itself remains obscure (Grønvik 1982; 1981, 162–89). Egils saga
implies that no proper funeral could happen without such a poem, but the
small number of remains of the genre from the private sphere throws a
doubtful light on that claim. Bjarne fidjestøl is the author of the only
standard treatment of erfikvæði, an article that is a model of philological
workmanship. But to achieve such clarity, Fidjestøl narrowed the concep
tion of the genre to a collection mostly restricted to early Christian court
poems on the death of the Norwegian king (Fidjestøl 1989). In a recently
published article, I followed in his wake but tried to reopen the focus to
consider both private poems such as Sonatorrek and also the royal erfi
drápur, which, I argued, shared a continuous generic space (Harris 2006a).
Some of the private poems, for example, Vǫlu-Steinn’s Ǫgmundardrápa,
18 Harris 2006b, 57–61, 86–89.