Gripla - 01.01.2003, Blaðsíða 51

SIX NOTES ON THE INTERPRETATION OF HYMISKVIÐA
49
fold gll saman.
Sdkðiz síðan
sá fiskr í mar.
all collapsed.
The fish then sank
itself into the sea.
Hreingálkn, ‘monstrous destroyers of reindeer’, the reading of the two
MSS.4 5, makes no contextual sense, but emendation to Heingálkn does, be-
cause the hein ‘whetstone, or hone’, is the weapon of the giant Hrungnir; and
when he fought Þórr, he flung his whetstone at Þórr and it split against Þórr’s
hammer. This story is told with vivid complexity in Haustlgng*' and the poet of
Hymiskvida is deliberately referring to it, as one of Þórr’s early successes.
Now Hymiskviða tells of Þórr’s final and total success, destruction of all the
giants with his thunder-hammer (37). But on his way to that final success, Þórr
tums aside, as it were, to dispose of the World Serpent, ‘the one the gods
abhor — the encircler — from below — of every land’ (23). As he accom-
plishes this little task, the echoing thunders of his hammer-blow on the
serpent’s skull evoke the crash of the whetstone in the old, stone-age battle.
The poet calls the giant Hymir ‘Hmngnir’s close friend’ (16) with a certain
irony, for the two giants meet the same fate under Þórr’s hammer.
While the meaning of heingálkn in its context is clear, only a general
sense, of ‘antagonist’ or ‘destroyer’, can be given to gálkn, as no etymology
has been determined. In skaldic verse, the three instances of gálkn are in the
plural, as in heingálkn, and their action is to destroy their opponents’ defence,
in two cases specifically their shield:
4 In MS. R a faint mark beneath r in Hreingálkn might possibly be the remains of a negating
dot. Six letters in the line beneath reingá have been roughly erased, perhaps to the detriment
of the dot.
5 Skjaldedigming B I 18, vv. 13-20; most recently edited, with commentary and translation, by
R. North, The Haustlgng of Þjóðólfr of Hvinir, Hisarlik Press, 1997, 10-11. The lines
relevant to Heingálkn read:
Ok harðbrotin herju
heimþingaðar Vingnis
hvein i hjama mœni
hein at Grundar sveini.
And the whetstone — not easily broken — of that one [i.e. Hmngnir] who had a meeting at
the home of the warrior-girl [i.e. Þrúðr, powerful daughter] of Vingnir [i.e. Þórr] — whined
its way into the roof-top of the brain of Earth’s lad [i.e. Þórr]. (My translation). As Hrungnir
is called ‘the thief of Þrúðr’ in Bragi Boddason’s Ragnarsdrápa, Skjaldedigtning B I, 1, v. 1,
his visit to Þrítðr’s home was, no doubt, to abduct her, as the giant Þjazi abducted Iðunn in
HaustlQng v. 2.