Gripla - 01.01.2003, Page 57

SIX NOTES ON THE INTERPRETATION OF HYMISKVIÐA
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— as if the giant can hardly wait to tackle Þórr again on the problem that
obsesses him. Initial Ok here is a clever link and time-saver between stanzas
28 and 29 — no need to waste words on the home-coming and hearty eating.
Do the lines 28/9-10 derive from an old version of Hymiskviða, from which
the poet picked his abrupt opening Ok in 29/1? Though it was not uncommon
in skaldic verse to begin a stanza with Ok, it was rare in Eddic,
That the story of Hymir and Þórr was told and retold long before the extant
Hymiskviða was composed, is illustrated by the sixteen vísur by five early
skalds c. 850 to 1000, describing incidents in the story (and now preserved
helter-skelter in Skáldskaparmál). Gylfaginning MSS. also have variants that
differ from parallel episodes in Hymiskviða, while in Hymiskviða itself there
are loose ends of narrative threads that belong traditionally to other versions
from which the poet now wishes to diverge: so, the goats in stanza 7 must be
forgotten in stanza 35, because Þórr must walk away with the cauldron on his
head. Perhaps the best illustration of the confusion of versions underlying the
extant text of Hymiskviða is the copying of two stanzas, which are not part of
Hymiskviða, immediately before the final stanza of the poem. These two in-
trusive stanzas relate to the beginning of the story of Þórr’s visit to Utgarða-
Loki (SnE 49) which in SnE precedes the story of Hymir. The confusion
between the two stories may have been stimulated by the fact that three
stanzas about Þórr’s joumeying begin with a similar line, Fóro driúgom (7),
Fóro[t] lengi (35), Fórot lengi (intrusive stanza), and that stanza 7 and the
intrusive stanza are both concemed with Þórr’s travelling goats. The poetic
habit of repetition, the overlap of oral and written recollections, as well as the
confusion of written pieces, waiting to be sorted on the scribe’s table (such as
the Hauksbók text of Vgluspá) will have contributed to slips — and perhaps
to occasional felicities, as in 29/1 — in the recording of such ancient texts.
But today, when such slips are obvious, the incongruities they bring into the
work could perhaps be taken out of it and relegated to notes.
5. Hymiskviða 31/5-8
Having failed to discover any weakness in Þórr, but — on the contrary —
having provoked an outrageous display of Þórr’s physical strength, that the
giant had not expected, Hymir confronts Þórr with another test, which seems
suspiciously simple. They have just dined, and the wine glasses are still on the
table before them, and the giant picks up his argument —