Gripla - 01.01.2003, Blaðsíða 75

INTERPRETATION OR OVER-INTERPRETATION
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display; Bjgm’s setting out fully armed demonstrates his disclaimer, ‘Ekki læt
ek drauma ráða fQrum mínum’ (196) [I don’t let dreams decide my mov-
ements] to be a hero’s conventional insistence on embracing a perceived
threat that he ostensibly dismisses.
A further, and intriguing, multiplication of explanations for the disabling
of Mæringr may lie concealed in a verse in a previous chapter. Early in the
saga Bjgm’s acquisition of the sword from the kappi Kaldimarr in Garðaríki
has been related (Borgfirðinga sggur, 122). In verse 30, placed before the
hero’s penultimate fight, he recounts a dream which could have been
misinterpreted as predicting the breaking of Mæringr:
Draum dreymðumk nú, Nauma
Nið-brands skarar landa,
koma mun Yggr á eggjar
enn bragsmíðar kenni,
báðar hendr í blóði,
braut kaldhamars nauta,
mér of kenndr í mundum
Mæringr roðinn væri.15
(Borgfirðinga sQgur, 178)
Kaldhamarsnautr is included as a sword-heiti in a þula in Skáldskaparmál
(Skáldsk., 1 121), and is most likely to be a kenning similar to the Old English
fela laf, homera laf (Beowulf 1032, 2832), with the sense ‘survivor, product of
the cold hammer’.16 The saga author rightly does not take its use in BjQrn’s
verse to apply to the reddened Mæringr; rather, it is part of a periphrasis
indicating that battle is taking place: ‘swords were breaking’. But its occur-
rence in a verse in Bjarnar saga, in proximity to the name of the sword,17 has
15 ‘I have just had a dream, Nauma of river fire of hair’s land (= lady)—Yggr (Óðinn) will again
bring the knower of metres (= poet) to sword-blades (i.e. to battle)— that both hands (were)
covered in blood, comrades of the cold hammer (= swords) broke; in my hands famous
Mæringr was reddened.’
16 The compilation of the þulur is dated to the 12th century or Iater (Skáldsk., I xvi-xvii). The
form kaldliamarsnautr may derive from Bjpm’s verse; it does not occur elsewhere. But its
listing as a heiti shows that the compiler understood it to be a sword name, rather than a
periphrasis, showing how the misinterpretation of it as a reference to Mæringr could arise.
17 De Boor (1913) interprets Mæringr here as a lieiti for ‘man’, from which the sword-name
was derived. Marold (2000, 92, n. 25) adopts this interpretation. but Nordal (Borgfirðinga
sQgur, lxxix) ftnds it unconvincing.