Orð og tunga - 01.06.2010, Page 133

Kirsten Wolf: Green and Yellow
123
HÍQrvarðssonar st. 26 (the sea-golden girl). When in the prologue to his
Edda Snorri claims that Tror's hair was more beautiful than gold ("fe-
gra en gull" 4.12), he is clearly referring to the metal, but when he
states that Sif's hair was like gold ("sem gull" 4.21), he may be express-
ing the hue. Likewise, when the author of GQtigu-Hrólfs saga (3:190.7-
8) refers to a strand of human hair (mannshár) as being of gold-color
(gidlslitr), he most likely means yellow.
A further reason for the absence of gidr in the earliest Old Norse-
Icelandic literary works is possibly the existence of bleikr, which, along
with derivatives of gull, may have rendered gulr unnecessary. Al-
though the term appears most frequently in the meaning "pale (o: of
weak or reduced color), wan, ?bleached" (the Arnamagnaean Com-
mission's Dictionary, s.v., bleikr), the term occurs not uncommonly in
the meaning "blond, fair, light-colored" (translation offered by the
Dictionary), as in, for example, "hárit bleikt" (Trójumanna saga 11.12),
"bleikir akrar," (Njáls saga 182.22), and "á bleikum hesti" (Karlamag-
míss saga 302.39).19 It is interesting that gulr is not used to describe the
sun and its rays, now one of its major referents; in Old Norse-Icelandic
literature, rauðr and bleikr are used to describe the color of this celestial
body.20 Most likely, bleikr and derivatives oigull were initially consid-
ered appropriate to express the hue yellow, and it is noteworthy that
it is primarily in connection with descriptions of the color of stones
and aspects of a person's physical appearance (eyes, hair, teeth; tables
9-10) that gulr occurs, contexts in which derivatives of gidl and bleikr
may have seemed insufficiently nuanced or inappropriate.
4 Conclusion
The literary works examimed show that while yellow (gulr) certainly
existed, the color was expressed primarily by means of derivatives of
gull prior to the thirteenth century. When gidr begins to appear, the
chief collocations (eyes, hair, teeth, stones) suggest that "shiny" was
its usual conceptual component and that its use as a pure color term
came later (see n. 2). Presumably, as gulr attached itself more firmly
19When used to describe the color of horses and cows, the term means, according
to the Amamagnaean Commission's Dictionary "lys, ?lys grábrun, ?bleggul, ?skimlet
(- fr. vair) / / light-coloured, ?fawn, ? pale yellow dappled (- fr. vair)."
20In the íslensk orðabók, gulr (gulnr) is defined as "með lit sólar eða sítrónu."