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[fire is wanted for the one who has come in, nipped with cold to
the knee... Fire is best for the sons of men, and the sight of the
sun...]11
It should be emphasized that in these stanzas fire is seen as something
positive which maintains life, whereas elsewhere, including in Völuspá, it
appears as a destructive force.
the main argument for the fire hypothesis adduced by finnur Jónsson
is the fact that aldrnari is listed among the heiti for fire in the þulur. These
texts are assumed to have been composed in the late twelfth or the early
thirteenth centuries.12 It is questionable, however, if the þulur can be con-
sidered to be an independent source in this case. rather, as suggested by
Hallberg, the interpretation of aldrnari in the þulur might be dependent on
Völuspá, where the word’s proximity to eimi may – mistakenly, according
to Hallberg – have given rise to the view that it meant ‘fire’.13
In any event, most scholars lean towards the explanation of aldrnari as
‘fire’. the proposal is adopted in the dictionary of richard Cleasby and
Guðbrandur Vigfússon, and Johan fritzner reports that aldrnari means
‘fire’ in poetic diction.14 The same understanding is evident in the Edda
commentary by Sijmons and Gering, in Gering’s dictionary ‘lebenserhalter,
d.i. feuer’, and in finnur Jónsson’s edition ‘ilden som den liv-nærende’, as
well as in the glossary accompanying Kuhn’s (earlier neckel’s) edition of
the Edda and its English version by La farge and tucker ‘life-nourisher:
fire’.15 Moreover, rudolf Meissner is full of praise for ‘die schöne und
11 The Poetic Edda III, 3, 15.
12 Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, vol. aI, 684, vol. BI, 674–5; “anonymous Þulur:
Introduction,” 649.
13 Peter Hallberg, “Världsträdet och världsbranden: Ett motiv i Völuspá,” Arkiv för nordisk
filologi 67 (1952): 155.
14 richard Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon. An Icelandic-English Dictionary (oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1874), 12; Johan Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog. 2nd ed.
(Christiania: Den norske forlagsforening, 1886–97), vol. 1, 31. See also the discussion of the
word by Johan fritzner, “forklaring over nogle ord og udtryk i det gamle norske Sprog,”
Forhandlinger i Videnskabs-selskabet i Christiania (1871): 426ff.
15 Die Lieder der Edda, 25; Hugo Gering, Vollständiges Wörterbuch zu den Liedern der Edda
(Halle: Waisenhaus, 1903), 25; De gamle Eddadigte, ed. by finnur Jónsson (Copenhagen:
G. E. C. Gad, 1932), 18; Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius, vol. 2, 14. See also Beatrice La
farge and John tucker, Glossary to the Poetic Edda: Based on Hans Kuhn’s Kurzes Wörterbuch
(Heidelberg: Winter, 1992), 5.
ALDRNARI