Gripla - 20.12.2018, Qupperneq 144

GRIPLA144
für den norden charakteristische ... Kenning aldrnari’ for fire, referring
to Hávamál 68, and Falk argues that aldrnari expresses the idea of vitality
of burning flames.16 finally, the meaning ‘fire’ for this word is generally
accepted in the etymological dictionaries of old and Modern Icelandic by
alexander Jóhannesson, Jan de Vries, and Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon, as
will be discussed below.17
furthermore, ‘fire’ appears in foreign translations of Völuspá, for ex-
ample in the English translations by Bellows, Hollander, and Larrington,
as well as in German, nordic, and other translations.18 In the same vein,
ursula Dronke, in her edition of the Eddic poems, gives the following
translation of Völuspá 54:
the sun starts to blacken,
land sinks into sea,
the radiant stars
recoil from the sky.
Fume rages against fire,
fosterer of life,
the heat soars high
against heaven itself.19
as a matter of fact, Dronke does not let it suffice to translate aldrnari as
‘fire’ but inserts, as if to explicate further, the words fosterer of life, thus
emphasizing the notion that fire fosters life.
John McKinnell also accepts the fire hypothesis and elucidates the image-
ry as follows: ‘a similar balance between fire as destroyer of evil and as sym-
16 Rudolf Meissner, Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik (Bonn: Kurt
Schröder, 1921), 102; Hjalmar falk, “ordstudier I,” Arkiv for nordisk filologi 44 (1925):
320–1.
17 Alexander Jóhannesson, Isländisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Bern: francke, 1956), 639;
Jan de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 3rd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 405; Ásgeir
Blöndal Magnússon. Íslensk orðsifjabók (reykjavík: orðabók Háskólans, 1989), 659.
18 Henry adams Bellows, The Poetic Edda (new York: american Scandinavian foundation,
1923), 24; Lee M. Hollander, The Poetic Edda. 2nd ed., revised (austin: university of texas
Press, 1962), 11; Carolyne Larrington, The Poetic Edda (oxford: oxford university Press,
1999 [2nd ed. 2014]), 11.
19 The Poetic Edda III, 151.