Gripla - 2019, Qupperneq 86

GRIPLA86
10 and 24 as a compound, bergrisi “mountain-risi.”26 However, grottasǫngr
is likely a late eddic composition.27 This largely non-mythological quality
of the term risi, as evidenced by its almost total absence from skaldic and
eddic mythological poetry, is a crucial point of difference when compared
with the term jötunn.
The term risi lacked both the etymological and mythological negativity
that was such an important factor in defining the character of the jötnar in
saga material and translated works. As the term risi occupied no place in
the pre-Christian mythology of Scandinavia and was therefore separable
from it, the earliest Icelandic authors used the word to refer to giantlike be-
ings who were emphatically not Scandinavian in origin or nature – and this
point should be emphasised. Katja Schulz suggested that “ganz offensicht-
lich erröffnen die als risar bezeichneten Figuren ein anderes semantisches
Feld als die aus der Mythologie vertrauten jǫtnar und þursar; neben den
nordischen auch eine exotische, fremdartige Art von Riesen” [obviously,
the figures called risar open up a different semantic field than the jötnar
and þursar familiar from mythology. In addition to the Nordic, they are an
exotic, alien type of giant].28 This important distinction between jötnar and
risar is captured by Snorri Sturluson’s use of the two terms in his Edda.
While jötnar appear throughout Snorri’s work as the enemies of the gods,
the simplex risi appears only once, in the Prologue. In this context, it is
used to describe giantlike beings of the pseudo-Classical past whom Tror,
the euhemerised Þórr, destroys when he leaves Troy. Snorri thus separates
the jötnar, whom Þórr kills in the mythological narratives in Gylfaginning
and Skáldskaparmál, from the emphatically non-Scandinavian and non-
mythological risar who are the victims of the “historical” Trojan hero.
The distinction that Snorri draws is representative of a wider practice
among Icelandic authors and translators. In the vast majority of cases, the
term risi is used to describe gigantic beings from outside of Scandinavia
26 Snorri Sturluson also uses the term bergrisi twice in Gylfaginning, where it apposes hrímþurs
“frost-þurs.” His use of bergrisi may in fact be inspired by grottasǫngr, which Snorri
preserves in his Edda. Bergrisi might be semantically distinct from risi as a simplex. The
mountainous associations of bergrisar perhaps encouraged a closer association with jötnar
and þursar than was the case for ordinary risar, though there is not sufficient textual support
to confirm this speculation.
27 Clive Tolley dates the poem to the twelfth century at the earliest and considers it above all
a literary product, grottasǫngr, 31–3.
28 Schulz, Riesen, 44.