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við bœ sinn eða skip sitt þat er nafn á eða eign sína þá er einkarnafn
er gefit. Þetta kǫllum vér sannkenningar at kalla mann spekimann,
*ætlunarmann, orðspeking, ráðsnilling, auðmilding, óslœkinn, gæi-
mann, glæsimann. Þetta eru fornǫfn.15
Anthony Faulkes defines við(r)kenning as “circumlocution, a description
(of a person) in terms of something else (i. e. in terms of an attribute or ‘ac-
cidental’; cf. kenna við)”, and sannkenning as “true description, a description
(of a person) in terms of their qualities or essence”.16 Snorri’s third term,
fornafn, Faulkes defines as “substitution (of a name or description for the
normal one), replacement (of a proper name), ‘pronominatio’”.17 This must
in fact be the overarching category for both við(r)kenning and sannkenning
– both types of kenning replace the name of the person, irrespectively of
the kenning’s verbal content. The difference between these two terms is, in
other words, whether the description is based on the person himself or on
something that only belongs to or is associated with the person. Common
to við(r)kenning and sannkenning is that both depend on facts of real life,
for instance who one’s father is, e.g., Haralds arfi ‘Haraldr’s heir’ and sonr
tryggva ‘the son of Tryggvi’ for óláfr Haraldsson and óláfr Tryggvason
in Sigv Berv 6,18 or, in the case of mythological kennings, the name of a
man’s spear, e.g., vǫ́fuðr Gungnis ‘the swinger of Gungnir (óðinn’s spear)’
for óðinn in Bragi Frag 4;19 they do not rely on a totally different, often
mythological world, as the more conventional kennings do. They are ken-
nings “without metaphorical content”, as Margaret Clunies Ross puts
it.20 I believe that in Egða andspillir, this is exactly the case; in Snorri’s
terminology this is a við(r)kenning, in which Gísli is kendr við his friendship
with the Egðir.
I will soon explain how I believe this relationship should be under-
stood, but first I will take a closer look at the earlier interpretation of Egða
andspillir as ‘Norwegian’: Gísli was born and raised in Norway – accord-
15 Snorri Sturluson, Edda. skáldskaparmál, vol. 1: Introduction, text and notes, ed. by Anthony
Faulkes (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1998), 107.
16 skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, 427, 382.
17 skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, 277–78.
18 skP II, 17.
19 skP III, 59.
20 Margaret Clunies Ross, A history of Old norse poetry and poetics (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer,
2005), 115.
Gí SLI Sú RSSON AS E G ð A A n D s P I L L I R