Cosmology and Skaldic Poetry

Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade

JEGP, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Volume 111, Number
2, April 2012, pp. 199-207 (Article)

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Cosmology and Skaldic Poetry

Margaret Clunies Ross, University of Sydney,

and Kari Ellen Gade, Indiana University

It is well known that medieval Norwegians and Icelanders were interested
in cosmology and in the movements of the heavenly bodies, including the
sun, moon, planets, and stars. This interest is evident both from traditional
sources, as presented in eddic poems such as Voluspá 5–6 and Vafþrúðnismál
22–25 were translations of or influenced by Latin encyclopedic litera-
ture, from which medieval Europeans gained most of their knowledge of
the natural sciences before the works of Aristotle and other Greek and
Arab scholars became available in the period 1125–1230.

2

Many of the

encyclopedic sources to be found in Old Norse manuscripts were gath-
ered together in the three volumes of Alfræði Íslenzk and more recently
discussed by Rudolf Simek.

3

Works such as Konungs skuggsjá indicate that

medieval Scandinavians also had a practical interest in the application
of cosmology to their daily lives.

4

In the fictional discussion in that work

between a father and his son, for example, the father makes it clear to
the son that someone who ventures out to sea on trading voyages needs
to know about the courses of the sun, moon, and stars, and the influence
of the moon on the tides.
Less well known than the general Old Norse interest in cosmology in-
dicated by the sources mentioned above, which are mostly in prose, is the
fact that skaldic poets were occasionally moved to compose stanzas on such

1. The latter is edited by Kate Heslop in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, vol.

3: Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, ed. Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (Turnhout: Brepols

[forthcoming]).

2. Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs. The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 (Cambridge:

Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), p. 13.

3. Alfræði Íslenzk. Islandsk encyklopædisk Litteratur, 3 vols, Samfundet til udgivelse af gammel

nordisk litteratur, 37, 41, 45, vol. 1: Cod. Mbr. AM 194 8vo, ed. Kristian Kålund (Copen hagen:

Møller, 1908); vol. 2: Rímtol, ed. Kristian Kålund and Nataniel Beckman (Copenhagen:

Møller, 1914–16); vol. 3: Landalý singar etc., ed. Kristian Kålund (Copenhagen: Møller,

1917–18). For a more recent discussion of this material, see Rudolf Simek, Altnordische

Kosmographie: Studien und Quellen zu Weltbild und Weltbeschreibung in Norwegen und Island vom

12. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Alter-

tumskunde, 4 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1990).

4. Konungs skuggsiá, ed. Ludvig Holm-Olsen, 2d ed., Norrøne tekster, 1 (Oslo: Norsk

historisk kjeldeskrift-institutt, 1983).

subjects. In this article we discuss two examples in which we consider the
skald is presenting material inspired by a knowledge of medieval natural
science and, in one case, of the science of computus (ON rím), the system
of calculating astronomical phenomena and the movable dates of the
Christian calendar, especially Easter, which was essential to the practical
operation of the Church.

5

The first of these skalds, though the later in date,

is the thirteenth-century Icelandic poet Óláfr svartaskáld (Black Skald)
Leggsson, and the second is the much more famous and prolific Icelander
Einarr Skúlason (born c. 1090), who is best known for his composition of
the encomium Geisli (Light-beam) in honor of St. Óláfr.

6

It is arguably significant that the two examples discussed here have
been transmitted only in the grammatical literature of medieval Iceland
and its early modern Nachlaß, significant because the stanzas’ subjects
would have been taught in the medieval schoolroom alongside elementary
grammar and rhetoric as essential knowledge for school pupils, many of
whom were or would become priests. We know that Einarr Skúlason was a
priest, because he is designated prestr in some sources,

7

and is mentioned

in a catalogue of priests from western Iceland who were alive in 1143.

8

On

the other hand, there is no indication that Óláfr Leggsson was in orders,
and what little we know of his life suggests otherwise.

9

However, the level

of cosmological knowledge his stanza displays is fairly elementary and
is of an order that an intelligent layman would have known, just as the
merchant of Konungs skuggsjá is represented as doing.
Most of the poetry attributed to Óláfr Leggsson is fragmentary. Among
the fragments are two half-stanzas (helmingar) transmitted consecutively in
two manuscripts of the Y redaction of the Laufás Edda of Magnús Ólafsson,
an early seventeenth-century Icelandic treatise on skaldic poetics based

5. C. W. Jones, “Bede’s place in medieval schools,” in Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemora-

tion of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede, ed. Gerald Bonner (London:

S. P. C. K., 1976), pp. 266–68.

6. For the most recent edition of Geisli, see “Einarr Skúlason, Geisli,” ed. Martin Chase,

in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, vol. 7: Poetry on Christian Subjects, Part 1: The

Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp.

5–65. For Einarr Skúlason’s biography, see Kari Ellen Gade, “Einarr Skúlason, Biography,”

in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, vol. 2: Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas, 2, Part 2,

ed. Kari Ellen Gade (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), p. 537.

7. For example, see the first chapter of the version of Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu in MS

Holm 18 4° (Borgfirðinga sogur, ed. Sigurður Nordal and Guðni Jónsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 3

[Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1938], p. 51, n. 3), where Einarr prestr Skúlason is

listed among those descendants of Egill Skallagrímsson who were also famous poets.

8. See Sturlunga saga including the Islendinga Saga of Lawman Sturla Thordsson and Other

Works, ed. Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon], (Oxford: Clarendon, 1878), II,

502.

9. For Óláfr Leggsson’s biography, see R. D. Fulk, “Óláfr Leggsson, Biography,” in Skaldic

Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, III.

200

Ross and Gade

on medieval sources but including some material from sources that are
now lost, including in all probability lost leaves of the Codex Wormianus
(AM 242 fol. of c. 1350).

10

In standard editions of skaldic poetry, these

two helmingar have been regarded as part of a longer poem and given a
modern title.

11

Finnur Jónsson called them part of En drape om Kristus (?)

(A drápa about Christ [?]), but there is no evidence available on whether
they formed part of a longer poem and, if so, what its name was, if it had
one.
The subject of the first of these half-stanzas is Christ’s crucifixion and
its significance for humanity. The second is addressed directly to God and
enumerates some of his most important natural creations:

12

Tungl gaft, tryggvinr engla,

talið dœgr megin lœgis,

— fekk hlý rnir stað stjornum —

sterkr, ok aldir merkja.

Sterkr tryggvinr engla, gaft tungl merkja talið dœgr,

megin lœgis ok aldir; hlý rnir fekk stjornum stað.

(Powerful friend of angels [= God], you gave celestial bodies

to mark the number of days and nights, the power of the sea

and the ages; the sky found a place for the stars.)

The helmingr’s emphasis is on God’s creation of the celestial bodies and
the establishment of their courses through the heavens, topics that can
be paralleled both in native sources like Voluspá and in encyclopedic lit-
erature in Old Norse on the sun, moon, stars, and the zodiac.
Much of this literature is ultimately indebted to widely known late an-
tique works of science and cosmology, especially Macrobius’s Commentarius
in Somnium Scipionis (Commentary on the Dream of Scipio) and Martianus
Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (Concerning the Marriage of
Philology and Mercury).

13

Early medieval writers, like Isidore of Seville,

10. For Laufás Edda, see Two Versions of Snorra Edda from the 17th Century, ed. Anthony

Faulkes, vol. 1: Edda Magnúsar Ólafssonar (Laufás Edda) (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnús-

sonar á Íslandi, 1979).

11. The stanza is edited in Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jónsson, vol. AII:

Tekst efter håndskrifterne, vol. BII: Rettet tekst (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1912–15), pp. 85 (AII),

96 (BII); as well as in Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen, ed. E. A. Kock (Lund: Gleerup,

1946–50), II, 52.

12. Text, prose order, and translation are from the forthcoming edition by Kari Ellen

Gade in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, III.

13. See Macrobius, Somnium Scipionis, ed. James A. Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1963); and

Macrobius: Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. W. H. Stahl, Records of Civilization:

Sources and Studies, xlviii (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1990 [ebook]). For Martianus

Capella, see De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. James A. Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1983);

and Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, trans. W. H. Stahl, Richard Johnson, with

E. L. Burge, vol. 2: The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, Records of Civilization: Sources and

Studies, lxxxiv (New York and London: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971–77).

Cosmology and Skaldic Poetry

201

in his Etymologiae (Etymologies) and De natura rerum (On the nature of
things), and Bede, in his treatises De natura rerum, De temporibus, and De
temporum ratione (On the nature of things, On Times, and On the Com-
putation of Times), reinterpreted antique scientific and cosmological
lore for medieval readers, Bede in particular adding much learning of
his own. Later still, medieval writers such as Honorius Augustodunensis
(c. 1080-c.1137) in his De imagine mundi (On the Image of the World),
treated the same topics. Icelandic vernacular presentations of these topics
are usually indebted to these medieval Latin pedagogical works, whether
directly or indirectly, as is probably the case with Snorri Sturluson’s Edda.

14

In the second line of Óláfr Leggsson’s helmingr, he mentions megin lœgis
‘the power of the sea’.

15

Here he appears at first glance to depart from his

cosmological theme, but in fact he remains within it. In the scientific trea-
tises mentioned above, as well as in some vernacular sources, the causative
link between the phases of the moon and the tides was a regular topic. Me-
dieval commentators—especially those who, like Bede, lived near oceans
such as the North Sea or the Atlantic, which were subject to much more
extreme fluctuations in the tides than was the Mediterranean, with which
antique scholars were familiar—evinced a special interest in the subject
of the moon’s influence on the tides. In Chapter 29, De Concordia Maris et
Lunae (On the Harmony of the Sea and the Moon), of De temporum ratione,
Bede writes at length on the subject and includes some direct observations
of differences in the tides in various parts of the British Isles.

16

The topic

is also treated in considerable detail in Konungs skuggsjá and connected
there with the course and phases of the moon, as it is in the treatise named
Rím II from the fifteenth-century manuscript AM 624 4°.

17

Our second cosmological example is a dróttkvætt stanza transmitted in
The Fourth Grammatical Treatise on page 118 of the Codex Wormianus, in

14. For vernacular presentations of medieval Latin text in Old Icelandic literature, see

Kålund and Beckman, ed., Alfræði Íslenzk, II, p. 85. Possible learned influence on Snorri

Sturluson’s Edda is discussed by Margaret Clunies Ross, Snorri Sturluson’s Edda and Medieval

Theories of Language, The Viking Collection, 4 (Odense: Odense Univ. Press, 1987), pp.

153–62.

15. The word megin ‘power’ is an emendation, widely accepted by editors, of both manu-

scripts’ megir ‘sons’, which makes no sense in this context, although the compiler of this

section of the Laufás Edda seems to have understood megir lœgis ‘sons of the sea’ as a ken-

ning for ‘men’. Such a kenning-type is untraditional and cannot be found in the extensive

exemplification of man-kennings by Rudolf Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag

zur skaldischen Poetik (Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder, 1921), pp. 243–350.

16. Bedae Venerabilis Opera, ed. C. W. Jones, Pars VI, 2: Opera Didascalica, Corpus Christia-

norum Series Latina, CXXIII B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977), pp. 366–71; Bede: The Reckoning

of Time, trans. Faith Wallis, Translated Texts for Historians, 29 (Liverpool: Liverpool Univ.

Press, 1999), pp. 82–85, 307–12.

17. Konungs skuggsiá, ed. Holm-Olsen, p. 10, ll. 12–16; Alfræði Íslenzk, ed. Kålund and

Beckman, II, pp. 85–88.

202

Ross and Gade

two manuscripts of the Laufás Edda, and in Peter Resen’s Edda published
in 1665.

18

In The Fourth Grammatical Treatise, composed probably in the

second or third decade of the fourteenth century, and in Resen’s edi-
tion, the stanza is anonymous, but Magnús Ólafsson, possibly drawing on
sources other than the Codex Wormianus, attributes it to Einarr Skúlason,
an attribution that Anthony Faulkes has found plausible.

19

It will appear

as lausavísa 13 of Einarr’s poetry in the forthcoming Volume III of Skal-
dic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, edited by Kari Ellen Gade.

20

We

reproduce the text of this stanza here, as it will appear in that edition:

Máni skínn af mœni

21

moldar hofs of foldir

alla stund, meðan endisk

ævi lands ok sævar.

Veitk félaga fljótum

fróns prý ði vel þjóna;

þeim vitu eigi ý tar

auðit lífs né dauða.

Máni skínn af mœni hofs moldar of foldir alla stund, meðan

ævi lands ok sævar endisk. Veitk prý ði fróns þjóna fljótum

félaga vel; ý tar vitu eigi þeim auðit lífs né dauða.

(The moon shines from the roof-ridge of the temple of the ground [sky >

zenith] throughout the countries all the time while the life of land and sea

endures. I know that the adorner of the earth [sun] serves its swift companion

well; people do not know that one has been allotted neither life nor death.)

The composer of The Fourth Grammatical Treatise chose this stanza to exem-
plify the rhetorical figure he called antopazia (more regularly homopatia),
which he defines as when two things are so closely joined together and
agree in such a way that it can be said that the one does what the other
does. He continues, explaining, “here [in this stanza] the moon is assigned
the office of the sun, to shine continuously on the earth, because it does
not have light from itself, but from the sun, and the side which faces away
from the sun is dark. But the side which faces the sun is very bright.”

22

18. Laufás Edda, ed. Faulkes, p. 386; Two Versions of Snorra Edda from the 17th Century, ed.

Anthony Faulkes, vol. 2: Edda Islandorum. Völuspá. Hávamál. P. H. Resen’s Editions of 1665

(Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, 1977), p. Kk.

19. Laufás Edda, ed. Faulkes, p. 169.

20. “Einarr Skúlason Lausavísa 13,” ed. Kari Ellen Gade, in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian

Middle Ages, III.

21. All manuscripts have mœðu ‘weariness’, which makes little sense in this context; the

emendation to mœni ‘roof-ridge’, which restores internal rhyme, was first suggested by Svein-

björn Egilsson (Sveinbjörn Egilsson et al., ed., Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Edda Snorronis Sturlæi,

[Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission, 1848–87], II, 242–43, n. 2) and has been

adopted by all subsequent editors.

22. Antopazia er sú fígúra ef tveir hlutir eru svá bundnir ok samþykkir að það megi segjaz annarr

gera sem annarr gerir . . . [the stanza is quoted] . . . Hier er tunglinu kennt embætti sólarinnar að

Cosmology and Skaldic Poetry

203

In Laufás Edda the stanza is given in a similar context under the heading
figura in the section on kennings for ‘sun’, and the surrounding prose is
very similar to that in The Fourth Grammatical Treatise.
It is our view that the full meaning of this somewhat enigmatic stanza
can only be appreciated in the context of medieval ideas of cosmology and
science, particularly computus, which were transmitted in the pedagogical
and computistical sources we have mentioned earlier. The first helmingr is
relatively easy to understand. It asserts the ubiquity and continuous shin-
ing of the moon throughout the world for all time. Its scientific context
is probably hinted at in the unique kenning mœnir hofs moldar ‘roof-ridge
of the temple of the ground’ (lines 1–2), which we have interpreted as
meaning ‘zenith’. Whereas a comparison of the sky to a roofed building
is not uncommon in skaldic poetry,

23

the extension of the image to refer

to the very top of a built structure is unprecedented in the corpus.
There have been considerable differences of opinion in the scholarly
literature about the meaning of the second helmingr and particularly about
the identity of prý ði fróns ‘the adorner of the earth’ (line 6) and fljótum
félaga ‘its swift companion’ (line 5). In his edition of The Fourth Grammati-
cal Treatise, Björn Magnússon Ólsen construed fljótum félaga fróns ‘the swift
companion of the earth’ as referring to the moon and took prý ði (m. acc.
sg.) ‘adorner’ as a half-kenning for ‘sun’.

24

Finnur Jónsson interpreted fljót-

um félaga ‘swift companion’ as ‘earth’ and prý ði (m. acc. sg.) fróns ‘adorner
of the earth’ as ‘moon’, but Kock correctly pointed out that it makes little
sense to regard the earth as the moon’s ‘swift companion’.

25

He resorted

to emendation to fljótan félaga (m. acc. sg.) and took prý ði as f. dat. sg.
‘adornment’, producing the sense ‘I know that the swift companion (i.e.,
the moon) serves the adornment of the earth (i.e., the sun) well’.
It is not necessary, however, to resort to emendation to understand
lines 5–6 of Einarr’s stanza. Its prose context in The Fourth Grammatical
Treatise, repeated in Laufás Edda, indicates that whoever wrote the prose
gloss thought the stanza was about how the moon takes its light from

skína jafnliga á jörðina fyrir því er það hefir ekki ljós af sier heldr af sólinni, ok er dökkt þeim megin

sem frá henni horfir. En albjart það er að henni horfir. Jonas Wellendorf is responsible for this

normalized Icelandic prose text and English translation, which is being prepared for a

forthcoming edition of The Fourth Grammatical Treatise by himself and Margaret Clunies Ross.

23. Cf. Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden, pp. 105–8.

24. Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske afhandling i Snorres Edda tilligemed de grammatiske af-

handlingers prolog og to andre tillæg, ed. Björn Magnússon Ólsen, Samfundet til udgivelse af

gammel nordisk litteratur, 12 (Copenhagen: Knudtzon, 1884), p. 292.

25. Finnur Jónsson, Lexicon Poeticum Antiquæ Linguæ Septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-

islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson, 2d ed. (Copenhagen: Møller,

1931), p. 131, s. v. félagi; E. A. Kock, Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldedikt-

ning, Lunds Universitets årsskrift: New series, section 1 (Lund: Gleerup, 1923–44), §2343.

204

Ross and Gade

the sun, and Laufás Edda cites the stanza as an example of kennings for
‘sun’. There is only one possible kenning for the sun in this stanza and
that is prý ði fróns ‘adorner of the earth’ in line 6, so, unless the Icelandic
commentators have misunderstood the stanza completely, prý ði fróns must
refer to the sun and fljótum félaga ‘its swift companion’ to the moon.
This interpretation is in perfect accordance with what ancient and me-
dieval cosmological treatises say about the relationship between the moon
and the sun and their respective courses and speeds. These treatises are
unanimous that the moon completes each of its courses more quickly than
the sun because it has a shorter orbit and because the moon is nearer
to the earth than the sun is.

26

Furthermore, another reason for some

medieval commentators’ ascription of greater speed to the moon than
the sun comes from their association of the moon with the phenomenon
known as saltus lunae ‘the moon’s leap’, which had an important place
in medieval computus theory. In considering the incommensurability of
lunar and solar cycles, early medieval commentators developed the view
that the moon ran ahead of the sun and over a period of four years built
up an advance of one day. In order to bring the calendrical system into
balance, the moon had to “jump over” a day in the count of lunar days,
hence the idea that it was very speedy.

27

The concept of the saltus lunae was widely known from the writings of
Bede and may have been derived from earlier Irish tracts.

28

It was certainly

familiar to late Anglo-Saxon vernacular writers like Ælfric of Eynsham
and Byrhtferth of Ramsey, the latter of whom refers in his Enchiridion
(Manual) to þæs monan swyftnes ‘the moon’s swiftness’ and þære sunnan
slecnys ‘the sun’s sluggishness’.

29

The author of Konungs skuggsjá, too, was

familiar with the notion that the moon was faster than the sun (though he
may not have been precisely familiar with the saltus lunae theory), writing
that merchants can hardly keep up with the speed with which the moon
changes firi suo skiotrar

r

ásir sakar ‘on account of [its] very swift [changes

of] course’.

30

Again here a contrast is set up between the speed of the

moon’s course and the much slower course of the sun.

31

The treatise Rím

II, which acknowledges Bede’s De natura rerum as one of its sources, also

26. See Isidore, Etymologiae, III, De mathematica, De astronomia, lvii, in Isidori Hispalensis

Episcopi Etymologiarum sive originvm libri xx, ed. W. M. Lindsay, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911), I,

n.p.; and The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach,

and Oliver Berghof (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006), p. 103.

27. Cf. Bede, trans. Wallis, pp. 326–28.

28. Bede, trans. Wallis, pp. lxxii–lxxix.

29. Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, ed. Peter S. Baker and Michael Lapidge, Early English Text

Society, Special Series, 15 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press for the Early English Text Society,

1995), pp. 65, 68–69.

30. Konungs skuggsiá, ed. Holm-Olsen, p. 10, ll. 17–18.

31. Konungs skuggsiá, ed. Holm-Olsen, p. 10, ll. 18–21.

Cosmology and Skaldic Poetry

205

discusses saltus lunae (ON tunglhlaup ‘moon-leap’), and it mentions that
most stars complete their courses more frequently than the sun does.

32

The most enigmatic part of Einarr’s cosmological stanza occurs in the
last two lines: ý tar vitu eigi þeim auðit lífs né dauða ‘people do not know
that that one has been allotted neither life nor death’. We infer that this
couplet alludes to the claim, as stated in the prose text of The Fourth Gram-
matical Treatise, that the moon (‘that one’) does not have light, and so life,
of its own, but takes its light from the sun. This idea can be traced back
to Macrobius’s Somnium Scipionis I, xix, 8: quod lunam, quae luce propria
caret et de sole mutuatur, necesse est fonti luminis sui esse subiectam ‘[we may
be further assured] by the fact that the moon, which has no light of its
own but borrows it from the sun, necessarily lies beneath the source of
its light’.

33

It is also mentioned in Book I of Martianus Capella’s De nup-

tiis Philologiae et Mercurii

34

as well as in many treatises of natural science,

including Isidore’s Etymologiae III, lii, De lumine lunae.

35

From these and

similar sources it found its way into vernacular works, whether transla-
tions of the Latin sources, like Notker’s German version of Martianus,

36

or

close vernacular paraphrases, like that in Rím II.

37

The idea was evidently

known to the author of the prose part of The Fourth Grammatical Treatise
and, we propose, to Einarr Skúlason, who is likely to have been familiar
with at least the basic teachings of cosmology and computus through his
training as a priest in Iceland.
The fact that two Icelandic poets from the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies respectively composed poetry in traditional metres about some of
the common subjects of medieval cosmology is an indicator of the cross-
fertilization of ideas and textual traditions that must have occurred both
within and outside the medieval Icelandic schoolroom, as Guðrún Nordal
has proposed with regard to the use of skaldic poetry in the teaching of

32. See Alfræði Íslenzk, ed. Kålund and Beckman, II, 141, 147, 149 for ON tunglhlaup;

and p. 94 for the section on courses of the stars and the sun; but cf. a contradictory view

discussed on p. clvi.

33. Macrobius, ed. Willis, pp. 74–75; Macrobius, trans. Stahl, p. 164.

34. De nuptiis, ed. Willis, p. 23, ll. 15–16; Martianus Capella, trans. Stahl, Johnson, and

Burge, p. 28.

35. Isidori Hispalensis, ed. Lindsay, n. p.; The Etymologies, trans. Barney, Lewis, Beach, and

Berghof, p. 102.

36. Denkmahle des Mittelalters: St. Gallen’s altteutsche Sprachschætze, ed. Heinrich Hattemer (St.

Gallen: Scheitlin and Zollikofer, 1844–49), III, 308–9 (translation by Kari Ellen Gade): “Pî

imo stûont sîn suéster luna . mít mánmentsámero únde líndero ánasíhte . uuánda sî neuuíder

sláhet tiu óugen nîeht . sô diu súnna. Únde sî enfîeng íro liêht . fóne des prûoder lampade

. uuánda íro ne máhti niêht eclipsis keskêhen, úbe sî iz fóne íro sélbun hábeti” ‘Next to him

[i.e., Sol, the sun] stood his sister Luna with a soft and pleasant face, because she does not

blind the eyes as the sun does. And she received her light from the brightness of the brother,

because an eclipse could not happen to her if she had it [i.e., light] from herself’.

37. Alfræði Íslenzk, ed. Kålund and Beckman, II, p. 88.

206

Ross and Gade

grammatica.

38

Though both Óláfr svartaskáld Leggsson and Einarr Skúlason

composed poetry for Norwegian kings, Óláfr for King Hákon Hákonarson
and Einarr for numerous twelfth-century kings and dignitaries, and so
presumably spent considerable time in Norway, their formative years are
likely to have been spent in Iceland and their education must also have
taken place there. Both their poetry and its preservation within vernacular
treatises on poetics are evidence of that characteristic medieval Icelandic
fusion of native tradition and learning of foreign origin that is one of the
hallmarks of Icelandic literature of the Middle Ages.

38. Guðrún Nordal, Tools of Literacy: The Role of Skaldic Verse in Icelandic Textual Culture of

the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Toronto: Toronto Univ. Press, 2001).

Cosmology and Skaldic Poetry

207