SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

304 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
As far as I can see, only one conclusion can be drawn.
We have no evidence of a native Norse sunna. It is
possible that Old Norse, like Gothic, once had both sol
and sunna, but then in such a remote period that it is
impossible to find any definite indication that it actually
did.
The Icelandic sunna ought therefore to be a West
Germanic loan, something which is already suggested by
the chronology of its occurrences. In my opinion the
word's appearance can be connected with the borrowing
of the name of the weekday, sunnudagr, 'Sunday'. The
West Germanic sunna may have come with sunnudagr.
But it is also possible that the Icelanders, with their
literary and linguistic interests, abstracted the simplex
sunna from sunnudagr - the above quotation from
Rlmbegla is in its way enlightening. The Icelandic word,
sunna, was probably a literary word from the beginning.
If sunna is a loan-word, then its appearance in Alvissmdl
says much about the poem's age. But this is a question
to which we shall return later.
Most of the words credited to the gods and other powers
are poetic circumlocutions of various types.
Very similar to the group of words discussed above are
those words whose meanings have been modified by
restriction or extension. For example, vegar (ro) which
really means 'ways, roads' is the word of the Vanir for
'earth'; aurr (ro), really 'gravel', is the word for 'earth'
used by the uppregin (whoever they were); mylinn (r4),
according to Hjalmar Falk really meaning 'ball'," is the
gods' word for 'moon'; skin (r4) 'shining', is the dwarves'
word for 'moon'; ofhly (22), really 'the sultry', is the
giants' name for calm; vdgr (24), 'wave, bay', is used by the
Vanir for 'sea'; uondr (28), really 'wand' (often used for
'mast' in scaldic poetry), is used by them for 'forest';
grima (30), really'a kind of hood covering the face', is the
word for 'night' among the ginnregin; v{!xtr (32), really
• Altnordische Waffenkunde (1914), 86 note.