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308 Saga-Book oj the Viking Society
grenne' with the qualification "i nedseettende mening".
This qualification perplexed Gering, who writes in his
Kommentar: "Warum dies eine 'verachtliche bezeichnung'
sein soll, ist nicht einzusehen." Finnur Jonsson made
himself clearer in his edition, De gamle Eddadigte
(1932), where he writes: "igrcen: strerkt gron, jsetteme
foler ubehag ved den smukke gr0nne farve." The
adjective is hapax legomenon in Old West Norse. But the
word is well known from both Modern Icelandic and the
dialects of Modern Norwegian and means 'greenish'. The
same applies to other colour adjectives formed with the
same prefix: iblaa, igraa, iraud, isvart, i.e. 'bluish', etc.
Fritzner's dictionary omits igreenn but has ibldr and
irautJr, which are correctly translated as 'blaalig, blaaagtig'
and 'redlig, lidt redagtig', The German ingrun, which
corresponds to igrcenn, means admittedly 'very green,
extremely green' and has done so since the Middle High
German period, but it is equally undeniable that
Scandinavian colour adjectives with the i-prefix do not
have any intensive connotation.t' Thus the giants in
Aloissmdl call the earth by a word which means 'greenish,
a little green'. The word is an understatement. The
giants admit, as if against their will, that the earth is
green; it is tgrcen, 'a bit green'. The vocabulary of the
giants does not, however, have negative connotations
throughout. Ale (34), for example, is able to dispel their
peevishness: its name is hreini logr, 'the bright liquid'.
The vocabulary of the elves testifies to a totally
different frame of mind from that of the giants. The
earth is verdant and fertile (gr6andi) , the sky a beautiful
roof (fagrarcejr), the sun a beautiful wheel (fagrahvel) ,
the forest is fair-limbed (fagrlimi), the night is sleep's joy
(svejngaman). It is to be noted that in no case do words
beginning with the prefix fagr- make part of the metrical
structure and they are therefore not bound by alliteration.
11 I refer to Ture Johannisson's discussion of these questions in his essay
'Idrott' in Meijerbergs Arkiv for svensk ordforskning 5 (1943).