SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

The Lay of Attila 13
Hogni the brave, unlike the heart of Hialli the coward" ­
yet between his words the verse swells to the broader
rhythm of mdlahdttr for the torment of Hogni, and from
the plain diction one ornate scaldic phrase emerges: "They
cut to the heart the living sculptor of scars" - qviqvan
kumblasmii), The warrior who inflicts wounds can also
endure thern.!" The frequency of shorter Jines continues
during the quiet revelation of Gunnarr's defiance:
er und einom mer oll urn folgin
hodd Niflunga: lifira nu Hogni.
But as his triumphant theme develops the lines lengthen
with rich parallelism:
Rin seal ni6a rogrnalmi seatna,
a su in askunna, arfi Niflunga;
i veltanda vatni lysaz valbaugar,
heldr en a hondom gull scini Huna bornom.w
The alternation between metres so fundamentally similar
reflects a change of attitude and of tension. If we must
suppose, as Becker does, that a poem in [ornyroislag has
been interwoven with another in mdlahdttr then the joiner
has achieved a poetic collage of genius.
In the sequence of verses from the ordering out of the
wheeled chariots to take Gunnarr to the snake-pit to
Atli's return, there is not only an alternation of metres
but an interlacing of different poetic styles. The language
is now rigid, now fluent, as the focus of the narrative
changes. Atli rides out with remote formality (throughout
the poem he is distant, featureless). He is the
emperor, inn rik», surrounded by the swords of his
warriors, sleginn rogbornom - a scaldic phrase with no
contextual significance that I can discover -, and he is
also sifittngr peira 'brother-in-law of those men (Gunnarr
i s Despite the rareness of kumbl in the sense 'scar', 'wound' (d. herkumbl
'battle-scar', kumla 'to maim'), it gives the best sense with -smior, and is
particularly apt in the context. The interpretation 'smiter (like a smith) of
helmet-crests' supposes a use of smiar in compounds unparalleled in ON or
OR.
2. In reading d sli. in dskunna I combine the emendations of Gering and
Kuhn. It is tempting to omit gull scini in the last line, and restore a
fornyroislag ending to the stanza, but the poet may have wished to give weight
by anacrusis (d. hratt hann 19/4) and repetition of the idea lysaz ualbaugar,