Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

æsinaðr til rausnar
rak vébrautar Nökkva.
In prose order: Lagar tanna mannskæðr mætir út á mar rak rausnar ræsinaðr til
Nökkva vébrautar. ("The assailants of the skerry (the teeth of the sea), dangerous to man,
flung out upon the sea the splendid serpent of the vessel's stem to the holy path of
Nökkvi"). 6
All interpreters agree that by "the skerry's assailants, dangerous to man," is meant
the waves which are produced by the storm and rush against the skerries in breakers
dangerous to seamen. It is also evident that Hornklofi wanted to depict the violence of the
sea when be says that the billows which rise to assail the skerry toss the ship, so that the
figure-head of the stem reaches "the holy path of Nökkvi." Poems of different literatures
resemble each other in their descriptions of a storm raging at sea. They make the billows
rise to "the clouds," to "the stars," or to "the moon." Quanti montes uoluuntur aquarum!
iam iam tacturos sidera summa, Ovid sings (Tristia Book I, 2) and Virgil has it: Procella
fluctus ad sidera tollit (Æneid, I. 102-3). 7 One of their brother skalds in the North, quoted
in Skáldskaparmál 76, depicts a storm with the following words:
Hrauð í himin upp glóðum
hafs, gekk sær af afli,
börð hygg-k að ský skerðu,
skaut Ránar vegr mána. 8
The skald makes the phosphorescence of the sea splash against heaven; he makes
the ship split the clouds, and the way of Rán, the giantess of the sea, cut the path of the
moon.
The question now is, whether Hornklofi by "Nökkvi's holy path" did not mean the
path of the moon in space, and whether it is not to this path the figure-head of the ship
seems to pitch when it is lifted on high by the towering billows. It is certain that this holy
way toward which the heaven-high billows lift the ship is situated in the atmosphere
above the sea, and that Nökkvi has been conceived as travelling this way in a ship, since
Nökkvi means the ship-captain. From this it follows that Nökkvi's craft must have been a
phenomenon in space resembling a ship which was supposed to have its course marked
6 This verse also appears in Skáldskaparmál 61. From the context of Haralds saga Hárfagra, we learn that
Nökkvi is rival king, whom Harald conquers in battle. The most recent commentary suggests the following
prose order: áðr mannskæðr mætir Nökkva rak til rausnar út á mar ræsinaðr vébrautar tanna lagar;
meaning: "Before 'the man-harmful meeter of Nökkvi' [King Harald] magnificently drove 'the rushing
dragon of the holy path of the teeth of the ocean' [the ship] out to sea." Here the "teeth of the sea" are
skerries; the "holy path of the skerries" is the ocean; and it's "rushing dragon," a ship. Anthony Faulkes
(Edda p. 139) in 1987 first rendered this same half-strophe: "When the man-harmful meeter of the sacred
road [mountains] of the water's teeth [rocks] drove out on the mere the splendid fore-sheets-snake and
boats," before accepting a similar interpretation to that given above in his Skáldskaparmál I, 1998. See the
note to verse 345 which reads in part: "Snorri (in Hkr I 103) clearly took Nökkvi as the name of a king
against whom Haraldr hárfagri fought." There Faulkes discusses the difficulties of this verse in detail.
7 In the lines: Talia iactanti stridens Aquilone procella velum adversa ferit, fluctusque ad sidera tollit. In
poetic translation (John Dryden): The raging billows rise, And mount the tossing vessels to the skies.
8 A. Faulkes translation: "The main's embers were tossed up into the sky, the sea moved with force. I think
the prows cut the clouds. Ran's way [the sea] hit the moon."