Singasteinn
InNorse mythology,Singasteinn(Old Norse"singing stone" or "chanting stone" ) is an object that appears in the account ofLokiandHeimdall's fight in the form ofseals.The object is solely attested in theskaldicpoemHúsdrápa.Some scholars have interpreted it as the location of the struggle, others as the object they were struggling over.
Húsdrápa[edit]
The scene is described in the skaldÚlfr Uggason'sHúsdrápa,as found in the 13th centuryIcelandicProse Edda:
- Old Norse:
- Ráðgegninn bregðr ragna
- rein at Singasteini
- frægr við firna slœgjan
- Fárbauta mǫg vári;
- móðǫflugr ræðr mœðra
- mǫgr hafnýra fǫgru,
- kynnik, áðr ok einnar
- átta, mærðar þǫ́ttum.[1]
- Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur's translation:
- The famed rain-bow's defender,
- Ready in wisdom, striveth
- At Singasteinn with Loki,
- Fárbauti's sin-sly offspring;
- The son of mothers eight and one,
- Mighty in wrath, possesses
- The Stone ere Loki cometh:
- I make known songs of praise.[2]
Interpretations[edit]
In theProse Edda,Snorri Sturlusoninterprets Singasteinn as theskerryat which Loki and Heimdall fought. Referring to the same poem, he says that Heimdall may be called "Frequenter of Vágasker [" waves-skerry "] and Singasteinn";[3]this gives another name for the skerry[4]and this is also where he states that they were in the form of seals, showing that there was more of the poem on this story. Brodeur has followed Snorri in his translation, and so have some scholarly analyses. For example,Gabriel Turville-Petresays, "Singasteinn was evidently a rock far out at sea."[5]Viktor Rydberg,following Snorri in seeing the struggle as over Freyja's necklaceBrísingamen,went a step further and saw the necklace as having been lying on the skerry.[6]
Alternativelyat singasteinihas been taken to refer to what Heimdall and Loki were fighting over, parallel to thehafnýra fǫgru,"beautiful sea-kidney" (which Brodeur rendered as simply "stone" ). In this light, there is an attractive emendation ofsingasteinitosignasteini,"magic stone, amulet."[7]Several scholars have pointed out that both "sea-kidney" and "magic stone" fit less well with Brísingamen, a necklace, than withCaribbean drift-seedsthat can be found on the beaches of Iceland,Orkney,theHebridesand the Scandinavian mainland and have been traditionally used as amulets, particularly to ease childbirth; their European names includevettenyrer,wight(Old Norsevættr) kidneys.[7][8][9][10]
References[edit]
- ^Skáldskaparmálch. 23, cited from Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages,HúsdrápaArchived2011-07-06 at theWayback Machineverse 2, Skaldic Project Academic Body, University of Sydney, retrieved June 2, 2010.
- ^Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur,The Prose Edda,New York: American Scandinavian Foundation, 1916,OCLC974934,p. 115,also parallel with the Old Norse atvoluspa.org.
- ^tilsækir Vágaskers ok Singasteins,Skáldskaparmálch. 15; Brodeur translationp. 113,Old Norse text in parallel atvoluspa.org.
- ^Wilhelm Heizmann, "Der Raub des Brísingamen, oder: Worum geht es inHúsdrápa2? "Analecta Septentrionalia: Papers on the History of North Germanic Culture and Literature,Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Ergänzungsbände 65, Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2009,ISBN978-3-11-021869-5,502–30,p. 512(in German)suggests that Vágasker was simply Snorri's interpretation of Singasteinn, which was unclear to him.
- ^E.O.G. Turville Petre,Myth and Religion of the North,London, Weidenfeld, 1964,OCLC460550410,p. 129.
- ^Viktor Rydberg,Teutonic Mythology,tr. Rasmus B. Anderson, London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1889,OCLC504219736,p. 558.
- ^abAudrey Meaney, "Drift Seeds and the Brísingamen",Folklore94.1 (1983) 33–39,p. 33.
- ^Jan de Vries,Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte,Volume 2, 2nd ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1957, repr. as 3rd ed. 1970,OCLC466619179,pp. 260, 311–12(in German),using this as the basis for arguing that Brísingamen only later came to be thought of as aman,a necklace, after the original idea of an amulet bound on the hips had faded.
- ^Heizmann,p. 512says this connection has been made "fairly often."
- ^Franz Rolf Schröder, "Heimdall,"Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur(PBB) 89 (1967) 1–41(in German)suggests thathafnýrais simply a kenning for "island". According to Heizmann,p. 310,that was a cornerstone ofKurt Schier's argument that Singasteinn was the location.
Sources[edit]
- Kurt Schier."Húsdrápa2. Heimdall, Loki und die Meerniere. "in Helmut Birkhan, ed.Festgabe für Otto Höfler zum 75. Geburtstag.Philologica Germanica 3. Vienna: Braumüller, 1976.ISBN978-3-7003-0131-8.577–88 - an influential exposition of the location interpretation(in German).
- Birger Pering.Heimdall: Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Verständnis der altnordischen Götterwelt.Diss. Lund University. Lund: Gleerup, 1941.OCLC459397212- the first exposition of the birthstone interpretation(in German).