Grottasõngr
the song of grottiedited by

Clive Tolley

viking society for northern research
university college london
2008© Clive Tolley 2008
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Clive Tolley to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance withsections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published 2008

Viking Society for Northern Research, London

ISBN 978-0-903521-78-9

The printing of this book is made possible by a gift
to the University of Cambridge in memory of Dorothea Coke, Skjaeret, 1951.

Typeset in Ehrhardt by Word and Page, Chester, UK
Printed in Great Britain by
Short Run Press Limited, Exeter

Preface
The present edition of Grottasõngr was originally to be included in the fourthvolume of The Poetic Edda, edited by Ursula Dronke, with the assistance of thepresent editor, for Oxford University Press. As work progressed on that volume,
however, it became clear that a somewhat different and shorter treatment would
be needed for this poem, which is not, indeed, found in the Codex Regius whichforms the basis of Ursula Dronke’s edition. Hence we decided it would be better
to issue the present version separately. It is with great pleasure that I am able
to offer it for publication through the Viking Society, which does so much topromote scholarship devoted to medieval Scandinavia.
The present edition began as a collaborative effort between me and Ursula
Dronke, and reflects many of her suggestions (in particular in the reading of thetext itself), though the bulk of the editorial work was carried out by me. The edition was largely already completed before the appearance of the third volume ofthe edition with commentary by Klaus von See et al., Kommentar zu den Liedern
der Edda (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2000). There is, needless to say, much agreement between them, though the presentation of the material differs. I have notfelt it would make a marked improvement to my own edition to repeat the many
additional bibliographical references and smaller points of discussion includedin the German edition, where they can readily be consulted; von See has aimed
at a commendable degree of comprehensiveness in the 128 large pages devoted
to the poem, but the present, rather shorter, edition seeks, in the tradition andindeed format set by Ursula Dronke in her own edition of The Poetic Edda, tobe somewhat more selective and more focused on the presentation of the poem
as a literary artefact (though historical and other aspects are not ignored). In
keeping with those found in The Poetic Edda, the translation aspires to somesmall degree of poetic expression through the use of alliteration and choice of
vocabulary, rather than being purely literal. Grottasõngr is perhaps not among
the greatest of works of the ancient North, but it is not without its own interest
and attraction, and it is my hope that students and other interested readers will
gain some pleasure from investigating the poem through the present edition.
I would like to thank Ursula Dronke for her friendly support (spread overmany years, indeed), in particular in the editing of the poem and in bringing thisedition to fruition, and Alison Finlay for furthering its publication by the Viking
Society. I am also most grateful for the extensive and helpful comments madeby my reader, John McKinnell, which have highlighted many points in need of
elucidation. Finally, I thank the Dorothea Coke Memorial Fund for providing
the necessary financial backing for the publication of this edition.
Clive Tolley
Chester, July 2007

skapttré (Iceland)mõndull, handle

kvern, quernlúðr, where milled
grain collects

lightening tree (Shetland),léttistõng (Iceland),lettetre (Norway),? Norse léttitré,
for raising quernstonestoð, support for lúðrmõndullkvernar auga, eye of quern

lith (Shetland), lið(Norse), i.e. the recess
for the rynd
peg attached to cord forlifting lightening tree

(from above)
segl (Norse), sile (Shetland),rynd (English)? snúðgasteinn? hõfgasteinnbottom of lúðrlightening tree

standr (Iceland)grotti (Shetland), nave (English), of wood

The Norse quern, based on Norwegian, Icelandic and Shetland models.

Introduction

I. The manuscripts
Grottasõngr is preserved in three manuscripts of Snorri’s Edda, in its entirety in SR
and T, and the first stanza alone in C. SR (Codex Regius 2367 4to, formerly in theRoyal Library, Copenhagen, now in the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskumfræðum, Reykjavík) is from c. 1325. It is the primary manuscript source for thepresent edition of Grottasõngr. T (Codex Trajectinus 1374, in the University
Library, Utrecht) is a sixteenth-century copy of a late-thirteenth-century original(SnE vii). It is closely related to SR, but is not a copy of it; it is likely that SR andthe antecedent of T are copied from one original. This is confirmed in the textof Grottasõngr found in the two manuscripts. That original was itself corrupt invarious passages; problematic sections of the poem in SR are not resolved by T.
The orthography of T is basically more archaic than that of SR, for example in
the use of unstressed ‘o’ rather than ‘u’, or the form ‘oro’ for voru, or ‘it’ for þit:some caution is necessary, however: a form such as ‘hendor’ must be an inventionof the T copyist. In two places T omits lines preserved in SR (3/1–2, 18/3),
and mistakes, marked for correction, are fairly frequent. Nonetheless, in several
instances T has readings preferable to those of SR (e.g. 6/5, 17/5, 18/6, 21/7).
The immediate antecedent of T would probably have been more accurate than isSR, but the danger that forms in T itself stem from the sixteenth-century scribe
cannot be ignored. T, though valuable, does not preserve the text in a sufficiently
good state to supplant SR as the basis for the text of a modern edition. C (AM748 II 4to, now in the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, st. 1 only)
dates from c. 1400 (SnE xiii). In the one stanza cited, the text differs in two points
from SR/T: C has eru for erum, and giõrvar for hafðar. The first difference may
derive from a desire to avoid the complication of presenting a speech within sucha short citation; it may also represent a different textual tradition, as seems to be
the case with the second difference (giõrvar and hafðar may, however, derive fromone (perhaps somewhat corrupt) original written form: this implies that several
stages of transmission took place, presumably in the period c. 1200–1300, before theextant manuscripts were written). In both cases the SR/T reading seems slightly
preferable. It seems unlikely that Snorri intended to quote the whole poem: thiswould be uncharacteristic, and the poem is not wholly consistent with its prose
context. Therefore C may well represent Snorri’s original intention, with justthe beginning of the poem cited (SnE xxii). The differences observed in this one
stanza are sufficient warning that the text of the poem known to Snorri may have

Grottasõngr
differed considerably from that preserved in SR/T, where its presence is likely
to be due to an early interpolator.
Further discussion of the manuscripts of Snorri’s Edda is to be found in
Faulkes’s edition of Gylfaginning, xxix–xxxi.

II. The Norse quern
At the heart of Grottasõngr lies the ancient Norse hand mill. The form of quern
in use in medieval Scandinavia may be ascertained reasonably accurately byexamining both archaeological examples, and working querns in use in Norse
areas (including Norse areas of Scotland) until recently (see Eiríkr Magnússon
1910; Curwen 1937; KLNM, s.v. kvarn).
The quernstones rested on a platform or crib (lúðr) some feet off the ground,in which the flour would collect. In some querns the upper stone could be
adjusted up and down to achieve the best grind with a lightening tree fixedbeneath the lúðr. In later Icelandic querns the handle rose up to a frame (a  shaped structure rising from the lúðr); the skapttré of the poem is best understoodas referring to some such device. It is clear from the poem that both the girls are
involved in turning the quern; this could imply a quern with two handles, suchas were sometimes to be found in parts of Scotland, but it is more likely to indicate that the quern was simply so massive that both had to turn the (one) handle
together. Although specific names for the upper and lower stones do not appear
to be recorded, the poem’s snúðgasteinn is probably the top, moving stone, while
the lower stone may be indicated by hõfgasteinn (or variants). Grotti (cf. English‘grind’) in Norn and Norwegian dialect refers specifically to the nave of thelower stone, through which the shaft supporting the upper stone passes.

III. The sequence of ideas in the poem
Two cycles of human life intertwine in Grottasõngr. The maidens, sprung frommighty giant kin, first played with rocks in the mountains­ – the very rocks whichwere to form the quernstone they were later enslaved to – before engaging inbattles as valkyrie figures, and involving themselves in the highest militaryaffairs of kings. Suddenly these mighty beings are reduced to menials, churningout riches for another without rest. Their chagrin is ripe for explosion.
Fróði is the monarch who enslaves these girls. His deceit stems from the combination of traditions the poet has employed in his depiction. On the one hand
he embodies the character of Fróði the peacegiver, whose reign was marked by its
long peace and prosperity, and on the other that of Fróði, originally a king of the
Heathobards of the fifth century, who, in most of the Norse accounts, usurped
the throne from his brother, and was subsequently overthrown by his avenging
nephews (see §§IV and V). This marrying of different legends enables the poet toallude both to the riches and luxury of Fróði’s reign, and to its tyranny. His wealth isderived from a merciless exploitation of his mill-workers, not (as we should expectfrom the traditional king of peace) from the harmony and goodness of his rule.

Introduction
The poem presents a confrontation between these two different powers, but
it also involves a collision between different sorts of wisdom. Fróði encompasses
the sense ‘wise’, but also harks back to a more archaic sense ‘virile, fecund’. He
epitomises the conviction that a prosperous society depends on the wisdom of
its rulers, and once his wisdom falters, so too does the wealth and prowess of his
realm. It is upon this conceit that the structure of the poem depends. In contrast to the king, the maidens are said to have foresight, are framvísar. Fróði did
not anticipate the consequences of the lack of wisdom he showed in neglecting
to enquire about the nature of the maidens he obtained: he saw only strength,
something to bolster his own power. The maidens, however, declare that thefinding of the quernstones and their own presence there to work them was nochance, but was known to them all along. Whilst the audience may not be quite
convinced by this self-assuring explanation of their capture and subjugation,
the girls nonetheless put their conviction to effect, by milling out an avenger tooverthrow Fróði, and overturning the wonder-mill. At this point they declarethey have milled enough.
1 The poem opens with a declaration by the two protagonists of their identity,
their whereabouts, and their essential nature: Fenja and Menja have come to thehouse of King Fróði, two girls gifted with foresight. The incongruity of theirsituation – máttkar meyiar at mani hafðar – strikes a foreboding note.
2–4 The girls are taken straight to the mill to start working: the king does noteven mention rest before hearing the slave-women’s tune. They accordingly set
to work: the sound of industry rings out, as they adjust the machine, and the
king again orders them to work. The milling, accompanied by the girls’ singing,
continues until Fróði’s household is asleep, and the flour begins to emerge.
5–6 Menja speaks: let them grind out wealth and blessings for Fróði, let him
sleep in the lap of luxury – that may then be counted good milling. Echoing
the stock descriptions of Fróði’s peace found in other sources, she arrogates its
establishment to the mill’s grinding.
7 With scant thanks for this magnanimity, Fróði, far from offering them rest,
tells the girls they may sleep for no longer than a cuckoo stops singing, or thetime it took him to sing one song.
8–12 Menja in rejoinder undermines Fróði’s reputation for wisdom: he was
not wise when he bought slave-girls without finding out about their kindred.
She mentions a series of giants, and declares the girls are descended from them.
Moreover, the quern Grotti would not have emerged from the earth, nor would
the maidens be there to grind it, if they had not had foreknowledge of the wholematter. The maidens themselves moved the grindstones from the earth in theirplay, and sent them rolling to a place (presumably Denmark) where men discovered them.
13–15 The maidens then engaged in battle in Sweden, toppling and upholding kings as they chose.
16–17 With no explanation as to how it happened, the maidens were thenbrought in captivity and misery to Fróði’s courts, where these erstwhile warmongers were ironically reduced to turning the mill, the ‘diffuser of war’. This See, for example, commentary to Skírnismál 1/5 in PE II.

Grottasõngr
perception of their ignominy is the turning point of the poem. Menja concludes
by saying their hands must rest: she has milled more than her fair share.
17–20 Fenja takes over the song: they will not rest their hands, she says, beforeFróði deems that enough milling is done. The irony of her statement is thenrevealed: it is spear-shafts that hands shall grasp – and here she taunts the sleeping Fróði: wake up, if you wish to hear our songs! An army will arise and burndown the hall in spite of the prince; she sees the fires burning already: Fróði will
not keep the seat of Hleiðr. She exhorts her companion to grasp the mill-handle
more firmly: they are not sickened by the gore they are grinding out.
21–3 Seeing the approaching fate, they mill all the harder, until the quern
breaks to pieces.
24 The maidens conclude with a short statement to Fróði that they have milled
for long enough: his fate, for them, is assured.

IV. The legendary-historical background of Fróði
For the poet of Beowulf, Froda (Old Norse Fróði) was a king of the Heathobards;
in so far as he was a historical character he would have been living at some timearound the late fifth century. In Norse records another Fróði is also found, a kingof Denmark famed for his long reign of peace and prosperity. A glance at theNorse genealogies reveals that from these two Fróðis has proliferated a whole
series of legendary Danish kings called Fróði. Fróði the peace-bringer will beconsidered more fully in the next section of the Introduction.
The family tree of the Danish kings which may be reconstructed from Beowulf
reveals that the might of the Scyldings was based in part on marriage alliances
between small peoples later forgotten in the Scandinavian record:
Scyld
Beow
Healfdene

Heorogar

HeoroweardHroðgar = Wealhþeow
(Helming)Hreðric

Hroðmund

Froda(Heathobard)

Freawaru = IngeldHalgad. = Onela(Swede)Hroðulf

The Heathobards and Danes were enemies. It seems that Froda had slain
Healfdene (or Healfdene Froda); some time later Hroðgar attempted to settle thefeud by marrying his daughter Freawaru to Froda’s son Ingeld. However, as thepoet of Beowulf forebodes (lines 2032–69), and as Widsið says openly (lines 45–9),

the Heathobards attacked Heorot, but were defeated. Upon Hroðgar’s death, The manuscript’s reading of Beowulf for Beow is widely accepted as a mistaken anticipationof the protagonist’s name; I discuss the emendation to Beow in Tolley 1996, 29.

IntroductionHroðulf must have seized the throne, slaying Hreðric and Hroðmund. Later,
Heoroweard, with a still older claim to the throne, overturned Hroðulf (thismuch may be gleaned from the Scandinavian sources, though there Hjõrvarðr’s
relationship with the royal house is no longer recognised).
The Heathobards have been forgotten as a people by the time of the Norsesources; they are recalled merely in the names Hothbrodus, a Swede in Saxo,and Hõðbroddr, the enemy of Helgi in the Helgakviður. Hrólfs saga kraka preserves the closest genealogy to the Old English:
Hálfdan = Sigríðr

Hróarr = Õgn

Hrókr

AgnarrHelgi = Ólõf=Sævill = Signý

Fróði

Yrsa = Aðils (Swede)
Hrólfr krakiFróði kills his brother Hálfdan; Hróarr and Helgi take vengeance by burningFróði in his hall. Helgi is killed by Aðils the Swede. Hróarr is killed by his
nephew Hrókr. Hrólfr is killed in an attack by one Hjõrvarðr, here unrelated.
The genealogy of Skjõldunga saga is given on the next page. The time of
Frodo I was one of peace and prosperity (see §V); as an explanation it is statedthat Christ was born at this time. Christ’s passion was marked by earthquakes
and eclipses in Frodo’s realm. Frodo was burnt by a criminal named Mysinngus.
The death of Frodo III was caused by a deer turning on him and transfixing him
with its horns. Frodo IV killed his half-brother Alo; this fratricide is repeated in
the next generation, where, after taking vengeance on Sverting for the murderof his father Frodo, Halfdanus is killed by his half-brother Ingialldus, who also
takes his widow. Helgo and Roas in turn slay Ingialldus. Roas is then killed byRærecus and his brother Frodo.
Snorri’s genealogy in Skáldskaparmál, introducing the story of Grotti,
reflects that of Skjõldunga saga:ÓðinnSkjõldrYngviFriðleifrFróði
Hrólfs saga exists in manuscripts from the seventeenth century, based on a lost antecedentof the later sixteenth century (Hrólfs saga kraka, ed. Slay, Introduction, xii–xiv), but is believed
to have assumed its extant form, itself clearly based on earlier versions of the tale, in the latefourteenth or fifteenth century; elements in the narrative are found earlier, for example in Snorri’s
Edda and Ynglinga saga. See Simek and Hermann Pálsson 1987, s.v. Hrólfs saga kraka, for further
references to discussions of the saga’s date and provenance..
 Skjõldunga saga is from 1180–1200, but is preserved only in a sixteenth-century Latinsummary, Rerum Danicarum fragmenta, by Arngrímur Jónsson. The dating is that of BjarniGuðnason (1963, 315); he notes that Gunnlaugr Leifsson probably knew Skjõldunga saga when hewrote his saga of Óláfr Tryggvason around 1200.
 Grottasõngr
Odinus

Scioldus(Dane)

Ingo(Swede)Leifus(Fridleifur)
Frodo
Fridgode
Leifus(Herleifus)
Havardus

Leifushinn frekne

Frodo II

6 sonsVermundus

Olafa
Alo ofUpplandDan II

Ingo

Frodo III=

Inga

FridleifusAlo? = Frodo IV = ?

Halfdanus

Sigrida=Helgo = Olava=
Yrsa
Rolfo Krake

=

=

Hilda

Saevillus = Signya

Alricus(Swede)==Halfdanus
Svertingus

Ingialldus = d.

Roas = English Rærecus
woman
Adils

Skuld = Hiørvardus

The Danish genealogies of Skjõldunga saga



Frodo

AgnarusIntroduction
Dan
LotherSkioldGram
HadingFrotho I
Haldan
Roe

Svanhvit = Ragner (Swede)

Roe

Skat

elf woman = Helgo = Thora

Hothbrod

AthislHøther=Hiarvarth = Skuld

Yrsa

Rolvo

Vermund
Ufﬁ
Dan II
HuglekFrotho II
Dan III
Fridlef I
Frotho III
Frogerth = Fridlef II
Frotho IV
Ingel

Sverting
=

d.

Olaf
Ulvhild=

Frotho V

HaraldErik

Harald=Signe
Haldan II

The Danish genealogies of Saxo Grammaticus (selection)

Grottasõngr
Ynglinga saga (probably by Snorri) also follows Skjõldunga saga (which is
explicitly mentioned as a source); the Danish genealogy, in so far as it is given,
is identical. Three Fróðis are mentioned: frið-Fróði (ch. 11), on a visit to whom
the Swedish king Fjõlnir drowns in a vat of mead, corresponds to Frodo I ofSkjõldunga saga; Fróði inn mikilláti or friðsami (ch. 25) corresponds to Frodo
III of Skjõldunga saga; and Fróði inn frœkni (ch. 26), the Frodo IV of Skjõldunga
saga.
Snorri’s prose setting for Grottasõngr, which is not in agreement with thecontent of the poem, is derived in part from Skjõldunga saga. Snorri identifies
the Fróði of the poem as the first Fróði, of the peace, and makes no connection
with the later Fróði (i.e. Skjõldunga saga’s Fróði IV, the original Heathobard). The
poem’s information that the giant maids fought in Sweden probably prompted
Snorri to imagine their acquisition as slaves as taking place on a visit by Fróði to
the Swedish Fjõlnir (kings associated with each other already in Ynglingatal).
The demise of peace-Fróði is already associated in Skjõldunga saga with Mýsingr,though the latter is not a sea-king there; he is listed as a sea-king in þulur, however,and Snorri may have known both the tale of the death of peace-Fróði (FrothiIII) in Saxo, where he is gored by a witch transformed into a sea-cow, and theaetiological folktale of the wonder-mill stolen by a sea-captain, which ends up in
the ocean grinding salt.
Sven Aggesen (c. 1190) has the following genealogy in ch. 1 of his Brevis
historia:
SkioldHaldanus

FrothiHelghi
Rolf kraki

According to Sven, it was Frothi that was killed by Haldanus; he is alone in presenting this reversal of the usual tradition. Sven also mentions Ingeld, but in a lower
section of the royal genealogy (ch. 4):
Dan the Proud
Frothi the Old
Frithleuer
Frothi hin frithgothae
IngeldThe genealogical elaboration and repetition reaches its climax in Saxo, who
presents us with no fewer than five Frothos in the legendary part of his history. The
relevant sections of Saxo’s Danish genealogy are given on the previous page. Fourof these Frothos clearly developed from the original Heathobard king, and from themythical law-giver (the position of Frotho II, about whom little is said, is unclear).
Although Fróði I becomes a Danish king in Norse tradition, and he is dissociatedfrom Ingjaldr, yet the genealogy of Beowulf may still be perceived through theIntroduction
later accretions and distortions. Roe is attacked and killed by Hothbrod, whom
Helgi in turn slays; this is the reminiscence of the Heathobard Ingeld’s attack
upon Hroðgar. Haldan kills his two brothers Roe and Skat – something with nocounterpart in the Old English.
Saxo uses a source closely resembling Hrólfs saga kraka in his history of Frotho
V; thus, though the names have changed (apart from Frotho’s), the story is essentially a variant of that of Frotho I (whose genealogy is closer to Hrólfs saga). Thus
Frotho V kills his brother Harald, and is then burnt by Harald’s two sons.
Frotho IV with his son Ingel also clearly form a differently remembered version of the story of Froda and Ingeld. Ingel is stirred up by the gruff warrior
Starkatherus to take vengeance for his father’s death on the family of Sverting,
the Saxon (a change resulting from the incorporation of the Heathobards into
the Danish family).
Frotho III has the longest treatment of any Frotho in Saxo, taking up thewhole of book V of the work. He is regarded as a law-giver and founder of longpeace, whose reign coincided with the birth of Christ. He sets up a gold ringat a crossroads to encourage his people to be law-abiding through a fear of thepunishment that would follow the theft of the ring. However, a woman incites
her son to steal it. She turns herself into a sea-cow and her sons into calves.
Frotho arrives in a carriage and stares in amazement at them. She sinks her horn
into his flank, killing him. However, his men keep his body embalmed for three
years, carrying it around the land in a carriage.
Grottasõngr is composed in a tradition where Fróði is the son of Friðleifr, as(in various of his manifestations) he is in all the recorded Norse sources except
Hrólfs saga (which is silent on the matter), although in earlier (pagan) tradition
it is unlikely that Friðleifr was considered a father of Fróði (see below). It is
likely too that the Fróði of the poem is intended to recall Fróði the fratricide of
Hrólfs saga; even if st. 22 is rejected as an interpolation, it is this Fróði, rather
than peace-Fróði, who is overthrown by a hostile attack such as is ground out by
the giant maidens.
It would seem that two traditions stand behind the poem. On the one hand, alegendary history resembling Hrólfs saga has been used to inform the picture of
the tyrannical king, against whom vengeance is eventually taken; on the other,
the depiction of Fróði as the king of peace and wealth derives from a source similar to Skjõldunga saga. Both of these sources were also used by Saxo, and both
may be dated to the late twelfth century (though not precisely in their extant
forms). The other, later sources considered here represent further elaborationsof the traditions concerning Fróði, and do not appear to have been known to thepoet of Grottasõngr.

V. The mythological background
Three mythological narrative elements may be identified in Grottasõngr: theking, Fróði, renowned for a reign of peace and prosperity; the giantesses whobring about his downfall; and the mill, Grotti, which is the guarantor both of theking’s welfare and of his fall. Let us consider them in turn.

Grottasõngr
King Fróði
The god of fertility and his peace
The time of earthly paradise under the gold-milling Fróði mirrors the early
epoch of the gods recounted in Võluspá 6–8, where they forged gold in plenty,
and were happy. The legendary history of Fróði is elevated to the level of myththrough this allusion to the theme of a divine age of plenty.
Fróði’s golden age is described in several of the sources. Of Frodo I, son of
Fridleifur, Skjõldunga saga reports (ch. 3, ÍF 35, 5–6):
Sed et hujus tempora pax et qvies publica coronabat, ut nullus ne patris qvidem
sui interfectorem laedere vel ulcisci fas sibi duceret. Tum etiam vulgo a rapinis etfurtis cessatum est, adeo ut in via publica, qvae per tesqva Jalangursheide ducebat,
jacentem multis annis anulum aureum, cuivis obvium, nemo tolleret.
His times were crowned by peace and public quiet, so that no one arrogated tohimself the right even to harm or take vengeance on his father’s slayer. At thattime robbery and theft ceased to such an extent that no one took a gold ring,which lay for many years in full view of everyone beside the highway which led
across the wastes of Jalangrsheiðr.

Noting that Christ was born at this time, the account continues:
Fertur etiam fuisse hoc tempore incredibilis annonae in Dania proventus, apibus eam abundasse, agriqve perhibentur et pascua sponte floruisse,
gramina­qve (ut ait ille) injussa viruisse, metalla passim in Dania magna copia
effossa esse; qvorum artem ipse Rex Frodo probe calluerit.
It is also said that at this time there was an unbelievable produce of crops inDenmark, that bees were in abundance, the fields and meadows grew spontaneously, and the hay (he says) flourished unbidden, and that metals weremined in great quantities in various places of Denmark; in the craft of metals
King Frodo himself was thoroughly versed.

The end of Frodo’s reign occurred in this manner:
Deinde post multorum annorum curriculum insveta facta ecclipsis solis
cum terræ motu saxa et scopulos loco movente atqve disrumpente. Illum
igitur putant fuisse annum et tempus passionis Christi. Post hæc Frodo rex(a sui temporis pace publica dictus Frode fridgode) authore sceleris qvodam
Mysinngo incendio peremptus est.
Then after the course of many years there occurred an unwonted eclipse of thesun and an earthquake, in which rocks and crags were dislodged and cast down. It
is believed that this occurred in the year and at the time of the passion of Christ.
After this King Frodo (named Fróði friðgoði after the public peace of his time)
was destroyed by fire, a certain Mýsingr being the engineer of the crime.

Related accounts have similar observations: Upphaf allra frásagna (along with
the Rymbegla collection (AM 730 4to), an eighteenth-century compilation
derived from Skjõldunga saga) notes, for example (ÍF 35, 40):10

IntroductionÁ dõgum Fróða var svá mikill friðr, at engi vildi mann drepa, þó at sæi fyrir sér
bundinn fõðurbana sinn eða bróður.
In Fróði’s day there was such great peace that no one wished to kill anyone,even if he saw the slayer of his father or brother bound up in front of him.

Ynglinga saga relates (ch. 10, ÍF 26, 24):Á hans [Freys] dõgum hófsk Fróðafriðr. Þá var ok ár um õll lõnd. Kenndu Svíar
þat Frey. [. . .] Freyr hét Yngvi õðru nafni. Yngva nafn var lengi síðan haft íhans ætt fyrir tígnarnafn, ok Ynglingar váru síðan kallaðir hans ættmenn.
In Freyr’s days arose the Fróði peace. There were good harvests in all lands
then; the Swedes attributed this to Freyr. [. . .] Freyr was called by anothername, Yngvi. The name Yngvi was thereafter long kept in his family as a titleof honour, and his family was thereafter called the Ynglingar.

Snorri’s account, closely matching the first citation from Skjõldunga saga
above, is given below as part of the prose introduction to the poem.
The account of the peace of Fróði’s reign is similar in Saxo (V, xv; here it is
Frotho III who is the peace-Fróði); Saxo relates that Frodo abstained from war
for thirty years, and turned his attention to establishing homeland security byrooting out theft and robbery. Saxo includes the story of the ring on Jalangrs­heiðr (here merely designated ‘Jutland’); for Saxo, there was no lack of desire to
seize it, but Frodo’s terrible authority was so great that no one dared. Saxo thennotes that Christ was born at this time, bestowing a sort of peace on the wholeworld. Saxo is likely to have derived his account from Skjõldunga saga, where
the linking of the peace of Augustus (stemming, in Christian understanding,from the birth of Christ at that time) with the peace of Fróði is first likely to havetaken place.
The peace of Fróði is witnessed much earlier, however; already around 986
Einarr Helgason mentions in Vellekla 18 (Skj B I, 120) that no prince had worked
such a peace as his present patron except Fróði. The ‘golden age’ is a widespread
folktale motif; the peace of Fróði is the Danish variant of it. The Norse golden
age differs markedly from, for example, the classical, where it is a pre-lapsarian
time of plenty, unfettered by laws (see Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book I, 89–112).
Saxo’s is by far the longest account of the reign of peace-Fróði, and is undoubtedly elaborated from a much simpler core of tradition. Central to his account,however, is that the peace is established through long war, and its maintenancerequires a set of detailed laws. Baetke (1942, 39) makes the important pointthat peace – a condition of political and legal harmony and order where welfare
flourishes – was not regarded as a natural condition, but a donum sacrum thatcalled for sacrifice.
‘friðr ist die Gesamtheit jener rechtlich-sittlichen Ordnungen, die ein friedliches undfruchtbares Zusammenleben in der politischen Gemeinschaft gewährleisten. [. . .] Darin, dass die
Germanen um den Frieden opferten, spricht sich ihr Glaube aus, dass er nicht eine menschliche
Institution oder eine natürliche Ordnung, sondern eine göttliche Stiftung ist, ein donum sacrum,das mittels des Kultes immer wieder auf die Volksgemeinschaft herabgezogen werden muss.’ 11Grottasõngr
Fróði is in origin a title, ‘the wise/virile’. His particular gifts are seen to be
bestowed in an abundance of produce, accompanied by peace, and also in thelaws he established. Both elements may be regarded as ancient. He is said tobe the son of Friðleifr; this may be a result of later genealogising trends. It is
likely that friðleifr too was originally a title. The element ‑leifr is common innames, and indicates ‘offspring’. The precise purport of friðleifr perhaps cannot
be determined, but it would appear to emphasise the element of inheritance:Fróði is a ‘son of peace’, who must hand on the divine gift to his heirs.
To Friðleifr in Norse corresponds, in the Old English genealogies, Frealaf,
containing the name Frea (i.e. the Norse Freyr). Snorri, in the passage cited above,
indicates that while peace reigned in Denmark under Fróði, in Sweden it was
attributed to Freyr. In Skírnismál 1 Freyr is actually called inn fróði. We have here
local expressions of the same mythological notion of an age of peace and plenty
guaranteed by a semi-divine king. The link between Freyr and Fróði may be traced
elsewhere. Snorri says that Freyr was also called by the name Yngvi. Freyr, likeFróði, is in origin a title, and is probably not as ancient as Yngvi, a name which
is implied already in Tacitus’ name for one of the divisions of the Germani, theIngvaeones. In Old English Ing was associated in particular with Denmark: he is ademigod who appears among the Danes in the Rune Poem, and in Beowulf the lordof the Danes is called frea Ingwina (de Vries 1956–7, §461). In Saxo book VI thefather of Frotho IV is Fridlefus, who marries the Norwegian princess Frogertha;on his way to acquiring her he also has a relationship with a farm-girl Juritha.
Behind this surely lies a reminiscence of the wooing of Gerðr by Freyr (told in
Skírnismál), which has perhaps been split between the two girls in Saxo.
The bringing of ár ok friðr, economic and societal well-being, is to be related
to the account of Nerthus given by Tacitus in Germania ch. 40; Nerthus corresponds phonologically to Njõrðr in Norse, the father of Freyr:
Contra Langobardos paucitas nobilitat; plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus
cincti non per obsequium sed proeliis et periclitando tuti sunt. Reudigni
deinde et Aviones et Anglii et Varini et Eudoses et Suarines et Nuitones fluminibus aut silvis muniuntur. nec quicquam notabile in singulis, nisi quod incommune Nerthum, id est Terram matrem, colunt eamque intervenire rebus
hominum, invehi populis arbitrantur. est in insula Oceani castum nemus,
dicatumque in eo vehiculum, veste contectum; attingere uni sacerdoti concessum. is adesse penetrali deam intellegit vectamque bubus feminis multa
cum veneratione prosequitur. laeti tunc dies, festa loca quaecumque adventu
hospitioque dignatur. non bella ineunt, non arma sumunt; clausum omne ferrum; pax et quies tunc tantum nota, tunc tantum amata, donec idem sacerdos
satiatam conversatione mortalium deam templo reddat. mox vehiculum etvestis et, si credere velis, numen ipsum secreto lacu abluitur. servi ministrant,quos statim idem lacus haurit; arcanus hinc terror sanctaque ignorantia quid
sit illud quod tantum perituri vident.
The Langobardi, in contrast, are famous for being so few; hemmed in bymany mighty nations, they obtain safety not through servility but by running the risks of battle. Then come the Reudigni, the Aviones, the Anglii,
the Varini, the Eudoses, the Suarines, and the Nuitones, defended by rivers

12Introduction
or woods. There is nothing noteworthy about them individually, except thatcollectively they worship Nerthus, or Mother Earth, and believe that she takes
part in human affairs and rides among the peoples. On an island in the Ocean
is a sacred grove, and in it a consecrated wagon covered with hangings; toone priest alone is it permitted so much as to touch it. He perceives when thegoddess is present in her innermost recess, and with great reverence escorts
her as she is drawn along by heifers. Then there are days of rejoicing, andholidays are held wherever she deigns to go and be entertained. They do not
begin wars, they do not take up arms; everything iron is shut away; peace andtranquillity are only then known and only then loved, until again the priest
restores to her temple the goddess, sated with the company of mortals. Thenthe wagon and hangings and, if you will, the goddess herself are washed clean
in a hidden lake. Slaves perform this service, and the lake at once engulfs them:
there is as a result a mysterious fear and a sacred ignorance about something
seen only by those doomed to die.

The general reliability of Tacitus’ account has been called into question; thus,
for example, North (1997, 1–25) and von See (1981, 42–72) argue that there wasin reality no goddess in this Germanic cult but rather a male god, and that Tacitus
was heavily influenced in his depiction by the Terra Mater celebrations in Rome.
As a Roman without direct personal familiarity with the area he describes, it islikely that Tacitus’ understanding of Germanic practices was distorted in somerespects, but the extent of this distortion is a matter of debate; it is impossible
to engage in a detailed discussion of this topic here, but the general reliability of
Tacitus’ account is defended by (among others) McKinnell (2005, 50–2), andthis is the approach adopted here.
The annual peace, maintained during the divine visitation, may be seen as
a ritual realisation of the formative primordial peace. The ár ok friðr of Fróði’s
reign are a mythological representation of the same primordial peace. There isclearly some geographical continuity from Tacitus’ day; although the isle in theocean cannot be specifically identified, Tacitus’ description is precise enough toindicate that one of the Danish islands must be intended. The nearest parallelto Nerthus’ perambulation amongst her peoples occurs in the tale of Gunnarr
helmingr (in Õgmundar þáttr dytts), which is set among the Swedes. Gunnarr
takes the place of the god Freyr, and makes the attendant girl pregnant – a signof blessing, in the Swedes’ eyes. The two are carted around the country, bringing
blessing wherever they come.
There is little extant record of any ritual focused on Fróði. Saxo reports thatafter he died, Fróði III was carried around the country (under the pretence ofbeing alive), which may be a reflection of an earlier perambulation of the land,such as occurred with Nerthus and Freyr.
 It is likely that the Swedes, like the Danes, had an ancient tradition of a time of peace marked
in a ritual manner. Tacitus says less about the more distant Suiones (Swedes), but his one piece of
information is that all weapons there are kept in the care of a slave; he believes the Swedes, in theirremote position, scarcely feared invasion, but it is more likely that a particular period of sacredpeace is referred to, such as occurred later in the great gatherings at Uppsala, as reported in theeleventh century by Adam of Bremen in his ‘Descriptio insularum aquilonis’.

13Grottasõngr
The emergence from the lake, and return thereto after blessing the land, isto be seen as an enactment of the yearly cycle of the seasons, determined by thewaxing and waning power of the sun.
The peace of Fróði is signified in the gold ring left unmolested on Jalangrs­heiðr. The ring is associated with various motifs, an important one being oaths,
sworn by a god on a ring. The chief association here however is surely with
Draupnir, the ring which dripped clones of itself (e.g. Skírnismál 21) – anunending source of gold, just like Grotti – and therefore represents fertility. A
gold ring is clearly also a symbol of the sun. Although the tale of a ring left ina public place without being touched is a commonplace motif illustrating thegreat peace achieved by some monarch or other (cf. the drinking bowls left by
Edwin of Northumbria beside the highway, which none dared to tamper with:
Bede, Ecclesiastical History II, 16), the associations of the ring with fertility suggest that it may have been an ancient emblem of Fróði.
The end of the peace-god
In Grottasõngr Fróði meets his end in a hostile attack which burns him in his
hall; the perpetrator is not named, but if any reliance at all can be placed on st.
22, the attack appears to be one of revenge arising out of the family affairs of theheroic Fróði, not of frið-Fróði. Skjõldunga saga, however, relates that Fróði wasburnt in his hall by a criminal named Mysinngus; possibly the poem once contained the same information before the interpolation of st. 22. Snorri expands
the reference to Mýsingr, explaining that he was a sea-king who attacked bynight, slew Fróði, and fled with booty and Grotti. Snorri has seen in his sources
a connection between Mýsingr and Grotti (whether the source be Skjõldunga
saga or an earlier version of Grottasõngr), and knows of Mýsingr as a sea-king(as recorded in the þulur); using this information he has attributed to Mýsingr
the story of how Grotti ended up in the sea churning out salt (a folk motif which
may already have become attached to Grotti).
The name Mýsingr is formed from mús, ‘mouse’. In Near Eastern belief miceare deleterious vermin (Krappe 1936), and similar ideas are recorded in folk
belief elsewhere; the fall of other presiders over the age of peace often took placeat the hands of some beast – mice, of course, are archetypal grain-nibblers, soMýsingr appears as a murine destroyer of Fróði, seen as a king whose wealth andfertility depends on grain (here transmuted into gold).
Frodo III, a later successor of peace-Fróði, dies in the following manner inSkjõldunga saga (ch. 7(ii), ÍF 35, 15): Hic cum cervum venatu assecutus hasta transfoderet, cervi conversi cornibus ventrem et viscera confixus occubuit, ‘After piercing
with a spear a stag he had pursued in the hunt, he was transfixed in the stomach
and guts by the antlers of the deer as it turned round, and died’. This is similar
to the death of peace-Fróði (Frotho III) in Saxo (V, xvi); the gold ring which
Frotho had set up on some crossroads as a symbol of his peace was stolen at theinstigation of a woman. Frotho descended upon the woman’s home, but she
turned herself into a sea-cow and her sons into calves. When Frotho climbed outof his carriage, the sea-cow thrust her tusk into his flank, killing him. This sharesthe motif of the emergence from the sea with the representation of Mýsingr as

14

Introductiona sea-king. Ynglinga saga ch. 26 tells of the fall of King Egill of Sweden: he contended long with one Tunni, ‘tusk’, before being killed by the horn of a wild bull.
A comparable account is found in Beowulf, where the Swedish king Ongenðeow
is killed by the brothers Eofor and Wulf, ‘boar’ and ‘wolf ’; Ongenðeow corresponds genealogically to the Norse Egill. As a successor to Freyr, the Swedishking was, it would seem, believed to mirror, or re-enact, the illustrious life anddeath of the dynasty’s founder. The death of the fertility god by the horns orteeth of wild animals is matched in Middle Eastern myths, which appear to follow a comparable (if not necessarily directly related) mythological pattern; forexample, Adonis was killed by the tooth of a wild bear (de Vries 1956–7, §462).
The aftermath of the fertility god’s death is also significant. In Ynglinga saga
Freyr dies of illness, but his death is concealed from the populace. He is buried
in a mound, into which taxes are placed, and the good seasons continue. Only
after this has continued for some time do the people learn that he is in fact dead;they then ascribe the continuance of good seasons to Freyr’s presence in therealm (even though dead). Saxo tells a similar story about Frotho III; after hehas been killed by the sea-cow, he continues to be carried around his realm in his
carriage, until the advanced state of his body’s decay obliges the officials to revealthat he is dead, whereupon he is buried in a mound. Although this carrying of
the dead king about the realm must be linked to the motif of the perambulationsof the divinity, in a car, found in the accounts of Nerthus and Freyr (the tale of
Gunnarr helmingr), as Schier (1968, 394) points out, there appears no parallelto the carrying around of a dead king. Clearly the Swedes regarded even the deadFreyr as bestowing blessings of fertility on his realm, however; with this may becompared the account of the Norwegian king Hálfdan svarti, whose followers,
according to Heimskringla, arranged that portions of his body should be buriedin the various quarters of his realm to ensure its well-being (ÍF 26, 93). Schierargues that the death of Freyr, and indeed of Fróði, cannot be interpreted as amythological representation of the ritual of death and rebirth, such as takes placewith other fertility gods like Zamolxis, as there is no return from death in the
Norse examples. He notes, however, that it may not be the return of the god assuch, but his death which effects unfailing fertility; this might be supported by
the occurrence of strangely ritualised deaths among many of the Ynglingar, which
could be seen as re-enactments of the original fertility-generating royal sacrifice.
It is also to be inferred from Ynglingatal that the divine gift of good seasons
was inherited from the dynastic founder, and hence that founder would not be
conceived of as returning personally. As Schier notes (1968, 393), a returning godof fertility would be more likely to generate an annual festival; one whose power iscommunicated to his descendants might be celebrated on a different time-scale,as was the case with the nine-yearly festival at Uppsala.
 The death by sickness of Freyr in Ynglinga saga is out of tune with the repeated motif of
untimely death caused by an animal found among fertility beings. Saxo’s account of Frotho III’s
death may represent a more archaic pattern, especially given the Norse and Old English accountsof the death of Egill/Ongenðeow (and analogues from elsewhere for this sort of fertility-god
death). We may suspect that the most ancient evidence we have, namely Beowulf, preserves a hintof the most ancient layer of myth when it names Eofor as the king’s slayer. The boar was sacred toFreyr: did the god receive his life-giving death from his own sacred animal?

15

Grottasõngr
The giantesses
The narrative argument of the tale of Grottasõngr would, in its neatest form, leadto a conclusion in which the gold-producing mill – and in its wake the king who
depends upon it – is destroyed by its giantess workers overstraining themselves inan act of vengeance against a cruel and greedy tyrant. There is no need to involve
Danish heroic history, with the invasion and burning of the hall: its presence inthe poem has resulted from confusion between the Fróði of the mythologicalpeace, and the Fróði of a later heroic age. This confusion may already have takenplace by Eyvindr skáldaspillir’s time, however (late tenth century; see p. 25).
The role of the giantesses in the Grotti myth may parallel that of the giant
maidens in Võluspá 8, where they appear to break in on the happy and gold-richgods as they play with tõflur (presumably in a form of chess-game): the implication is that the giantesses join in the game and, we are to assume, win, which
results in the demise of the golden age for the Æsir, represented by the loss ofthe chequers (they turn up again in the new world in Võluspá 58, symbolising the
new golden age), just as Fróði’s loss of Grotti marks his end. In both cases thegiantesses are underestimated, and in both they achieve their aim, which from theconsequences we must surmise to be to undermine the gold and good fortune,
the ár ok friðr, of society. Yet in Grottasõngr it is not clear that the giantesses were
truly acting with fixed purpose from the beginning, even though in st. 1, 10, 13
they claim some sort of foreknowledge. What we are presented with is a ‘fall fromgrace’ in their social position, beginning with their playing with the huge stones
like children in their own land, then becoming involved in the sordid politics
and wars of men, and finally becoming enslaved to a tyrant. There is no real
purpose in this curriculum vitae, and it was mere chance that they happened tobe responsible for wrenching the great boulders from the mountain side, which
later became the raw material of the quern. But looking back from their abject
position, and contemplating the momentous events they are about to inaugurate,they impose their own fatalism upon their life story: now, it was not chance thatthey pulled up those rocks, but their own foreknowledge, which in due course hasbrought them to this plight, now seen as a deliberate self-humiliation, almost a
divine kenosis, to enable them to bring about deliverance from the tyrant Fróði.
Even so, it seems that they were not in a position, or indeed willing, to carry out
their design without some justification from Fróði’s actions, so that they became
agents of a destruction which essentially he had brought upon himself. It does
not seem that the giantesses have any purpose with regard to the mill itself (suchas retrieving it): for them, it had been mountain rocks, playthings which it took
men to turn to use. They had no need for such a machine.
The motif of the enslavement of a superhuman being resulting in the undoing of the enslaver is also found in Võlundarkviða. Võlundr is álfa lióði, ‘lordof elves’ (st. 11), dwelling on the very edge of human ken, and is characterisedin the prose introduction to the poem as son of the king of the remote Finnar,
the Sámi, who were stereotypically famed for their wily and deceitful magical See van Hamel (1934, 220–1), whose interpretation I follow, on the ‘golden age’ of the godsin Võluspá.

16

Introduction
practices. Like Fenja and Menja, Võlundr is forced to produce gold trinkets forthe cruel King Níðuðr whilst being held captive, until he works his vengeanceand escapes. Yet, despite both poems making use of a similar basic motif, they
manipulate their material in quite different ways. Fróði suffers from the aloof
arrogance of ignorance: it is below him to bother investigating the family historyof his slave girls, and this proves his undoing once he treats them badly. Níðuðr
is not ignorant of who Võlundr is: rather, he is bent upon control of all aroundhim, both people and wealth, and seeks to lessen Võlundr’s power sufficiently tokeep him captive – but he merely injures him physically, leaving his otherworldly
magical skills intact, which enable him to make his final escape and lord it overthe defeated Níðuðr as he does so, hovering in the air above. Võlundarkviða is a
far more sophisticated and finely wrought work of art than is Grottasõngr (seethe discussions of the poem in PE II), and the focus of attention is different:
Grottasõngr is concerned to show the dark underbelly of the ‘golden age’ of theFróða friðr, truly a sham which is bought at the price of inhuman cruelty towards
the underclasses, a cruelty which indeed turned initial goodwill into hatred on
the part of the giantesses. The author of the poem is moreover concerned withlineage: explicitly so in the case of the giantesses, whose ancestry reveals them tobe other than they appear to Fróði, and also by implication in the case of Fróði
himself, whose complex family history has been shown above to have been agreat source of interest in medieval Scandinavia.
The mill Grotti
The folktale wonder-working mill
Folktale type ATU 565, ‘The magic mill’, is of widespread occurrence. A Scandinavian example is found in the collection of Asbjørnsen and Moe (1886, 50).
In this version, there are two brothers, one rich and one poor; the rich brothertells the poor he can have a ham if he does what he asks, but then tells him to go
to the devil with the ham he throws at him; he does so, and is rewarded with awonder-mill that grinds anything. The elder brother buys the mill, but cannot
stop it; he has to pay again for his poorer sibling to take it back. A sea captainthen buys the wonder-mill from the erstwhile poor brother, and bids it grindsalt, but does not know how to stop it, so it sinks and is still grinding. A similar
tale is told in Iceland (Jón Árnason 1863–4, II 9–13), but here the rich brotherbuys the mill and sails away with it, but cannot stop it milling salt after giving it
the command to do so.
The story of Grotti as reported by Snorri has clearly taken elements from thisfolktale: Mýsingr fills the role of the sea-captain who steals the mill and cannot
stop it grinding salt. The poem itself, however, does not contain the theme ofthe salt-mill. The mill is represented as breaking at the end of the poem (andso could not continue functioning as a salt-mill), and its breaking mirrors the A parallel example from Hanover is given by Bolte and Polívka (1913, II 439), where thetale of the wonder-mill concludes with the mill’s theft by a sea captain, who bids it grind salt, butcannot get it to stop, with the result that the ship sinks, drowning the crew and making the sea
salt.

17

Grottasõngr
breaking of the Fróða friðr and the downfall of the tyrant. The poem could notcoherently end anywhere other than where the extant text concludes. Whilst thedemise of the mill in the ocean may be ancient, it is reasonable to suggest thatthe motif of the salt-mill became attached to Grotti only at a later time, when the
deeper mythological significance of the mill had been forgotten; this was obviously before the time of Snorri, but perhaps not very long before. Alternatively,
if Grotti was already associated with the salt-mill folktale, then the poet hasdeliberately avoided mentioning it.
Grotti of the poem differs in another aspect too. The mill of the folktale isa wonder-mill: it produces ‘wealth’ (in a wide sense), like Grotti, but, unlike
Grotti, it works on its own. Grotti is thus only partially a wonder-mill; it is an
ordinary mill to the extent that it requires two hefty giant girls to work it. The
basic motif of the mill therefore differs between the poem and the folktale.
The cosmic mill
One of the best-developed notions of cosmic churning – of the turning of thecentral support of the cosmos (pillar or mountain) to produce the sustaining
necessities of life (as well as misfortune) – is found in Indian myth.10 Here, in
a complex and extended series of episodes, the gods and demons contend witheach other in churning the primeval milk ocean with an outlier of the world
mountain, and by doing so produce many of the main cosmic entities such as
the sun and moon – and also the elixir of well-being, soma, as well as unwelcome
things like poison. Clearly there is an essential similarity with the tale of Grotti,
milling out the gold which sustains the paradisal peace of Fróði, and then anarmy which destroys him. Yet there is nothing overtly cosmic about Grotti’s
make-up or achievements, and the tale is only lifted onto a mythological (orpotentially religious) level through the implied association with a divine goldenage. It would be unwise to overstate the case for seeing the tale of Grotti as a
Germanic reflection of the Indian cosmic myth of the churning of the milkocean.
Geographically and temporally closer than the Indian analogue to the tale of
Grotti is the Finnish myth of the sampo,11 a myth which may indeed ultimately
owe something to an Indo-Iranian origin, for the word sampo may be borrowed
from a proto-Iranian word stambhas, the (world) pillar.12 In the case of the Finnish myth we are on firmer ground in seeing a cosmic dimension than in the
Norse counterpart.
10
The myth is recounted in the Mahābhārata; I have consulted O’Flaherty’s translation (1975,
274–80). She gives the passages translated as being from the Mahābhārata I.15.5–13; I.16.1–40;
I.17.1–30; 7 lines after I.61.35; 3 lines after I.61.32; 3 lines after I.16.36; 3 lines after I.16.40; 3lines after I.17.7.
11
I have dealt in detail with the Finnish myth of the sampo as an analogue of the Norse mill in
Tolley 1994–5; what follows is largely a summary of this discussion.
12
The proto-Iranians are thought to have lived much further to the west and north thanmodern Iran at the likely time of the loan, c. 2500 bc; sampo is one among several loans (including,for example, taivas, ‘heaven’) indicating a strong religious influence from the proto-Iranians(Koivulehto 1999, 230, 232).

18

Introduction
The sampo is the subject of a core of traditional poems existing in a great
many variants,13 yet it is never described in detail in these poems, nor is its
precise function determined. Its general effect was to ensure the wealth – but
final destruction or detriment – of the possessor. Three poems, going back, it
is believed, to at least ad 800, were fused into a sequence by 1200 (Kuusi 1949,
350–2; the dates are open to debate, but are based on factors such as distribution
and variance of variants, on preservation of elements of archaic pagan belief, andon comparison with other folk poems relating to more firmly datable events): theCreation of the World, the Forging of the Sampo, and the Theft of the Sampo.
In outline, the contents are:
The Creation of the World. Väinämöinen, the primordial sage, is shot by anenemy and drifts wounded for several years at sea where he performs various
acts of creation. The Forging of the Sampo. Finally, he is washed ashore at Pohjola, whose mistress undertakes to return him to his own people on condition
that he forges her a sampo. He promises that his fellow hero the smith Ilmarinen
will do this and is allowed to return home. Ilmarinen agrees to forge the sampo,
in return for which he is told he will receive the daughter of the mistress of Pohjola. Thus the sampo is made and provides the inhabitants of Pohjola with great
wealth (in some versions explicitly by grinding). The Theft of the Sampo. Jealousof this, Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen set sail for Pohjola and steal the sampo. They
are pursued and a furious battle takes place at sea, during which the mistressof Pohjola transforms herself into a vaakalintu (griffon), the sampo is smashedand the pieces are lost at sea. These and some fragments that are washed ashore
bring fertility to land and sea.
The song was sung at the spring sowing (Suomen kansan vanhat runot I.1,
88b): Jyrkini Iivana related that ‘when the spring sowing was done, first thesowing words were sung and then the song of the forging and theft of the sampo,
and of the pursuit of the Mistress of Pohjola’. There is thus a clear implicationthat recounting the tale of this wealth-producing object would strengthen thecrops to ensure the well-being of the community.
There have been innumerable interpretations of the word sampo, mostof them implausible. The word is in derivation an adjectival formation fromsampa, which originally appears to have signified ‘pillar’ (Setälä 1932, 479).14
Sammakko, ‘mill base’, is another derivative from sampa; it means ‘that which
supports a sampa’, i.e. the support for the mill’s central axle. Drawing on theapparently parallel sense of sammakko, sampo is likely to have been interpreted as‘something fitted with a sampa’, i.e. a mill; in origin, however, it probably meant‘sampa object’. Harva (1943, 101–4) offers the most convincing interpretationof this: the sampo is a cult representation of the world-pillar; such representations are found widely in Siberia (Holmberg 1922–3, 9–33). The world-pillar
is generally visualised as unmoving (Harva 1943, 42), and the sampo differs inthis respect. However, the connection of the word sampa with mills must have
13
Four versions of the Finnish sampo poems are given in Kuusi, Bosley and Branch 1977,
nos. 12–15; see also the commentary there (526).
14
Lönnrot (1958) records a saying in which maasampa means ‘world pillar’; the derivative
sammas in Vote and Estonian means ‘pillar’, but in Finnish ‘stone’.

19Grottasõngr
affected the concept of the world-pillar among the Finns; the Indian myth ofthe churning of the milk ocean demonstrates the plausibility of connecting theworld-pillar with a productive milling motion. Although by the time of recorded
poems the Finns had largely lost the concept of a world-pillar, a piecing togetherof the evidence reveals a consistent picture. Closely associated with the sampo is
the kirjokansi, ‘speckled lid’; kansi is used for ‘sky’ in the folk poetry. Since theNorth Star was referred to as the ‘nail of the north’ (preserved in the Estonianpõhjanael), it seems the lid of the sky was fixed to the world pillar at the North
Star, about which it turned. This turning came to be conceived as a sort of milling action, referred to as sammasjauho (sampo/pillar grinding). The sampo isnaturally situated in Pohjola, because this is ‘North Land’, near the North Star.
The tale of its removal by the heroes is an explanation of why the seasons now
progress uneasily without the level of productiveness of the golden age: the sampo’s being moved from its position represents the uneven turning of the earth
about its axis, observed in the progression of the seasons. The actual shatteringof the sampo would seem to mark a complete destruction, which is inappropriate for the world-pillar (though it might apply to a cult image of the pillar), but
this element of the tale is believed to have been influenced by the shattering of
the egg in the myth of creation; originally the sampo was probably broken or set
askew, but not shattered.
Grotti may show little indication of being a form of world pillar (as the sampo
appears to be), or of carrying out its milling on a mythologically significant cosmic level, yet both motifs may be glimpsed elsewhere in Norse poems.
A cryptic hint of mythologically significant milling (but unconnected to any
notion of the world pillar, as far as the evidence goes) is given in Vafþrúðnismál,though the text is highly obscure. The giant Vafþrúðnir says (st. 35):
Ørófi vetra	Numberless wintersáðr væri iõrð um skõpoð,before the world was fashioned
þá var Bergelmir borinn;
Bergelmir was born;þat ek fyrst of man,the first thing I remember
er sá inn fróði iõtunn
is when that wise giantvar á lúðr um lagiðr.
was laid on the mill-crib.

Bergelmir is the last of a threesome of primordial giants, Aurgelmir, Þrúðgelmir,
Bergelmir. Stanza 35 appears to span Bergelmir’s life: the laying in a mill-crib
thus marks the end of the giant’s life. There have been attempts at explaining
away the sense ‘mill-crib’ for lúðr, so that a connection with milling cannot be
regarded as certain.15 However, taking lúðr in its literal sense of ‘mill-crib’ yields
an extraordinary, but not unparalleled, motif of a giant being ground up. Anyinterpretation of the three giants is bound to remain tentative, particularly inview of the uncertainty of the meaning of the names. Fulk argues (1989, 317) that
Christiansen suggests (1952, 101–5) that lúðr could mean ‘cradle’ here, on the basis ofmodern Norwegian lur (from Old Norse lúðr); it would seem inept, however, to describe a baby
as fróðr. Holtsmark (1946, 53) proposed that lúðr could signify ‘coffin’; since õrk can mean both‘coffin’ and ‘ark’, Snorri could have invented the story he gives of how Bergelmir was saved withhis household in the flood by climbing aboard his lúðr by association between õrk and lúðr.
15

20

Introduction
aur- may be related to English ear (of corn). Vafþrúðnismál 33 tells that beneath
Aurgelmir’s arm grew a girl and boy together: limb begat on limb a six-headedson. This is presumably the son Þrúðgelmir, whose name is derived from þrúðr,‘might’. Fulk argues that the six-headed son is a six-headed ear of (emmer)
wheat. Bergelmir is to be interpreted as containing barr, ‘barley’ (alternating
forms baraz-/bariz- in Germanic explain the vowel difference); a more common interpretation sees the name as standing for Berggelmir, Mountain roarer.
Moreover, Aurgelmir is more naturally interpreted as containing aurr, fertile
mud coming from water (cf. eyrr, ‘river-bank’): the poem recounts that he wasformed from the coagulation of the primordial waters, Élivágar. The element‑gelmir, ‘roarer’, characterises anything that roars loudly, in particular giants
and torrential waters (as in Vaðgelmir and Hvergelmir, the source of all waters
beneath the world-tree, and the related Gjõll, the underworld river). Aurgelmir
appears to connect these two sorts of roaring entity in one being. Thus a motif
may underlie the account of Vafþrúðnismál in which the fertile earth, aurr,
emerging from water (cf. the raising of earth from ocean in Võluspá 4; see commentary in PE II), produces grain, which thrives (þrúðr), and is then ground up
as barley (Bergelmir on the lúðr). The implication is that the origins of fertility
lay in the primordial or underworld waters. The main objection to Fulk’s line ofargument is that giants, while associated with sources of fertility, are not themselves producers of well-being (except when forced, as in Grottasõngr).
The idea of being ground in a quern is implicit in Lokasenna 44, where it issaid of Byggvir, a name also derived from the word for ‘barley’, at eyrom Freysmundu æ vera ok und kvernom klaka, ‘you will for ever be at Freyr’s ears andcluck under the quernstones’. There is no association with giants here, however.
Clearer, but geographically remote, analogues can be found in the Middle East;in tenth-century Haran the pagans believed that fertility was secured by the god
Tammuz being ground up by his master (al-Nadim 1970, 758), and in ancient
Ugaritic sources Anat, on behalf of the fertility god Baal, grinds up their enemy
Mot in what appears to be an act of splitting and parching grain for brewing(Wyatt 1998, 136). In England, the folksong ‘The Passion of the Corn’ may
provide an analogue (and indeed possible descendant) of Byggvir in the personof John Barleycorn, ground up to provide food and drink.
Yet more difficult to interpret are some lines relating the tale of Mundilfœri
in Vafþrúðnismál 23;16 here we are presented with an image of the turning heavens, and possibly a ‘handle’, a variant of the world pillar. We do not have any
actual grinding here.
Mundilfœri heitir,	He is called Mundilfœri,hann er Mána faðir
the father of Moonok svá Sólar it sama;
and also of Sun;himin hverfa
they are to turn heaven
þau skulo hverian dag
every dayõldom at ártali.
for the reckoning of years for men.
16
The interpretation of Vafþrúðnismál 23 given here is based on that of Dronke, in her noteto Võluspá 5/1–4 in PE II.

21

Grottasõngr
The meaning of the name Mundilfœri is open to interpretation, but Cleasby and
Vigfusson (1957, s.v. Mundilföri) suggest that the name’s first element is ‘akin tomöndull [mill-handle], referring to the veering round or revolution of the heavens’,so the meaning would be ‘mover of the handle’ or ‘effective with the handle’ or‘handle device’ (see Fritzner 1886–1972, s.v. fœri, for the senses); a connection
with mund, ‘time’ is also possible, especially in view of the comment in the latterpart of the stanza. It is thus possible (as I argued in Tolley 1994–5) that the mythof Mundilfœri envisaged the sky being turned by means of a handle-like device,in this case to express a concept of the determining of time, the beneficent seasons(ár signifying both senses), where the ‘handle’ could be a version of the world
support. The regulation of time through a turning motion in order to produce
welfare (ár) – directly paralleled in Võluspá 6–8, where the gods meet on Iðavõllr,‘Eddy field’ (see PE II, 118–19 for this interpretation of this admittedly obscurename), and apportion the times of day before enjoying their riches – is clearly
analogous to the motif of the wealth and security milled out by Grotti, yet, in its
extant form, the Grotti myth is not interested in the temporal regulation that,for the poets of Vafþrúðnismál and Võluspá, underlies abundance.
In Norse mythological tradition, then, we find (if the above interpretations of
the meagre evidence are accepted) both the notion of the grinding of corn as asymbol of cosmic abundance, and (but distinct from the previous one) the imageof the cosmos turning, or being turned with a handle (reminiscent of the Eurasian mythical world pillar), in such a way as to regulate time and the abundanceof the seasons which depends upon this regulation. Grotti, however, is primarily
an adaptation of the wonder-mill – the mill of folktales which grinds whateverits master bids. It assumes an aura of the cosmic, the mythic, only by allusion to
motifs such as the gold-spangled reign of the King of Peace and the demiurgic
giants which have taken on a cosmic significance (through association with theimage of the gods’ age of plenty). By contrast, the sampo must once have formed
an integral part of traditional Finnish cosmology; it shows the signs of its highorigin in the sustaining pillar of the cosmos, but in the extant poems has been
reduced to little more than a wonder-mill. The tales of both Grotti and sampo
have been ‘tainted’ by the aetiological salt-mill motif of folklore, which lends acertain similarity between the tales, but essentially the Norse and Finnish milllegends are quite distinct;17 thus Grotti, by the time it is represented in Norse
tradition, plays a part in certain distinct mythological situations not represented
in Finnish myth, such as the mill’s derivation from the chthonic world of the
giants, represented as antagonists of the gods or orderly society of men, and thelegendary fall of the house of Fróði. The Finnish and Indian analogues are ofinterest chiefly in demonstrating the differences in legendary or mythologicalrealisations of the concept of the mill that are found in different societies.
17
As I have argued previously (Tolley 1994–5), the acceptance by Finnish scholars (see forexample Kuusi, Bosley and Branch 1977, 527–8) of Lid’s proposal (1949) that the tale of the sampo
derives (at least in many particulars) from Norse sources does not bear close scrutiny; once we areleft with little more than a vague similarity between Grotti and sampo as common-place folktale
wonder-mills, there is little reason to postulate much, if any, influence between the mythologems
in any essential aspects (whilst admitting the possibility that some of the more peripheral details
may perhaps have constituted motifs shared between these neighbouring lands).

22

Introduction
Conclusion
We may now hazard some ideas about the connection between King Fróði andthe mill Grotti.
The fertility gods Nerthus and Freyr both undertook perambulations among
their people; Fróði was probably believed to do the same – certainly his deadbody was carried around his realms after his death in what must have been a ritual
act of blessing. This visitation is to be related to the cycle of the seasons, and inparticular to the passage of the sun (the cart which carried Nerthus reminds usof the Trundholm waggon, with its gilded wheels and large disc, surely meant torepresent the sun). The time of peace and prosperity under Fróði was no doubt
a later reflection of the ritually enacted season of peace which obtained during
Nerthus’ visitation, as well as being comparable to the mythical time of plentyof the primordial gods in Võluspá 6–8, where the whirring cycle of time and cosmos is represented by the gods’ meeting place, Iðavõllr, and to the abundance ofthe seasons brought about by the activity of Mundilfœri, ‘turner of the handle’of the world in Vafþrúðnismál 23.
We might well envisage that another image for the same turning around of
the seasons would be that of the cosmic mill, whereby the firmament revolves
around the North Star in the manner of a hand-quern, the seasons resulting fromthis milling. The Finns appear in ancient times to have conceived the structureof the cosmos in this fashion; it would well explain the connection between themill Grotti and the fertility king Fróði if the Norse also had this image. Yet, atleast in the extant records, Grotti scarcely seems to have been possessed of sucha lofty mythological role; rather, it appears that a folktale of the wonder-working
mill has become associated with Fróði simply because both were guarantors ofwealth or fertility.
It is a remarkable characteristic of nearly all fertility beings in the Norse
area that they are associated with water. The earliest record is of Nerthus, whoemerges from a lake, and returns there: the waters surely mark a deathly realm
from which fertility emerges, a motif found in many Middle Eastern myths.
Njõrðr dwells at Nóatún, ‘ship meadow’ (Grímnismál 16). Ullr (Ollerus) was
noted for his magical skills at sea in Saxo (III, iv.12). Ing in the Old English
Rune Poem passed ‘over the waves’. In Skírnismál Freyr woos Gerðr out of thecourts of her father Gymir, the gaping ocean. Two accounts of the deaths ofthe various Fróðis stand out; the motif of a violent death by a wild animal isfound with many fertility deities, but here the motif is specifically one of deathby a wild beast from the sea; in the one case this is explicit, in that a sea-cow
slays Frotho III with its tusks, in the other it is implicit, in that Fróði is said tobe killed by Mýsingr, described as a sea-captain by Snorri, but whose name islinked to ‘mouse’.18
It is therefore noteworthy that in Finnish the sampo ends up in the sea, andthe Norse Grotti likewise sinks, though this may have been a motif avoided
by the author of the poem (Snæbjõrn’s verse, considered below, may, however,18
The connection of fertility gods with the sea is a huge topic; for a discussion of some key
aspects, see Dronke 1998; I touch upon further ideas (primarily as they relate to Old English) in
Tolley 1996.

23

Grottasõngr
imply that it was an ancient motif). The sea appears to be the destination ofwhatever engenders fertility, be it the demigod king, or the mechanical meansof its production.
The motif of the destructive giantesses is specifically Norse; it is consistent
with the presentation of giantesses in Võluspá, wishing to deprive gods and menof the fruits of well-being.
The motif of being ground up is found in association with some fertility
gods; the myth of Bergelmir possibly reflects this in Norse (but this may equallywell be a faulty interpretation). It does not seem that the fertility god himself
is ground up in Norse, however. Nonetheless, the association of Byggvir with
Freyr indicates at least that fertility gods and milling were associated,19 making a
deep-rooted connection between Fróði and Grotti all the more likely.
The kernel of the poem may be a very old concept: the turning of the cornmill, and its falling and cracking off its proper pedestal, being an ancient metaphor within agricultural societies for an imagined erstwhile era of luxury andits subsequent loss, a metaphor which in certain traditions takes on a cosmic
significance through its association with the turning of the heavens, and consequently the seasons, above the earth.

VI. The poetic background, and date and place of composition
The skaldic tradition
Relevant kennings for gold, in roughly chronological order (only the first three
are from poems attributed to the pagan period), are:Fróða mjõl, ‘Fróði’s meal’ (Egill Skallagrímsson, Hõfuðlausn 17/8, Skj B I, 33);Fróða þýja meldr, ‘the grinding of Fróði’s slave-girls’ (Eyvindr Finnsson skáldaspillir,
lausavísa 8, Skj B I, 64);
Fenju forverk, ‘Fenja’s menial work’ (Bjarkamál 4/3, Skj B I, 170);
Fenju meldr, ‘Fenja’s grinding’ (Þórmóðr Bersason Kolbrúnarskáld, lausavísa 24,
Skj B I, 266; Einarr Skúlason, Øxarflokkr 6, Skj B I, 450; Snorri Sturluson,
Háttatal 43, Skj B II, 73);Fróða sáð, ‘Fróði’s seed’ (Einarr Skúlason, Øxarflokkr 3, Skj B I, 450);
19
Of interest (despite differences such as Fróði’s not being explicitly young or prematurely
killed) is the analogue noted by Krappe 1936, 54 (cf. Krappe 1924, 332): ‘We furthermore know thata festival of general mourning was annually celebrated in Mysia, where it was connected with thename of King Kyzikos, said to have ruled over the Doliones in ancient times. Scholars are agreed inregarding him as one of those many youthful divinities doomed to a premature death: Hyakinthos,Hylas, Hippolytos, Attis, Adonis, etc., i.e. as a fertility daemon. He, too, is slain all of a sudden during
a nightly invasion from the sea. Nor is this all. The most prominent feature of the annual festivalcommemorating Kyzikos seems to have been a grinding ritual, a ceremony where the celebrants,
generally women, took a hand-mill and ground, accompanying their work with doleful dirges, thesubject of which was King Kyzikos and his fatal death. It is not difficult to conjecture that such aritual was known also in the North, as is proved by the mediaeval cantilenae molares, that one of
the songs accompanying the rites was attached to the name of the god-king Frey-Fróði, and that it
gave origin to the story of the grinding giantesses. In other words, the myth of Fróði’s death is anaetiological tale explaining why the death of the mythical king was sung by grinding women at thegrinding festival held in commemoration of this death and the end of the golden age.’24

IntroductionFróða meldr, ‘Fróði’s grinding’ (Rõgnvaldr jarl Kolsson, lausavísa 15, Skj B I, 482);Fróða fagrbygg, ‘Fróði’s fair barley’ (Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar 25, Skj B I, 573);
Fróða friðbygg, ‘Fróði’s peace barley’ (Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 43, Skj B II, 73);
Grotta glaðdript, ‘Grotti’s glad drift’ (Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 43, Skj B II, 73);
Fenju fagrmjõl, ‘Fenja’s fair meal’ (Njáls saga, st. 24, Skj B II, 217);
Menju góð, ‘Menja’s good things’ (the Eddic Sigurðarkviða in skamma 52).

The legend of Grottasõngr is thus reflected in kennings for ‘gold’ from thepagan period on; Fróði and Fenja are mentioned, but Menja only once. Grotti
occurs only in one kenning, which postdates Grottasõngr, apart from the verse ofSnæbjõrn considered below. Rarely is any narrative element found; however, Einarr
Skúlason’s Øxarflokkr 6 (first half of twelfth century) reads: frák at Fróða meyjar
fullgóliga mólu [. . .] grafvitnis beð, ‘I have heard that Fróði’s maidens ground quite
joyfully the serpent’s bed [gold]’ (Skj B I, 450). This is in direct opposition to othersources, which stress the misery of the girls – unless it reflects the tradition of st.
5–6 of Grottasõngr, where the girls seem glad to be grinding out wealth. The factthat the same poem contains two more kennings for gold from the Grotti legend
is explained by the fact that gold is the central theme of the work.
One of our earliest sources, Eyvindr skáldaspillir, cleverly contrasts two
images derived from the myth of gold as corn (I follow Davidson 1983, 205–6):
Bárum Ullr um allaímunlauks á haukafjõllum Fýrisvalla
fræ Hákonar ævi;nú hefir folkstríðir Fróða
fáglýjaðra þýjameldr í móður holdi
mellu dolgs um folgin.
God of the battle-leek [warrior], we used to carry the corn of Fýrisvellir [gold]on our hawks’ hills [arms] during all the life of Hákon; now an enemy of thepeople (i.e. Haraldr Eiríksson) has hidden the flour of the joyless bondwomenof Fróði [gold] in the flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess [earth].

This indicates that Fróði was regarded as oppressive towards his slave-girls,
and probably was seen as an enemy of the people like King Haraldr (note thejuxtaposition of folkstríðir Fróða); the indications are that Fróði’s golden age wasregarded as collapsing in strife (see Davidson 1983, 206).
Snæbjõrn’s verse on Grotti
The only mention of Grotti earlier than Grottasõngr is in a stanza (probably not
originally a lausavísa) by one Snæbjõrn, whose identity is unknown; a tenth- toeleventh-century date is likely:20
20
Skj B I, 201. Gollancz (1898, xvii) suggested he was the arctic adventurer Snæbjõrn
Hólmsteinsson, mentioned in Landnámabók 190–5. I consider Snæbjõrn’s verse more fully inTolley 1994–5, 69–71.

25

Grottasõngr
Hvatt kveða hrœra Grotta
hergrimmastan skerjaút fyr jarðar skautieylúðrs níu brúðir,þær es, lungs, fyr lõngu
líðmeldr, skipa hlíðar
baugskerðir rístr barði
ból, Amlóða mólu.
They say the nine brides [waves] of the island mill-crib [ocean] turn vigorously a most army-cruel Grotti of the skerries [whirlpool], out at the rim of theearth [ocean], they who long since have ground the meal [sand] of Amlóði’s
liquor [sea]. The ring-diminisher [prince] cuts with the prow of his vessel thehabitation of the hillside of ships [waves].

The sea is pictured here as fiercely grinding up the land as a mill does meal.
The sea is an eylúðr, island mill-crib, since it surrounds islands in the way theflat lúðr surrounds the quernstones upon it; a similar image (without the millelement) underlies jarðar skaut, ‘rim, i.e. surrounder, of land’. Sand is pictured
as the meal resulting from the milling action of the sea (the kenning is explainedby reference to Saxo III, vi.10, where Amlethus, feigning madness, says thatthe sand is farra [. . .] albicantibus maris procellis permolita, ‘meal ground fineby the hoary tempests of the sea’). ‘Grotti of the skerries’ may be another kenning for ‘ocean’, seen as the grinder-up of skerries. But the reference is surely
more specific: this Grotti is hergrimmastan, ‘the most army-cruel’, because, it
is to be assumed, it swallows armies on board perishing ships – or because it
ground out an army to destroy Fróði, as Grottasõngr reports. Snorri’s explanation that a whirlpool arose from the eye of the sunken Grotti is surely relevant
here: Snæbjõrn means specifically an ocean whirlpool by ‘Grotti of the skerries’,
the skerries in question being the hidden treacherous rocks below water whichcause the currents, and which were imagined as being a sunken quern. The useof the superlative may suggest that Snæbjõrn has a particular whirlpool in mind,
but we cannot be certain. In any case it is situated ‘out at the rim of the earth’, aphrase which, if taken merely as a kenning for ‘ocean’ becomes rather otiose: itis probably meant to bear a literal sense as well. The prince is thus pictured not
merely as crossing the ocean, but as crossing distant reaches of the ocean madeperilous by a mighty whirlpool.
Snæbjõrn’s verse is important, for it shows that Snorri is unlikely to haveinvented the tale of Grotti’s demise in the ocean; Snorri has tacked this story
onto his summary of Grottasõngr, which had no use for the tale, as it reaches
its conclusion with the fall of Fróði. Analogues considered above indicate thatthe wonder-working mill is likely from the earliest times to have been thoughtof as perishing in the ocean. The poet of Grottasõngr has drawn on only part of
the ancient tale for his account. Snæbjõrn’s verse tends also to suggest that the
motif of the mill grinding out an army against Fróði is an ancient element of thestory.

26

Introduction
Darraðarljóð
Grottasõngr is represented as a worksong (though it is not comparable with actual
worksongs recorded from many oral traditions): it is explicity said to accompany
the work of milling. Such songs – which are primarily the preserve of women– must have been commonplace inViking, as in other, societies,21 yet we have only
one other poem of a comparable nature in Old Norse. Darraðarljóð (again, reallya pseudo-worksong) is cited in full in ch. 157 of Njáls saga. It is explained in theprose that a certain Dõrruðr saw some women in a bower working at a loom, butinstead of cloth, they were weaving men’s entrails, and men’s heads were theloom-weights. It is said that the vision coincided with the Battle of Clontarf in
1014. In his edition of the poem Poole shows that the verse does not warrant theinterpretation given in the saga’s prose (Poole 1991, 120–5). Dõrruðr is probably an invention, formed from the word darraðar (genitive), an archaic wordfor ‘pennant’, that occurs in the poem. There is no indication of a bower, and it
seems rather that the valkyries, the women doing the weaving, are in fact engaged
in battle. The poem is relating the course of a battle, which is described using themetaphor of weaving at a loom. It uses the framework of a song accompanying
weaving, but the work is in reality slaughter rather than weaving. Moreover, thepoem may originally have commemorated an earlier battle, in 919, in which the
Irish were decisively defeated. The structure of the poem is thus descriptionof the battle, in terms of weaving (st. 1–3); the valkyries’ avowal of support forthe ‘young king’, accompanied by a worksong refrain vindum, vindum vef darraðar, ‘let us wind, let us wind the weaving of the pennant’ (st. 4–6); a seriesof prophecies resulting from the battle and the poem’s conclusion (st. 7–11).
These prophecies are that death lies in store for the great king, that the dwellersof the headlands will rule the lands, that the Irish will grieve, and that news of
the disaster will travel across the land. The actual end of the battle is marked inst. 8 with the statement nú er vefr ofinn en võllr roðinn, ‘now the fabric is woven
and the field dyed red’. The poem concludes with the valkyries exclaiming ‘let
us ride hence with brandished swords’, that is away from the battle describedand on to others.
The author of Njáls saga has interpreted the whole poem as a supernaturalrepresentation of the battle, however, in which an actual task of weaving withmen’s bodies determines the outcome of the fight; in some sense the valkyries
are seen as both present in the battle and determining it from outside.22
The outline structure of Grottasõngr is: arrival and setting up of the quern
21
That songs accompanied milling is specifically mentioned in Haraldssona saga ch. 18 (ÍF 28,325), where King Sigurðr, riding in Vík, hears singing so beautiful that he seeks out the house it iscoming from, and there stóð kona ein við kvern ok kvað forkunnar fagrt, er hon mól, ‘a woman stoodby the quern and sang remarkably well as she milled’. Sigurðr sleeps with the woman, named
Þóra, who then bears a son named Hákon. The richness of women’s worksongs is exemplified
in the Gaelic waulking songs of the Scottish islands (themselves once Norse) preserved into thepresent century: see the large collection of waulking songs in Campbell and Collinson 1969–81.
22
Compare the game of gwyddbwyll between Arthur and Owain in The Dream of Rhonabwy in
the Mabinogion (slightly earlier than Njáls saga, which is probably late thirteenth century: Njáls
saga lxxxiv), where it is implied that the moves in the game correspond to the developments inthe battle.

27

Grottasõngr
(st. 1–4); the gladsome declaration, beginning with the worksong-like exhortation mõlum [. . .] mõlum (st. 5), of the riches to be milled for the king (st. 5–6);
interjection of the king (st. 7); recounting of the giantesses’ life – the uncoveringof the quernstones, the engagement in battle as framvísar tvær, ‘two foresighted
women’, the arrival in misery at Fróði’s (st. 8–17); the continuing milling, withthe worksong-like refrain mõlum enn framarr in 21–2, as a hostile army attacks
Fróði, and the prophecy that he will lose his throne (st. 17–22); the collapse of
the mill (st. 23); the final statement by the girls that the milling is completed (st.
24).
Some of the structural elements of Darraðarljóð may have influenced Grotta­sõngr. The stanzas of support for Fróði (st. 5–6) match those of support for the
young king by the valkyries; and as Darraðarljóð switches to prophesying deathfor the mighty king (his opponent), Grottasõngr predicts the downfall of theking, Fróði (st. 20). The declaration that the fabric is woven, intimating that thebattle is over (Darraðarljóð 8), corresponds to the concluding statement of the
giant girls that malit hõfum [. . .] sem munum hætta, ‘we have milled so that weshall stop’, from which we understand that the vengeance is assured. One of theweakest structural elements of Grottasõngr is the engagement in wars in Swedenby the ‘two foresighted women’ (st. 13–15); this confirms the girls’ warrior
status, but not their foresight (which may even be referred to ironically), and theemphasis on the episode seems excessive. On the other hand, the engagement
in battle by the foresighted valkyries forms the central theme of Darraðarljóð.
It would seem likely that the poet of Grottasõngr wished to appropriate some of
the awe of these prophetic valkyries by incorporating an episode of slaughterous activity conducted by the ‘foresighted’ giantesses. Two phrases in the poem
suggest borrowing from Darraðarljóð. The giantesses say (st. 13/4) í fólk stigum,‘we strode into battle’, just as the valkyries say fram skulum ganga ok í fólk vaða,‘we must go forth and advance into battle’ (Darraðarljóð 4/5–6); and, describing
the loom, it is said that járnvarðr yllir, ‘the shed rod is ironclad’ (meaning it is aweapon) (Darraðarljóð 2/7), just as when the quern breaks to pieces it is despite
the støðr, ‘supports’, being iárni varðar, ‘ironclad’ (st. 21/7).
Grottasõngr differs from Darraðarljóð in various respects. The valkyries
express support for a young king and predict the downfall of his opponent,
whereas the mill in Grottasõngr churns out both blessings and misfortunes forthe same king, and Mýsingr is no more than an implied agent of the giantesses’
vengeance against Fróði. In addition, there is no question but that the giantesses
are actually milling: therefore it is their action of milling which produces theavenging army to overthrow Fróði. They also seem to envisage themselves as
engaged in the fighting – eruma valnar í valdreyra, ‘we are not squeamish in the
blood of slaughter’. Thus the scene seems somewhat closer to the interpretationof the author of Njáls saga, a sort of simultaneous involvement in the millingwhich is determining the battle’s fate, and in the fatal battle as it is being determined. A greater poet might, along the lines of Darraðarljóð, have imagined theact of mining gold and mastering the chthonic forces of the rocks in which it was
found through the metaphor of the giantesses’ milling, but the aspirations of theauthor of Grottasõngr were clearly less lofty.

28

Introduction
The heroic-verse context
An investigation of the vocabulary of Grottasõngr reveals a series of analogues
in Eddic heroic verse, but very few in mythological verse. Clearly the author
regarded his work as belonging among the tales of men, not gods.
Elsewhere in Eddic poetry Fróði is mentioned only in Helgakviða Hundings­
bana I 13, sleit Fróða frið fiánda á milli; fara viðris grey valgirn um ey, ‘Fróði’s peace
was cut between enemies; Óðinn’s wolves go about the isle eager for slaughter’.
Other vocabulary is also reflected in the Helgakviður (see commentary to 16/7,
19/3, 20/4). It is likely that vígspiõll (19/3) is borrowed from Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, where it is used more aptly. The most striking parallel is with st. 2–4
of Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, which (with the preceding prose) read:
Hamall hét sonr Hagals. Hundingr konungr sendi menn til Hagals at leita
Helga. En Helgi mátti eigi forðaz annan veg en tók klæði ambòttar ok gekk at
mala. Þeir leitoðo ok fundo eigi Helga. Þá kvað Blindr inn bõlvísi:
Hamall was the name of Hagall’s son. King Hundingr sent some men to
Hagall to search for Helgi. Helgi could not escape danger any other way thanby putting on the attire of a servant girl and going to grind. They searched anddid not find Helgi. Then Blindr the mischief-causer said:‘Hvõss ero augo
‘Sharp are the eyes
í Hagals þýio,on Hagall’s slave-girl,era þat karls ættthat is no working-man’s lineage
er á kvernom stendr:
standing at the quern:
steinar rifna,
the stones are cracking,støkkr lúðr fyrir!
and the corn-crib flies loose before		 her!
Nú hefir hõrð dœmi	Now the prince has received
hildingr þegit,
a harsh sentence:er vísi skal
the ruler must millvalbygg [mala];foreign barley;
heldr er sœmri
a swordhilt suits
hendi þeiri
that handmeðalkafli
rather betteren mõndultré.’than a mill-handle.’
Hagall svaraði ok kvað:		Hagall answered and said:‘Þat er lítil vá,þótt lúðr þrumi,
er mær konungsmõndul hrœrir;hón skævaði
skýiom efri
ok vega þorði
sem víkingar,‘It means little,
even though the corn-bin thunders,
as the king’s daughter
turns the handle;
she used to dart
over the clouds
and dared to battle
like the Vikings,

29

Grottasõngr
áðr hana Helgihõpto gørði;systir er hón þeira
Sigars ok Hõgna,því hefir õtul augo
Ylfinga man.’before Helgi
took her captive;
she is the sisterof Sigarr and Hõgni,that’s why the servantof the Ylfings has sharp eyes.’

The scene may have influenced the poet of Grottasõngr. Like Fenja and Menja
in the poem (but without parallel elsewhere, and incidental even to the theme ofthe poem), according to Hagall the worker of the mill in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II is a noble woman used to engaging in battle before being captured by
Helgi: and hence the quernstones are cracking and the whole apparatus shaking.
This confirms the social aspect of Grottasõngr: the foreign female war-captives
put to menial work on the mill, and the resentment they undoubtedly felt. The
shattering of Grotti – an event inconsistent with its subsequent role as a salt-millin the ocean depths, which seems already to be a part of the folktale of Grotti by
the time of Snæbjõrn, but which the poet of Grottasõngr has ignored – is perhaps
an exaggeration of the harsh treatment Helgi gives the quern (though this may
well not be the only source of this variant of the story of the mill). The word valbygg in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 3/4 could also imply a meaning ‘slaughterbarley’, which is effectively what the giantesses grind in Grottasõngr.
The name Gotþormr/Guttormr is found in the heroic poems; as the nameoccurs along with Knúi only in a verse of Õrvar-Odds saga this must be considered a possible source (cf. also commentary to 13/8).
Other analogues are found with Atlamál (see commentary to 14, 16/8, 19/6;
in st. 14 there is some possibility of influence from Atlamál), Atlakviða (seecommentary to 16/7), Grípisspá (see commentary to 1/3, 15/5–6), Sigrdrífumál(see commentary to 6/7, 16/7), Guðrúnarkviða I (see commentary to 8/3),
Sigurðarkviða in skamma (see commentary to 16/8). Some analogues in whatmight be termed ‘semi-heroic’ poems are also found: Rígs­þula (see commentary to 16/5–6, 23/2), Hárbarðsljóð (see commentary to 16/8), Hyndluljóð (seecommentary to 19/1); of these only Rígsþula 16/5–6 is significant, suggesting
possible borrowing.
One likely borrowing from Grottasõngr is found in Ívarr Ingimundarson (seecommentary to 19/7–8), composing c. 1140, which would give a terminus antequem for the poem’s composition.
Other literary influences and parallels
It is likely that the poet was familiar with skaldic verse (see commentary to 9,
9/7, 11/8, 14/8, 15/5), but specific influence is only reasonably demonstrable
in the cases of Egill (see commentary to 7/3–4, 16/7, also st. 6) and Bjarkamál(which recounted the fall of a successor of Fróði’s, Hrólfr kraki) (see commentary to 18/4–5, 19). The expression dólgs siõtul, though not in fact a kenning,
may reveal a familiarity with skaldic technique (though compare similar phrasesin Eddic verse: see commentary to 16/7).
It is difficult to trace influence from Skjõldunga saga in the absence of the30

Introduction
Old Norse text, but it seems likely that the poet is alluding to descriptions of thegolden age of Fróði that had already crystallised into a form resembling what isfound in Skjõldunga saga (see commentary to st. 6, also 11).
The date and place of composition
Several factors indicate a late date for the composition of Grottasõngr in its
extant form (even though, as has been shown, individual elements in the poem
are likely to be of great antiquity). There is nothing of a mythological nature in
the poem which challenges our understanding: indeed, there is little reflectionof what must once have been a rich mythological field. Fróði is son of Friðleifr,
which must be the result of genealogical speculation made after the end of
paganism, and is in agreement with sources from the thirteenth century on. It
seems that frið-Fróði and Heathobard Fróði are confused (perhaps deliberately)by the poet, as would scarcely have happened in the pagan period. There is anappeal to a tradition of the Fróða friðr similar to that of Skjõldunga saga, most
likely a twelfth-century work.23 The poet shows a familiarity with heroic Eddicverse, some of it late (like Atlamál: probably twelfth century, see PE I, 111).
The vocabulary of the poem also indicates a late date. Some of it occurs
chiefly in prose (see commentary to 9/7, 15/5, 19/6, 23/4); and there are threewords which derive from the developed lexicon of Christianity (alsæll (5/2),
meginverkum (11/6), miskunnlausar (16/3)), which point to a date not earlier
than the twelfth century. If Grottasõngr is indeed quoted around 1140, a dateshortly before that would be most likely for its composition.
Guðrún Nordal (2001, 310), following Bjarni Guðnason, emphasises theimportance of Danish royal history in the later twelfth century in Iceland (andimplies that the Danish influence in fact stretches back to much earlier in the
century):
Throughout this study I have noted the eminence of Danish myths and legends
in relation to skaldic poetry and during the earliest phase of the writing of royalhistoria. It is, I believe, no coincidence that this Danish bias is most recognizable
in learned works on skaldic poetics – Snorra Edda, Háttalykill, and Skáldatal– as well as in the subject matter of poems preserved in, and in conjunction with,
Snorra Edda in manuscripts (e.g., Ragnarsdrápa, Jómsvíkingadrápa, Málshátta­kvæði, and Rígsþula). These texts suggest that the textual culture, and thestudy of skaldic poetics in particular, was subject to a decisive and unequivocal
Danish influence. Why was this the case? Earlier we tentatively endorsed BjarniGuðnason’s view that this fascination with Danish history resulted from theformative influence of Lund on the education of Icelanders in the twelfth
century. Lund was the archiepiscopal seat for Iceland until the establishmentof the archbishopric at Niðaróss in 1153. Six Icelandic bishops, three at Hólar
and three at Skálaholt, were consecrated at Lund in the twelfth century. [. . .]These cultural links with Lund and Denmark were not broken off after thefounding of Niðaróss, but were actively maintained thereafter.
23

Bjarni Guðnason suggests 1180–1200 in Danakonunga sõgur lii.

31

Grottasõngr
Nordal notes (312) the convention in European historiography of this period to set
the royal genealogy within a mythic framework, a convention followed for example
by William of Malmesbury (d. c. 1142) and Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. c. 1154)
and taken up in the preface to Snorri’s Edda. Genealogy was a primary concernof the earliest vernacular writings in Iceland (beginning in the later eleventh
century), according to the First Grammatical Treatise (fol. 84/14, p. 12).
It is surely within this period of focus upon Danish royal genealogy and its
mythic background that Grottasõngr as we have it was composed. The poem
labours the point about the importance of genealogy; whilst the focus is upon thefamily history of the giantesses, this surely acts as a foil to the Danish king Fróði,whose ancestry, as has been noted, was a major source of fascination in historical
works from the late twelfth century. The poem also appears, like Rígsþula, to beconcerned with social order, in that Fróði suffers as a result of maltreatment of
his slaves, whose real nature is belied by their menial status – noblesse oblige, andwhen that obligation is ignored it leads to disaster. It is not clear, however, thatsocial concern of this sort can be used as a criterion of dating.
Given the likely date of the poem’s composition in the twelfth century, I
have treated it as essentially a literary product (though the shift from orality toliteracy was certainly not a black-and-white affair); hence the many parallels
found in other poems are treated as allusions or borrowings, rather than reflections of oral formulas, though it is, naturally, impossible to be certain that thiswas always the case.
There is no evidence to suggest firmly where the poem was composed. The
existence of two words in the poem, gria and vamlar (or valnar), which are not
Icelandic, and the fact that cuckoos are not found in Iceland,24 suggests that thepoem is not Icelandic. The word valnar (if we favour that reading) has a sensemost appropriate to the poem in Norn. The word grotti also survived in Norn.
Stories of Grotti Minnie and Grotti Finnie and their salt-quern in the Swelchieof the Pentland Firth survived on Orkney at least until 1895 (Johnston 1908–9,297); Fenja and Menja had by then become witches, characters of local superstition used to frighten children.25 Manuscripts A and B (AM 748, 757) of Snorri’s
Edda, in an addition to Snorri’s work, recount the following (SnE 259):
Kvern heitir Grótti, er átti Fróði konungr; hon mól hvetvetna þat er hannvildi, gull ok frið. Fenja ok Menja hétu ambáttir þær, er mólu. Þá tók Mýsingr
sækonungr Gróttu ok lét mala hvítasalt á skip sín, þar til er þau sukku á Pétlandsfirði. Þar er svelgr síðan, er sær fellr í auga Gróttu. Þá gnýr sær, er hon
gnýr, ok þá varð sjórinn saltr.
A quern is called Grotti, which King Fróði possessed; it milled whatever hewished, gold and peace. Fenja and Menja were the names of the servant girls
who milled. Then Mýsingr a sea-king took Grotta and had salt ground on his
24

Cuckoos are mentioned by Egill and Snorri, however, both (travelled) Icelanders.

This last echo of the tale of Grottasõngr appears to have died away as soon as it wasrecorded; Tom Muir, an Orkney folklore researcher, is clear that no further tales of Fenja and
Menja have been recorded from Orkney, so effective was the opposition from the local Kirk
to Norn language and traditions (personal communication).
25

32

Introduction
ships, until they sank in the Pentland Firth. There has been a whirlpool thereever since, where the sea falls into the eye of Grotta. Then the sea grates as themill grates, and then the sea became salty.

Clearly the connection between Grotti and the Orkney whirlpool called the
Swelchie is old. It is at least possible that the poem was formed with these traditions behind it, though the whirlpool motif is explicitly excluded by the poetfrom his work.

33

Grottasõngr
Sonr Friðleifs hét Fróði. Hann tók konungdóm eptir fõður sinn í þann tíð er
Augustus keisari lagði frið of heim allan; þá var Kristr borinn. En fyrir því atFróði var allra konunga ríkastr á Norðrlõndum þá var honum kendr friðrinn
um alla danska tungu, ok kalla Norðmenn þat Fróða frið. Engi maðr grandaði
õðrum, þótt hann hitti fyrir sér fõðurbana eða bróðurbana lausan eða bundinn. Þá var ok engi þiófr eða ránsmaðr, svá at gullhringr einn lá á Ialangrsheiði
lengi. Fróði konungr sótti heimboð í Svíðióð til þess konungs, er Fiõlnir er
nefndr. Þá keypti hann ambáttir tvær, er hétu Fenia ok Menia; þær vóru miklar ok sterkar. Í þann tíma fannz í Danmõrk kvernsteinar tveir svá miklir, atengi var svá sterkr, at dregit gæti; en sú náttúra fylgði kvernunum, at þat mólz
á kverninni, sem sá mælti fyrir, er mól. Sú kvern hét Grotti. Hengikiõptr er
sá nefndr, er Fróða konungi gaf kvernina. Fróði konungr lét leiða ambáttirnar
til kvernarinnar ok bað þær mala gull, ok svá gerðu þær, mólu fyrst gull, okfrið ok sælu Fróða; þá gaf hann þeim eigi lengri hvíld eða svefn en gaukrinnþagði eða hlióð mátti kveða; þat er sagt, at þær kvæði lióð þau, er kallat er
Grottasõngr. Ok áðr létti kvæðinu, mólu þær her at Fróða, svá at á þeiri nóttkom þar sá sækonungr, er Mýsingr hét, ok drap Fróða, tók þar herfang mikit.
Þá lagðiz Fróða friðr. Mýsingr hafði með sér Grotta ok svá Feniu ok Meniu
ok bað þær mala salt; ok at miðri nótt spurðu þær, ef eigi leiddiz Mýsingi salt.
Hann bað þær mala lengr. Þær mólu litla hríð, áðr niðr søkk skipit, ok var þar
eptir svelgr í hafinu, er særinn fellr í kvernar augat; þá varð sær saltr.
The son of Friðleifr was named Fróði. He succeeded to the kingdom after
his father at the time that the emperor Augustus imposed peace on the wholeworld; Christ was born then. As Fróði was most powerful of all kings in
The text of the poem is preserved only in manuscripts SR and T (st. 1 also in C) of
Snorri’s Edda; the SR text is followed here, with variants from C and T noted. Eachstanza begins with a capital in the manuscripts (unless noted otherwise in the textual
notes), and in SR most helmingar are marked with _ T also marks many helmingar in 8line stanzas with a capital (not 1b, 2b, 6b, 8b, 9b, 11b (but preceded by point), 13b, 17b,
18b, 21b). In T, forms of ð, d are indistinguishable, and are transcribed here according
to the sound in the context. A common source of misreadings in both manuscripts has beenminim confusion; see st. 3/1, 3/4, 4/2, 8/4, 17/5, 19/6, 21/7. The prose introduction
is standardised from SnE, where textual variants may be found listed.
Conventions: IC initial capital, MC marginal capital, italics: emendation, [ ] notin manuscript, [ ] reading from another manuscript, ¡ manuscript letter omitted in
emendation, † † text transferred, # $ superscript addition in manuscript, | end of line inmanuscript, ÷ omission, + addition. Underdots (representing deletions) are scribal.

35

Grottasõngr
northern lands the peace was ascribed to him in all the Norse-speaking lands,
and the Norsemen call it the peace of Fróði. No one harmed another, even if
he chanced upon his father’s or brother’s slayer before him, free or bound.
There was no thief or robber then, so a gold ring long lay upon Jalangrsheiðr.
King Fróði visited a king called Fiõlnir in Sweden. He bought two slave-girls
named Fenia and Menia; they were big and strong. At that time two quernstones were found in Denmark, so big that no one could move them. It wasa feature of the quernstones that they would grind out whatever the grinder
told them to. This quern was called Grotti. Hengikiõptr was the name of theone who gave Fróði the quernstones. King Fróði had the slave-girls led tothe quern and ordered them to grind out gold, and so they did: they groundout gold first, and peace and well-being for Fróði. He gave them no more
rest or sleep than a cuckoo is silent or it takes to sing a song. It is said thatthey sang the lay called ‘The Song of Grotti’. And before the quern stopped
they ground out an army against Fróði, so that at night there came a sea-kingcalled Mýsingr, who slew Fróði and took great booty there. That was theend of Fróði’s Peace. Mýsingr took Grotti with him and Fenia and Menia
too, and he ordered them to grind salt. At midnight they asked if Mýsingr
was not tired of salt. He ordered them to carry on milling. They milled for alittle while until the ship sank. There was afterwards a whirlpool in the ocean
where the sea fell into the eye of the quernstone: then the sea became salt.

1 ‘Nú erum komnar‘Now we have cometil konungs húsato the king’s houses,
framvísar tvær,far-sighted, both of us,
Fenia ok Menia.’	Fenia and Menia.’
Þær ro at Fróða,They are at Fróði’s,Friðleifs sonar,	Friðleifr’s son,máttkar meyiar,
mighty maidens
at mani hafðar.
kept as menials.
2 Þær at lúðri
To the mill-crib
leiddar vóru
they were conducted,
ok griótz griá
and the grit grindstones
gangs of beiddu;
they goaded into motion.
hét hann hvárigri	He promised to neither girlhvíld né ynði,pause nor pleasure,áðr hann heyrði
before he heard
hlióm ambátta.
the slave-women’s harmony.
1/1 Nú] large IC SR, T   1/1 erum] so SR, T, eru C   1/5 ro] eru C  
1/6 Friðleifs] frilleifs T   1/8 hafðar] gioruar C   2/3 griótz] grioz T  
2/3 griá] gr#i$a T  

36Grottasõngr
3 Þær þyt þutuThey started the screeching,þõgnhorf ¡nar:
shunned by silence;‘Leggium lúðra,‘Let us fix firm the mill-crib,
léttum steinum!’
let us ease the stones!’
Bað hann enn meyiar	Again he urged the girls
at þær mala skyldu.
to go on with the milling.
4	Sungu ok slungusnúðga steini,svá at Fróða manflest sofnaði.
Þá kvað þat Meni[a],– var til meldr[ar] komit:

They sang and slung
the swift-swirling stone,so that Fróði’s servants
were mostly asleep.
Then Menia spoke– the meal had started to flow:

5 ‘Auð mõlum Fróða,mõlum alsælan,[mõlum] fiõlð fiárá feginslúðri!
Siti hann á auði,sofi hann á dúni,
vaki hann at vilia –þá er vel malit!

‘Let us grind riches for Fróði,let us grind him all-fortunate,
let us grind massive wealth,on the mill of felicity!
May he sit on riches,
may he sleep on down,
may he wake to joy –then that is milling well done!

6 ‘Hér skyli engiõðrum granda,
til bõls búa
né til bana orka,né hõggva[g]ihvõssu sverði,þó at bana bróður
bundinn finni!’‘Here must no one
harm another,
work for his ill-fortune
or encompass his death,nor strike him any blowwith biting sword,
even though his brother’s murderer
he should find in fetters!’

3/1–2 ÷T   3/1 þutu] þulu SR   3/2 þõgnhorfnar] þÃ¸|horvi©ar SR
3/3 leggium] IC T   3/4 steinum] steuiû (? i.e. stefium, cf. heui 17/3,
24/3 (JH)) T   3/6 skyldu] scyldi T   4/2 snúðga] so T, stiuðga
(apparently; though st is abnormally formed, and may be a correction to n after an
initial reading of n as ti) SR   4/2 steini] steina T   4/5 Þá] IC T
4/5–6 Menia . . . meldrar] menia . . . meldrs T, meni . . . meldr SR   4/6 komit]ko® SR, comî T   5/1 no IC SR, T   5/1 Auð] aul (i.e. õl) T   5/3 mõlum]so T, ÷ SR   5/5 Siti] IC SR, T   6/5 -gi] so T, þvi SR  37

Grottasõngr
7	En hann †[ekki]† kvað	No words he saidorð it fyrra:
sooner than these:‘Sofið eigi þit me[ir]‘Sleep no more, you two,en s[yngr]at gauk¡r!
than the cuckoo stops singing,eða lengr en svá
or longer than I chantlióð eitt kveðak.’a single charm.’‘You were not, Fróði,8 ‘Var[t]attu, Fróði,fullspakr of þik,very far-sighted for yourself,
málvinr manna,– mankind’s sweetheart –er þú man keyptir.
when you bought slaves.
Kaus[t]u at afli	You picked them for strength
ok at álitum,and appearances,
en at ætterni
but as to their ancestry
ekki spurðir.
you asked no question.
9 ‘Harðr var Hrungnir‘Unyielding was Hrungnir
ok hans faðir –and his father too –þó var Þiazi
yet Þiazi provedþeim õflgari.
more powerful than they.
Iði ok Aurnir,	Iði and Aurnir
okrir niðiar,are our kinsmen,brœðr bergrisa,
brothers of crag-giants:þeim erum bornar.
we were born from their line.
10 ‘Kœmia Grottiór Griáfialli,né sá hinn harði
hal[l]r ór iõrðu,‘Grotti would not have comefrom the Grindstone Fell,
nor that hardrock from out of the earth,

7/1 ekki kvað] so T, qvað ecki SR   7/3–4 sofið — gaukr] see Commentary on theemendations in these lines.   7/3 þit] it T   7/3 meir] ne SR, T   7/4 en]of SR, T   7/4 syngrat] sal SR, T   7/4 gaukr] gavkar SR, gaucar T  
7/6 eitt] eit SR, T   8/1 Vartattu] so T, Varattv SR   8/2 of] û T
8/4 er] ef T   8/4 man] malj T must derive from an antecedent scribal ma© (cf.
forms of © in SR), influenced perhaps by ma©a in the previous line.   8/5 kaustu]
so T, kÃssþv SR   8/8 ekki spurðir] eî sprðir T   9/5 Aurnir] Ãrnir SR,
aurnir T (MS forms can also be read Õrnir.)   9/7 brœðr] broðr T  
10/1 Kœmia] Komi á T   10/2 griá fialli] griafalli T   10/3 hinn]
i³ T   10/4 hallr] so T, halr SR  

38

Grottasõngr
né mœli svámær bergrisa,
ef vissi[m] vitvætr til k[v]ernar.

nor would a crag-giant’s girlbe doing such grinding,
if we two had known
nothing of the millstone.

‘For nine winters we two
11 ‘Vit vetr níu
vórum leikur
were playfellows,õflgar, alnar
mighty girls, bredfirir iõrð neðan.
beneath the earth.
Stóðu[m] meyiar	As maidens we took on
at meginverkum,
tasks of great moment:[hófum] siálfar
we ourselves plucked
setberg ór stað.
the mountain-seat from its place.
12 ‘Veltum grióti
of garð risa,
svá at fold firir
fór skiálfandi.
Svá sløngðum vitsnúðga steini,hõfga halli,at halir tóku.

‘We sent the stone rollingover the realm of giants,
so the ground before it
began to quake.
The two of us flung so far
the fast-wheeling stone,
the heavy rock,that humans took it.

13 ‘En vit síðan
á Svíþióðu,framvísar tvær,í fólk stigum.
Bei[tt]um biõrnu,en brutum skiõldu,gengum í gegnum
gráserkiat li[ð].

‘And since then we two
in Sweden,
far-sighted, both of us,
strode into battle.
We baited bears,
and hacked shields,
marched right throughtheir mail-clad host.

10/5 mœli] moli SR, meli T   10/7 vit] vi´ SR, vit T   10/8 kvernar]
hnar SR, hnar T   11/1 Vit] Vær SR, Ver T   11/2 leikur] leikô T  
11/5 stóðum] stoðv SR, stoðo T (m omitted due to haplography before following
m of meyiar)   11/6 at] a T   11/7 hófum] færþ` SR, Haufô (?for hófom(JH), with IC) T   11/7 siálfar] sialfr sialfar T   12/5 sløngðum] slaungðu T  
12/6 snúðga] snuðug T     13/2 Svíþióðu] sviðioðv SR, suiðioðo T  
13/3 tvær] .ij. SR   13/4 fólk stigum] floc stigô folc stigô T   13/5 beittum]
so T, beidd` SR   13/8 lið] so T, lit SR  

39

Grottasõngr
14 ‘Steyptum stilli,
studdum annan.
Veittum góðum
Gotþormi lið.
Vara kyrrseta,
áðr Knúi felli.

‘We toppled one prince,
propped up another.
To good Gotþormr
we gave our support.
There was no time of truce
till Knúi fell.

15 ‘Fram heldum þvíþau misseri,
at vit at kõppum
kendar vóru[m].
Þar skorðu[m] vitskõrpum geirumblóð ór benium
ok brand ruðum.

‘We pursued that life
throughout those seasons,so that as champions
we both were acknowledged.
There we two carved
with keen spears
blood from wounds,
and made our blades red.

16 ‘Nú erum komnar‘Now we have cometil konungs húsato the king’s houses,
miskunnlausar
and without pity
ok at mani hafðar.
have been put as slaves.
Aurr etr iliar,
Mud corrodes our soles,
en ofan kulði.
and cold nips from above.
Drõgum dólgs siõtul – 	Round we heave war’s settler –daprt er at Fróða!
wretched it is at Fróði’s!
17 ‘Hendr skulo hvílaz,‘Hands shall take rest,
hallr standa mun.
stone will stand still.
Malit hefi ek firir mik	For my part I have milled
mitt of [h]leyti!’
in accord with my pledge!’‘[M]u[n]u[m]a hõndum
‘We will not give
hvíld vel gefa,
our hands good rest,
áðr fullmalit
before the milling seems to Fróði
Fróða þykki!
fully done!

14/1 no IC (but point precedes) SR, T     14/3 góðum] vitrom T  
14/4 Gotþormi] gothormi SR, guðormi T    15/4 vórum] so T, v¡ SR  
15/5 skorðum] skorþv SR, scerðo T 16/1 erum] ero T
16/3 miskunnlausar] miscunlausar T   16/4 at] ÷T   16/5 aurr] Aur T   16/7 dólgs]dogls T (cf. Võluspá 41/6 gagl/galg)   16/8 daprt] darptr T   17/1, 18/1
Hendr] Hendor T   17/2 mun] mon T   17/3 hefi] heui T   17/4 hleyti]
leiti SR, T   17/5 munuma] so T, nv mvna SR   17/5 hõndum] + heldr T  

40Grottasõngr
18 ‘Hendr skulo hõn†d†laharðar triónor,vápn valdreyrug –vaki þú, Fróði!
Vaki þú, Fróði,ef þú †[vill]† hlýða
sõngum okkrum
ok sõgum fornum!

‘Hands shall handle
hard staves,slaughter-gory weapons –wake up, Fróði!
Wake up, Fróði,if you want to hear
the songs we two singand stories of old!

19 ‘Eld sé ek brenna‘I can see fire blazing
firir austan borg,
east of the fortress,
vígspiõll vaka,
war-news wakening,– þat mun viti kallaðr.
– a warning beacon that will mean.
Mun herr koma	Soldiery will comehinig af bragði
in sudden speed towards us
ok brenna bœand burn the palace
firir buðlungi.
in despite of the prince.
20 ‘Munat þú halda‘You will not holdHleiðrar stóli,
the throne of Hleiðr,rauðum hringum
the gold-red rings
né regingrióti.
nor the grindstone of power.
Tõkum á mõndli,	Let us grasp the mill-handle,
mær, skarpara –girl, more keenly –eruma vamlar
we are not squeamish
í valdreyra.
in the gore of slaughter.
21 ‘Mól míns fõður
mær ramliga,þvíat hón feigð firafiõlmargra sá.’‘My father’s girlground lustily,
for she saw the near deathof numberless men.’

18/1 hõndla] hõlða SR, holda T   18/3 ÷T   18/5 Vaki] IC SR  
18/6 vill hlýða] so T, hlyþa vill SR   19/4 mun] mô T   19/5 Mun]
Mô T   19/5 herr] her T   19/6 hinig af] hung a T   19/7 bœ]bæ SR, bõ T   20/1 Munat þú] Mu³ aðr T   20/3 hringum] ringô T  
20/4 -grióti] g riote T   20/5 Tõkum] MC SR   20/5 mõndli] mundli T(cf. Mundilfœri, Vafþrúðnismál 23/1)   20/7 vamlar] valmar SR, withsmall subsript stroke between l and m, valnar T   21/2 ramliga] rangliga T  
21/3 þvíat] ¾t SR   21/4 fiõlmargra sá] fiolð of vissi T  

41Grottasõngr
Stukku stórar	Off burst the massive
st[ø]ðr frá lúðri,mainstays from the mill-crib,iárn[i v]arðar:girded with iron:‘Mõlum enn framarr!’‘Let us grind even further!’
22 ‘Mõlum enn framarr:‘Let us grind even further:mon Yrsu sonr	Yrsa’s son willvíg[s] Hálfdana[r]for Hálfdan’s slaughter
hefna [á] Fróða.
take vengeance on Fróði.
Sá mun hennar	He will comeheitinn verða
to be calledburr ok bróðir –her son and brother –vitum báðar þa[t].’both of us know that.’
23 Mólu meyiar,
megins k[o]stuðu –vóru ungarí iõtunmóði.
Skulfu skap[t]tré,skautz lúðr ofan,
hraut hinn hõfgi
hallr sundr í tvau.

The girls ground on,gave proof of their strength –those young ones werein giant wrath.
The timber frames shuddered,the mill-crib shot to the ground,the cumbrous stone
cracked in two.

24	En bergrisa	And the crag-giants’brúðr orð um kvað:consort had her say:
‘Malit hõfum, Fróði,‘We have milled so, Fróði,sem munum hætta.
that we shall mill no more.
Hafa fullstaðit
They have stood long enough,flióð at meldri.’these ladies, at the milling.’

21/5 stukku] stuco T   21/6 støðr] so T (stõðr), steðr SR   21/7 iárnivarðar] so T, iarnar fiarþar SR   22/3 vígs] við SR, T   22/3 Hálfdanar]
halfdana SR, T   22/4 á] ÷ SR, T   22/5 mun] mô T   22/8 báðar]baðir corrected to baðar T   22/8 þat] so T, þar SR   23/2 kostuðu]so T, kÃstvðv (i.e. ‘flung’) SR   23/3 vóru] oro T   23/5 skulfu]
IC SR (but preceded by _), T   23/5 skapttré] skaptre SR, scaftre T  
23/6 skautz] scauz T   23/7 hinn] i³ T   23/8 tvau] tau T   24/3 hõfum
Fróði] heui ec fyrir mik T (cf. 17/3)   24/4 sem] sm   24/4 munum] monû T

42

Commentary
Prose The setting for the acquisition of the giantesses, on a visit by Fróði toFjõlnir in Sweden, has probably been surmised by Snorri on the basis of thepoem’s description of the girls’ feats in Sweden, along with the tradition ofvisits between Fróði and Fjõlnir found already in Ynglingatal 1 (Skj B I, 7). The
quernstones on the other hand were found in Denmark, according to Snorri.
Whilst it is possible to construct a scenario in which the giantesses come fromJõtunheimar via Sweden to Denmark, it is more likely that a mixing of traditions
occurs here; the poem at least gives no provenance for either the girls or thestones, merely noting that the girls were responsible for the stones’ appearance.
The poem also indicates that the stones rolled through the realm of giants, into
the hands of men, who took them. Snorri’s account of one Hengikjõptr presenting them to Fróði is thus also inconsistent with the poem. Hengikjõptr is either
a giant (cf. Hengjankjapta, a giantess in a verse of Þorbjõrn dísarskáld, cited bySnorri in Skáldskaparmál ch. 4: SnE 97; ed. Faulkes I, 17; trans. Faulkes 74)– which seems contextually unlikely – or a heiti (‘hanging chin’, in reference tohis beard) for Óðinn (found in þulur jj 4, Skj B I, 673, as hengikeptr). An ill-fatedgift presented by a disguised Óðinn would be in character, and Snorri is likely tohave invented this aspect of the story. Snorri’s summary follows the poem fairly
closely up to the point where vengeance is wrought on Fróði. The poem makes
no mention of Mýsingr, unless in some lost section. Mýsingr does appear as theoverthrower of Fróði in Skjõldunga saga, however, though he is not a sea-kingthere. In þulur a 3 (Skj B I, 658), Mýsingr is listed as a sea-king: if this antedates
Snorri, he could have used the ascription to help produce the story he gives. He
would have been aided by the existence of a tradition such as is found in Saxo,that Fróði was killed by a beast from the sea (albeit a female one), which has
ancient mythological parallels. The rest of the tale of Grotti, that it was takenby Mýsingr along with Fenja and Menja, and told to grind salt, ending up in
the deep still grinding, is an aetiological folktale found in Norway and Iceland,and elsewhere, which has nothing to do with the poem Grottasõngr: the famous
mill Grotti may, however, have been associated with this tale already by Snorri’stime, especially as Snæbjõrn’s verse implies a tradition in which Grotti ended
up in the sea.
1 The first helmingr is spoken by the two giant maids in SR and T; in C thethird person is used. Whilst the C form is perhaps more logical, it lacks thedramatic force gained by the use of direct speech here, and is probably a rationalisation on the part of Snorri (C, citing merely an excerpt, is likely to represent
the form of text closest to Snorri’s original here) to accommodate the stanza to
its context more readily as a straightforward quotation.

43

Grottasõngr
The first stanza sets out the scene and the characters. The two girls are Fenja
and Menja; they are strong – hence their usefulness – but they are also giftedwith foresight (in common with many giants: cf. Vafþrúðnir (Vafþrúðnismál 44)).
The irony that this foresight had failed to prevent their enslavement is not considered; the focus is upon the use they will make of this foresight against Fróði,and their enslavement is regarded (perhaps disingenuously) as a deliberate actof self-humiliation to achieve their final goal. The mill, with its connotationsof turning fortune, will be the means of their grinding out misfortune for the
ill-treatment they receive at the king’s hands. Hence the explanation in st. 10 ofhow, with foreknowledge, they had arranged the discovery of the quernstones
and their own enslavement (presumably the same implication lies in the repetition of framvísar tvær in st. 13: they are prescient in entering the battle in which,it may be surmised, they were caught and enslaved). Their bondage at the millis their means of power over the king. Naturally, this may be felt by the reader
as something of a justification after the event – they had milled wealth for the
king happily enough to start with, after all, but it is a claim the girls themselves
seem keen to defend.
Fróði is identified as son of Friðleifr. This must originally have identified
him clearly as frið-Fróði, not as the semi-historical king of the fifth century,
but several of the Fróðis of the Norse genealogies are sons of Friðleifr (see thefamily trees in the Introduction): clearly confusion between the mythical andthe historical Fróðis had a long tradition. Although Snorri identified the Fróði
of Grottasõngr as the peace-Fróði, it is not clear that the poet intended more thanthe vaguest revelation of his identity by calling him son of Friðleifr.
1/3 framvísar occurs in the late Grípisspá 21/7, and in a verse of Bjõrn
Hítdœlakappi (framvísar dísir, Skj B I, 282, dated to 1024), and in a verse in
Hjálmþérs saga ok Õlvers ch. 14.
1/4 Fenja may derive from fen, ‘deep pool’, and Menja from men, ‘necklace,jewellery’ (de Vries 1977 regards man as a more likely source, i.e. ‘slave-girl’). In
the poem Menja speaks mainly of the treasures they are to grind out for Fróði.
Fenja’s name would be a generic giant-name, ‘dweller in the fens, pools’, but thisunderwater home would confer powers of prophecy (as with Frigg: ørlõg Frigg
hygg ek at õll viti, ‘of all fates Frigg has, I think, full knowledge’, as Lokasenna
29 says; Frigg’s home was Fensalir (Võluspá 33/6): see PE II, commentary toVõluspá 20/3, 33/6 and Lokasenna 21/4–6, as well as Grímnismál 7): Fenja’s
chief role is to prophesy the end of Fróði. The other implication of fen is treasure: cf. the kennings fenglóð, fenlogi for ‘gold’ (Plácítusdrápa 55, Skj B I, 621;
verse from Õrvar-Odds saga, VII.9, Skj B II, 318). (Other possible etymologies
are listed in de Vries 1977, s.v. Fenja.)
1/5 Fróði means ‘wise’, but also ‘virile, fecund’ (see PE II, commentary to
Skírnismál 1/5); it is the latter sense that must have been to the fore in the nameof peace-Fróði, the bestower of ár ok friðr, ‘abundance and peace’, but probably
the former sense was more important in the names of historical men such as the
king of the Heathobards.
1/8 man, ‘slave-girl’, is here used in a collective sense.
1/8 hafðar SR, T, giõrvar C. It is possible to derive both manuscript forms
from one written original (‘gervar’ being more likely than ‘hafðar’), but giõrvar

44

Commentary
may be a sense replacement by the C scribe, gera at and hafa at both meaning‘put to use’.
2/1 On the sense of lúðr, ‘mill-crib’, see the Introduction II.
2/3 The word griá occurs in Old Norse only here and in 10/2. It is possible,
given the defective state of the text from which our manuscripts were copied,that ‘gria’ is a corrupt form, but what it could be derived from is not obvious. To
read it as a corrupt form of grá, ‘grey’ – the most obvious solution – is scarcely
satisfactory, as there is no obvious reason for such a common word to be corrupted twice, other than the initial grj- of grjóts preceding it; ‘grey’ is moreover a
vacuous description of the rock (though this cannot wholly preclude its appearance in the poem). If we are to seek a more satisfactory interpretation, the word
must clearly refer to some type of rock, perhaps one particularly suitable for
quernstones (German volcanic rock was the best available, and was sometimes
imported into Scandinavia; see Curwen 1937, and KLNM, s.v. kvarn, but thenarrative of the poem implies the stones were derived from local mountains).
The suggestion of LP is the most likely, that griá is accusative plural in 2/3, andgenitive plural in 10/2, and is derived from a nominative gré; de Vries (1977, s.v.
*gré) suggests a possible etymology from a root greu-, ‘feinreiben’. Thus griótz
griá would mean ‘grindstones of rock’.
2/6 ynði is probably meant in the more concrete sense of ‘refreshment’rather than the usual ‘delight’ (cf. Võluspá 61/8, where there is a hint of ‘liquid
refreshment’).
2/7 This line is problematic: whilst the general sense that Fróði told the girls
to get straight on with work is clear, it is not obvious whether Fróði made his
promise of rest once they had started work, or whether he made no mention of itat all. Once the noise of the mill starts, Fróði again tells the girls to work (3/5–6).
St. 7 seems to indicate that he said nothing further to them until he told them
they could have no rest, after which their goodwill towards him disappears. Yet
st. 4–6 seem to show the girls’ good disposition towards the king, which would
readily be motivated by the promise of rest mentioned in st. 2; their violent
reaction after st. 7 would moreover follow all the more naturally if it was a resultof Fróði breaking his word. On the whole, however, it seems most likely that nopromise was made. St. 2 then demonstrates Fróði’s importunate nature: he cannot wait to get at the mill’s gold, and has no regard for his servants. That is thelimit of his character; breaking of promises lies beyond this narrow scope.
2/8 hlióm is a word applied in particular to music (singing or instrumental);it thus looks forward to the girls’ song, but probably also encompasses the harmonic whirring of the mill. The word is also used in kennings for ‘battle’ (LP,s.v. hljómr); possibly the poet intended to hint at the violence to be milled out
for Fróði.
3/1–2 These lines, unfortunately absent from T, present some problems. The
seemingly nonsensical manuscript ‘þulu’ (nonetheless retained by Faulkes (ed.
I, 53; trans. 108) and interpreted as ‘caused to be uttered’) must be a mistake for‘þutu’ (cf. the kvern þjótandi, ‘whirring quern’, of Hlõðskviða 8); the manuscript‘þÃ¸ horvi©ar’ appears to be feminine genitive singular, without any referent. It

45

Grottasõngr
has been construed as referring to the quern, the thing from which silence has
been banished, but this is syntactically difficult given that no noun is present
to which ‘silence-banished’ would refer. The slight emendation adopted here
makes the word a feminine nominative plural, in agreement with the subject of
the sentence, namely the slave-girls, who, as they set to work, are ‘shunned bysilence’. A further possibility would be to emend to þõgn horfin var, ‘silence wasbanished’ (Kock 1923–35, §69). The word þõgn refers to lack of speech, not justabsence of sound: the next two lines show the girls busily telling each other what
to do, and soon will follow their singing. This is the hlióm referred to in 2/8. The
unusual formation þõgnhorfinn may be intended to recall the expression heillum
horfinn, ‘shunned by fortune’.
3/3 leggium is to be understood as a jussive subjunctive. The manuscripts
consistently use the first person plural indicative form in place of the earlier
subjunctive (which was beginning to disappear already in the earliest records, andhad been completely superseded by 1500; Noreen 1970, §536.2); the earlier forms
would have been leggim; léttim (3/4); malim (5/1,2, 21/8, 22/1); takim (20/5).
3/3 The mechanics of the action described here are unclear. Leggja would
most naturally be taken in the sense ‘set up’, but it is clear from 2/2 that the millis already set up. Some preparation of the corn-bin in the way of cleaning might
be expected, but this would hardly be described as leggja. The mill should havebeen firmly fixed (for example to a wall), but perhaps some extra strengthening
precautions are taken by the giantesses here. Also unusual is the use of lúðra in
the plural; the mill could only have one corn-bin, though it might be seen as
having two halves on either side of the stones. Lüning’s view, that the girls areproposing to stop milling (see von See et al. 2000, 880), seems unlikely given thestage of proceedings at this point in the poem.
3/4 The girls lighten the stones, that is, they adjust the upper stone by raising
the lightening tree. This would no doubt reduce the þyt, ‘noise’, of 3/1 to a more
acceptable level. The reading of T is a misinterpretation of minims (‘steuiû’ for‘steinû’), but the resulting stefium, ‘refrains’, may have been connected in themind of the T scribe with the slave-girls’ singing.
4/2 snúðga is probably a weak adjective, but it could also be taken as a compound adjective (cf. hvítaauri in Võluspá 19/4; see commentary in PE II). The
snúðgasteinn would be the top stone of the quern, which whirled around over the
motionless lower stone (designated possibly by the hõfga halli of 12/7). For theadjective snúðigr cf. Bjõrn krepphendi, Magnússdrápa 9/4 (Skj B I, 406), where
it describes a flying weapon-shaft.
4/3–4 Whilst these lines emphasise the unceasing labour of the giant maidens, working on whilst the rest of the servants slept, they also hint at a magicalenchantment wrought by the whirring mill, though this is not a theme developed in the extant form of the poem. A sleep enchantment forms an importantpart of the myth of the sampo in Finnish (see Introduction V).
4/5 If Menja’s name derives from men, ‘necklace, treasure’, it is appropriatethat she should be the one to speak of the riches they are to mill out.
4/6 meldrar: SR ‘meldr’, T ‘meldrs’ point to an antecedent ‘meldr’, corrected in
T; ‘meldr’ would be badly copied from ‘meldrar’ omitting the superscript abbre-

46

Commentary
viation for -ar (more likely than the omission of ‘s’ in a supposed *meldrs).
4/6 komit: the manuscripts read ‘ko®’ (SR), ‘comî’ (T), i.e. komin, which
would mean ‘Menja had come to the milling’. But she must be included in theþær of 3/1: she has been fully involved in the milling process already. The small
emendation adopted here changes the sense, so that the poet is saying the milling had reached the point where the flour starts to emerge from between thequernstones (meldr outside Grottasõngr appears always to mean ‘result of themilling process, flour’, but here a sense ‘milling process’ is implied; see von See
et al. 2000, 883). This prompts Menja to speak of the riches they are to mill out
in place of the expected wheat-flour.
5/1 Although mõlum is probably jussive, standing for an earlier malim, it could
be indicative: Menja could be simply pointing out the nature of the meldr as it
emerges from the mill.
5/2 mõlum alsælan is a difficult construction. Alsælan must be an accusative
masculine adjective (cf. parallel compounds such as matsæll, ‘fortunate in respect
to food’, a nickname in Bandamanna saga ch. 10), agreeing with an understoodFróða, ‘let us grind Fróði happy in all things’, but mala is not elsewhere recordedwith an adjective used as an object in this way. Snorri, in his prose rendering,
substitutes the noun sælu. There does not appear to be any abstract noun fromwhich alsælan could be derived or corrupted, however; Snorri has merely simplified. Alsæll appears to be used primarily in Christian religious contexts: alsælan hug occurs in Heilagra anda vísur 11/4 (Skj B II, 178), and the word is also
used in the Stockholm Homily Book 29/31 (SG).
5/4 feginslúðri: for the use of a genitive adjective as the first element in a compound cf. Skírnismál 26/1: tamsvendi (and commentary in PE II).
5/5–8 It is possible that this helmingr is based on actual charms (von See etal. 2000, 886): cf. the phrase sem á dúni søfr dóttir Atla, ‘where Atli’s daughter
sleeps on down’, in the inscription from Årdal kirke, Sogn (Olsen 1941–60, IV,
126–36).
6 This stanza seems to be a deliberate reflection of the traditional descriptionof the Fróða friðr; this well-known time of peace and prosperity, described in the
Introduction V, ‘King Fróði’, is thus attributed to the working of the mill (sucha clear, or exclusive, connection was not made elsewhere). The poet makes noallusion, however, to the tale of the gold ring remaining undisturbed for many
years beside the highway on Jalangrsheiðr. It is likely that the poet has madeuse of Skjõldunga saga or a closely related source in this deliberately allusive
stanza – though the lateness of the Latin recension of Skjõldunga saga admits the
remote possibility that it may itself have been influenced by Grottasõngr.
The phrases used have an air of legal terminology, but exact parallels cannot
in fact be found. Sitt bjó til betra occurs in a verse of Ámundi Árnason (thirteenth
century) describing a ruler, a true friend of the law and righteousness (Skj B II,59), where the sense appears to be ‘prepared himself for a better [home]’ in a
religious sense. The use of búa in an absolute sense, ‘prepare’, ‘work’, without areflexive (‘prepare oneself ’) or a direct object is unusual, but cf. Rígsþula 16/4:
bió til váðar, ‘prepared to make cloth’; the construction is presumably intended to47

Grottasõngr
parallel til bana orka of the next line. Búumk til vígs, ‘I am ready for battle’, occurs
in Egill’s lausavísa 29 (Skj B I, 49). The nearest parallel to orka til bana seems to
be orka til þarfa in lausavísa 43 of Egill (Skj B I, 52), meaning effectively ‘help’.
6/5 Compare Grípisspá 15/5–6: þú munt hõggva hvõsso sverði, ‘you will strikewith sharp sword’.
6/7 bana bróður: the brother’s killer is an ancient mythical motif (see Lokasenna
17/6 and commentary in PE II), here placed in a heroic context and given legal
rather than mythological import (cf. the bróður bani of Sigrdrífumál 35).
7 It is possible that some lines are missing at the beginning of the stanza,
though the continuity of sense in the extant text can be defended: the slave-girls’
effusion on Fróði’s behalf is met with the cold indifference of his command to
take no rest.
7/1–2 Compare Oddrúnargrátr 8, svá at hón ekki kvað orð it fyrra, ‘for she
had spoken no word before’. Here and at 18/6 the metrically better T text ispreferred to the text of SR (kvað ekki, hlýða vill). However, given the lack ofmetrical regularity elsewhere in the poem (e.g. 15/1–2), the T reading does notnecessarily represent the poet’s intention.
7/3–4 The manuscripts read sofið eigi þit né of sal gaukar, which makes little
sense. Clearly a corrupt text lies behind both T and SR. Apart from the grammatical problems it may also be noted that cuckoos do not frequent halls (SG).
The emendation is based on Snorri’s prose account; he says þá gaf hann þeimeigi lengri hvíld eða svefn en gaukrinn þagði eða lióð mátti kveða, ‘he gave themno more rest or sleep than a cuckoo is silent or it takes to sing a song’. The
phrase syngrat gaukr occurs in Egill’s lausavísa 27 (Skj B I, 48) – ‘the cuckoo
does not sing’ when the hound is circling below it; both poetic contexts appear
to allude to the cuckoo as an archetypal incessant chatterer (other associationsof the cuckoo in ancient Norse and Old English sources, either with magic, as
in some runic bracteates (see McKinnell, Simek and Düwel 2004, 72–3), or as
a bird of ill-omen (e.g. the Old English Seafarer 53), seem irrelevant). Egill’s isthe only other use of gaukr recorded in verse in LP; that the poet of Grottasõngr
has borrowed from Egill is indicated moreover by the occurrence in the samestanza of Egill of the word sjõtul, the only other occurrence of which is in Grotta­sõngr 16/7. (Egill’s verse reads: þar nautk enn sem optarr arnstalls sjõtul-bjarnar,‘there I benefited again, as often, from the settle of an eagle’s pedestal bjõrn’;the pedestal that eagles settle on is a rock, equivalent to arinn, ‘hearth-stone’:hence Arinbjõrn, Egill’s comrade.) It appears that various scribal misreadings ofletters and abbreviations have taken place to produce the text of these lines asfound in the manuscripts; at least one, misreading of ‘t’ as ‘l’, occurs elsewhere(cf. 3/1 þutu). Another possibility would be to allow the manuscript reading tostand, and assume some lines have dropped out, so that the statement would
have been to the effect ‘Sleep no [more than x’s do not sing] nor the cuckoos
about the hall’, but Snorri’s summary does not reveal anything these lines could
have contained.
7/6 The sort of ljóð implied here is the short charm of the sort listed in
Hávamál 146–63, suitable for any eventuality; particularly swift must have been
the ljóð against a speeding weapon (Hávamál 150).

48

Commentary
8/1 The form ‘varattv’ in SR is probably a slip. Noreen (1970, §534.2.d) cites
the loss of -t in the second person singular preterite when þú follows immediately; here however a negative -a- intervenes. Since the negative a was archaicby the time of the manuscript, varattu could possibly represent an erroneously
reconstructed form. Note that the form kvaðattu occurs in Oddrúnargrátr
12/5.
8/2 fullspakr: the link between wisdom and prescience emerges clearly inVõluspá 29/3: spaklig (see commentary ad loc.). Fróði is ‘the wise’ (a multarum
rerum scientia sic dictus, ‘so called from his knowledge of many matters’, as Skjõld­unga saga puts it), but he lacked foresight for himself, unlike the giant maidens(or so they claim).
8/3 málvinr: lit. ‘a friend in speech’. The word is used with deep irony: Fróði
was far from friendly in his speech to the girls. The word is elsewhere usedin the sense of ‘sweetheart’ (Guðrúnarkviða I 20, Krákumál 20): the ‘people’s
sweetheart’ refers to Fróði’s popularity as bestower of peace and well-being.
Menja uses the title with biting sarcasm.
9 Five mighty giants, four of them named, are mentioned to impress uponFróði that he has taken on more than he bargained for in buying the girls.
Hrungnir’s father appears to be an invention of the poet of Grottasõngr; he is
nowhere else mentioned.
The story of Hrungnir, ‘Noisy’ (de Vries 1977, s.v.), is recounted in Skáldskaparmál ch. 17 (SnE 100–4; ed. Faulkes I, 20–2; trans. Faulkes 77–9), basedon Haustlõng 14–19 (Skj B I, 17–18); he is also mentioned in Hárbarðsljóð 15,
Lokasenna 61, 63, Hymiskviða 16, Sigrdrífumál 15, Ragnarsdrápa 17 (Skj B I,4), Kormakr’s lausavísa 14 (Skj B I, 73), and Háttatal 30 (Skj B II, 69). In acontest with Þórr, Hrungnir defended himself by placing his shield beneathhim, believing the god would attack from below; he cast a whetstone at Þórr,who shattered it in mid-air, but received a splinter of it in his forehead; the god
crushed the stone head of Hrungnir.
Þjazi (meaning obscure, but probably originally related to ‘father’ words: deVries 1977, s.v.) was the father of Skaði, wife of Njõrðr (Skáldskaparmál ch.
G56: SnE 30; ed. Faulkes I, 1–3; trans. Faulkes 59–61); Þjazi abducted Iðunn
from Ásgarðr by assuming the form of an eagle; Loki retrieved Iðunn, and Þjazi
pursued; when he reached Ásgarðr, the Æsir set fire to his feathers and slew him.
His daughter marched off to Ásgarðr in panoply of war to seek vengeance, but
was placated by the promise of one of the gods as husband, the condition being
she had to choose him by his feet alone (Skáldskaparmál ch. G56: SnE 80–1; ed.
Faulkes I, 2; trans Faulkes 61). Þjazi is also mentioned in Haustlõng 1 (Skj B I,
14), Kormakr’s Sigurðardrápa 6/4 (Skj B I, 69), Grímnismál 11, Hárbarðsljóð 19,
Lokasenna 50, 51, and Hyndluljóð 30.
Iði, ‘Industrious’ (de Vries 1977, s.v.), was brother of Þjazi (Skáldskaparmál
ch. G56: SnE 81; ed. Faulkes I, 3; trans. Faulkes 61); when their father died, hissons divided their inheritance by each taking a mouthful of gold. The name also
occurs in Bjarkamál 5 (Skj B I, 171), Þórsdrápa 2 (Skj B I, 139), Friðþjófs rímur
I, 21/3 (Rímnasafn I, 414), in two anonymous verses (Skj B I, 601, 604), and inþulur (Skj B I, 658 st. 1/4).

49

Grottasõngr
Aurnir (probably ‘Muddy’: aur- is a common element in giant names; cf.
Aurboða, Aurgelmir, Aurgrímnir) occurs as a giant name in þulur (Skj B I, 659b 4); in Sturla Þórðarson’s Hákonarkviða 19 (1263–4, Skj B II, 122); and in averse from Bergbúaþáttr 9 (Skj B II, 228). It also occurs in a context at least
comparable with Grottasõngr, in the third of three vísur found in Hemings þáttr
(from Hauksbók) sung by a troll-woman flying through the air on a wolf, carrying a trough of blood and limbs and prophesying defeat for Haraldr harðráði as
he lies off the coast at Scarborough (Skj B I, 400; recent edition and discussion
in Poole 1991, 16–17). The troll-woman is called brúðr Aurnis jóða, ‘bride of thechildren of Aurnir’. Nothing is known of the history of Aurnir.
9/7 bergrisa: the word is not found elsewhere in Eddic poetry; it is used in atenth-century verse (Skj B I, 172 st. 7), in Buslubœn 8 (Skj B II, 352; Bósa sagach. 5), and also in Gylfaginning ch. 15, 21, 27 (SnE 23, 29, 33; ed. Faulkes 18, 23,
25; trans. Faulkes 18, 22, 25).
9/7–8 Cf. Oddrúnargrátr 11: sem við brœðrom tveim of borin værim, ‘as if wewere born of two brothers’.
9/8 The alliteration falls on the second stressed syllable.
10/1 Grotti is the ‘grinder’; grotti survives in Norn and Faeroese as a designation for the nave in the lower quernstone, and in Norwegian for the block in thenave; in Danish dialect the verb grotte means ‘grind up fine’ (see de Vries 1977
on the etymology).
10/2 See commentary to 2/3.
10/7–8 SG retain the manuscript reading ef vissi vitt (T vit) vætr til hennar,
taking this to mean ‘if sorcery did not belong to her’. However, the mention ofmagic here appears inappropriate: it is not a theme developed in the poem, andeven if it were, the statement by the girl that she would not be working the mill
if she – or it – were not in possession of magic powers would be pointless inthe context. Moreover, the word rendered ‘magic’ – vitt or variants – is foundexceedingly rarely, occurring with any certainty only in a couple of passages
in the Norwegian laws and probably in the archaic Ynglingatal 6 (see Cleasby
and Vigfusson 1957, s.v. vitt, for citations), where it most likely refers not tomere ‘magic’, but to a particular (and now unidentifiable) object used in conjury. Rather, the stanza in fact must relate to, and justify, the girls’ attribute offoreknowledge: they are stating that they knew about the situation they now
find themselves in long before it actually took place; therefore they allowed it
to happen, with the result that they now command control over the mill, withwhich they will work a punishment for Fróði (as noted, this may be more theirpost factum explanation for their plight). The emendations adopted here are
fairly minor: final -m is regularly dropped before a labial in the manuscripts (cf.
stóðu[m], next stanza; see Noreen 1970, §531.3), double and single consonants
alternate often without regard to phonology (and tt here is represented merely
by a dotted t); the change of hennar to kvernar is more major. Hennar makes nosense, as it cannot meaningfully be related to any antecedent; it is also suspectsemantically as a weak word coming at the climax of the forcefully stated stanza.
Kvernar is the most apposite word to fit the context from which hennar could
be corrupted.

50

Commentary
11 Eiríkr Magnússon suggests the image of stones being hurled by giantesses
may be related to the account of Rymbegla: Þat var á einu ári, þá er Fróði var
gamall, at reiðar þrumur kómu stórar ok eldingar; þá hvarf sól af himni ok skálf
jõrð svá at bjõrg hrutu ór stað ok þá kómu bjõrg ór jõrðu ok viltusk allir spádómar,‘It was one year, when Fróði was old, that mighty wild thunderings and lightnings came; then the sun disappeared from the sky and the earth shook so thatthe mountains quivered from their place and crags came out of the earth andall forecasts went awry’. This is based on Skjõldunga saga, of which the Latinsummary here reads (ch. 3, ÍF 35, 6): Deinde post multorum annorum curriculum
insveta facta ecclipsis solis cum terræ motu saxa et scopulos loco movente atqve disrumpente. Illum igitur putant fuisse annum et tempus passionis Christi, ‘Then after
the course of many years there occurred an unwonted eclipse of the sun andan earthquake, in which rocks and crags were dislodged and cast down. It isbelieved that this occurred in the year and at the time of the passion of Christ’.
It is difficult to say if the motif of the age of peace and wealth ending in natural
cataclysms is older than this Christian version, but it may well be. The difficultywith associating the emergence of the millstones with such events is that thiswould scarcely allow enough time for the construction of the mill and acquisition of the slave-girls to work it: the cataclysms mark the end of Fróði’s reign,
not merely an event within it. The poem does not present the casting up of thestones as an apocalyptic event, and the collapse of the mill cannot be equatedwith such natural events as Skjõldunga saga describes. On the whole, therefore, it
is difficult to see any particular connection with Skjõldunga saga at this point.
11/1 The use of vér (plural) in place of the dual vit may be a scribal slip.
11/4 firir iõrð neðan characterises the giantesses as chthonic or underworld
beings: the phrase is used in Lokasenna 23, Võluspá 42 and Alvíssmál 3, all relating to giants, dwarfs or the dead.
11/6 meginverkum is otherwise found only in Heilagra anda vísur (Skj B II,
178). Von See et al. (2000, 909) suggest it is borrowed from Old English mægenweorc, and cite the Paris Psalter, Psalm 91/4.
11/7 SR has ‘færþ`’; the T reading ‘haufô’ probably represents a misinterpretation of ‘hofô’, i.e. hófom, ‘lifted’; this may well be the original reading, which
SR has replaced with the semantic equivalent fœrðum; SG quote some parallels(an Uppland runic inscription, and Þjalar Jóns saga) where fœra steinn (bjõrg)ór stað is used of moving stones. This is the only place in the poem where œ isrepresented by the up-to-date ‘æ’ in SR (except once in the commonplace wordbœ); the T reading is preferred as being marginally more likely to be earlier.
11/8 setberg: a saddle-backed mountain, suitable for seating giants (SG);the word occurs in topographical names in Norway and Iceland (Fritzner
1886–1972, s.v.; Kålund 1908–18, I 428, II 390), as well as Norse-colonised
areas of England (Watts 2004, s.v. Sadberge, Sedbergh), where such mountains
may have been associated with gods as well as giants (see Ælfric, De falsis diis
138, in Pope 1969, 684): this would lend a more aggressive tone to the statement, with the giantesses appearing in a traditional role as antagonists of thegods. The word occurs twice in kennings: setbergs bõnd, ‘gods of the mountain’,i.e. giants, in Eilífr Guðrúnarson (Skj B I, 144) (though Weber 1970 questions
this interpretation), and linna setberg, ‘mountain seat of serpents’, i.e. gold, in51

Grottasõngr
Eyjólfr dáðaskáld’s Bandadrápa 3 (Skj B I, 191). In Gylfaginning ch. 47 (SnE 59;
ed. Faulkes 43; trans. Faulkes 45 as ‘table mountain’) the giant Skrýmir thrusts
a setberg in front of him to defend himself against Þórr; possibly the poet of
Grotta­sõngr is alluding to the lost Eddic lay that Snorri almost certainly used asa source (see Brennecke 1981).
12/5–6 The same words are used to describe the dislodging of the stones fromthe earth as are used in st. 4 for the action of turning the quern made fromthese rocks. The snúðgi steinn and the hõfgi hallr (or snúðgasteinn and hõfgahallr)
may designate the two stones used to make the quern, as Snorri seems to haveunderstood (fannz í Danmõrk kvernsteinar tveir, ‘two quernstones were found in
Denmark’); see commentary to 4/2.
13–14 The exploits of the giant girls in Sweden must relate in some way to Fróði.
It was presumably through defeat in a Swedish war that the girls fell into Fróði’s
hands as captives. Snorri appears to have connected this with frið-Fróði, who issaid to have purchased the girls while visiting Fjõlnir of Sweden. However, inSkjõldunga saga it is Frodo IV, son of Fridleifus, and father of Ingialldus (and thus
in origin the Heathobard king), who has the greatest connection with Sweden.
Frodo’s half-brother Alo, a pirate, was adopted as king of Sweden, upon which
Frodo decided to assassinate him in case he should come seeking his patrimony inDenmark. This task was entrusted to Starcardus, who slew the king in his bath.
Frodo then defeated the Swedish king Iorundus and took his daughter. Iorundus
murdered Frodo as he was making a night sacrifice. Further exploits of this Fróði
are recounted in Ynglinga saga ch. 26; he attacks and lays waste Sweden after KingÓttarr has refused to pay tribute; Óttarr in turn attacks Denmark while Fróði isabsent. It is more likely that the poet of Grottasõngr wished to evoke these Swedish wars to accommodate the giantesses into an accepted ‘historical’ tradition,rather than the weaker links between frið-Fróði and Sweden. However, the two
leaders mentioned, Gotþormr and Knúi, are not found associated with any Fróði
elsewhere. Gotþormr is a name known from the Sigurðr poems as a brother ofGunnarr, Hõgni, and Guðrún (Grípisspá 50, Brot 4, Sigurðarkviða in skamma 20,
22, Guðrúnarkviða II 7, Hyndluljóð 27). The name Knúi is found in a list of heroic
names in Õrvar-Odds saga, where Guttormr also occurs (Skj B II, 316 IV 3, 5).
There appears little justification for the giantesses’ engagement in the wars
mentioned in terms of the structure of the poem. The poet may be intending
to imitate Darraðarljóð, where the engagement in war by the weaving valkyries
as they proclaim the outcome of the battle is essential. There is also some similarity to the part played by Þorgerðr hõlgabrúðr and her sister Irpa in Hákon
jarl’s battle with the Jómsvíkingar (in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, ch. 154–5, in
Flat­eyjarbók I, 210–11).The Grottasõngr poet may have wished to appropriate
some of the terror of these beings for his giantesses.
13/4 í fólk stigum: cf. í fólk ganga, lausavísa 2 of Óláfr inn helgi (Skj B I, 210)and í fólk vaða of Darraðarljóð 4 (all meaning ‘to engage in war’).
13/5 beittum biõrnu: it is difficult to decide between the nearly homophonous
T and SR forms beittum/beiddum biõrnu, both with the general meaning ‘wehunted bears’, but beita, ‘make bite, bait’, better emphasises the heroic risks

52

Commentary
the girls undertake (cf. Õlkofra þáttr ch. 1, ÍF 11, 86, where Õlkofri, having got
into trouble for accidentally burning down a group of chieftains’ woodlands,
is refused help by his former patrons, who declare at þeir mundu eigi þeim birni
beitask, ‘that they would not bait that bear’, i.e. bring trouble upon themselves).
The image of warriors as bears being overpowered as an example of heroic feats
is found in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 8/5: er ek biõrno tók í Bragalundi, ‘when
I took bears in Braga­lundr’, which may have influenced Grottasõngr. Bjõrn,‘bear’, used in the sense of ‘warrior’ seems to occur only in riddling or enigmatic contexts (thus in the example just cited, Helgi is attempting to be evasive,
being uncertain who he is talking to; for other examples see von See et al. 2000,
913–14), but the riddling context appears to be lost on the poet of Grottasõngr.
Bugge suggests an emendation (adopted by SG) to sneiddum brynjur; it is basedon Víkarsbálkr 11/7–8 (Skj B II, 346): brynjur sníddum ok brutum skjõldu, ‘wesliced byrnies and shattered shields’, which might then be viewed as a likely
borrow­ing from Grottasõngr. The word-order brynjur sneiddum would be metrically preferable, as in Víkarsbálkr. However, the emendation appears too far
removed from the forms of SR and T to be adopted here.
13/8 gráserkiat: the warriors are ‘grey-shirted’ with iron mail-shirts; cf.
hringserkjat lið, ‘ring-shirted army’, in Merlínusspá II, 46 (Skj B II, 33); í grám
serkjum, ‘in grey shirts’, in Õrvar-Odds saga (Skj B II, 311, III 3/3).
13/8 SR ‘lit’ is a result of hypercorrection of final -ð to a (supposed) earlier -t.
14 An interference in politics is found also in Atlamál 96–9, where Guðrún
and her brothers go roving, killing a king and freeing outlaws. This is similarin that a woman is involved in these Viking activities, and in the contrast which
both poems draw between the former life of freedom and the present one ofdrudgery (Guðrún is married to Atli). Moreover, in both instances the female
activists bring about vengeance on their masters.
14/7 kyrrseta: this word occurs in Óttarr svarti’s Knútsdrápa 3 (Skj B I, 273)
from 1024, but is otherwise a prose word.
14/8 felli: the subjunctive implies purpose: the giant girls are actively engaged
in toppling Knúi. The construction áðr . . . felli is fairly common, however: it
occurs in Gísl Illugason’s Erfikvæði (c. 1104) 13/8 (áðr Hugi felli: Skj B I, 412),
and frequently in Krákumál (twelfth century) (st. 5, 6, 7, 10, 20: Skj B I, 650 ff.).
De Vries (1964–7, §129) regards Gísl’s phrase as borrowed from Grottasõngr, but
the expression is too short to draw any firm conclusion.
15/3 kõppum: either from kapp, ‘brave deed’, or from kappi, ‘champion’; cf.
kendir at þegnum, ‘recognised as subordinates’ (Óttarr svarti, Hõfuðlausn 19,
c. 1023, Skj B I, 272).
15/5 skorðum . . . geirum: skora (of which skorðum is a syncopated preterite),frequent in prose, is found only here in Eddic poetry. Compare Sighvatr’s Erfi­
drápa 6/3 (Skj B I, 240, c. 1040): hvõssum hundmõrgum [. . .] lét grundar võrðr
með võpnum skorða víkingum skõr, ‘with sharp weapons the guardian of the land
had the heads sheared from a good many Vikings’ (though note the varia lectio
form skerða, ‘diminish’, here; skorðum too could be read as skõrðum, the preteriteof skerða). The related skera commonly occurs in heroic verse of wounds, in53

Grottasõngr
particular with reference to the cutting out of Hõgni’s heart (Oddrúnargrátr
28/5–6, Atlakviða 22, 24, Atlamál 59, Guðrúnarhvõt 17).
15/8 brand ruðum: rjóða brand is a fairly frequent expression in skaldic verse(Skj B I, 133, 218, 338, 380).
16–17 St. 16 represents the lowest point in the expression of the giantesses’
fortunes: in the cold drudgery of slavery these mighty warrior women are forced
to turn a mill to produce peace. Menja appears ready to give up milling, but
in the next stanza her companion urges her on to grind out not peace but anarmy of vengeance to overthrow Fróði. A combination of traditions seems tobe the poet’s purpose here: the peace of frið-Fróði is about to end in the violent
overthrow of the murderous Fróði the erstwhile Heathobard.
16/3 miskunnlausar: this word does not appear elsewhere in verse. Miskunn
is found only in late religious verse; the earliest is probably Harmsól from thetwelfth century (st. 4, 46, Skj B I, 549, 560; for further references see LP, s.v.).
A double meaning may be intended in the present context: the obvious sense is‘(treated) without pity’, but the usual prose sense is ‘having no pity (on others)’(see von See et al. 2000, 922–3, for examples). The implication is that the giantesses will also behave without pity in their subsequent treatment of Fróði.
16/5–6 aurr etr iliar, en ofan kulði: cf. Rígsþula 10/3: aurr var á ilium, ‘soil was on
the soles of her feet’, describing Þír, ‘Thrall-woman’ (see commentary in PE II).
16/7 dólgs siõtul: dólg, ‘enmity, strife’, occurs in the most ancient skaldic verse(see LP for references); in Eddic poetry it occurs in Helgakviða Hundingsbana
I 20 (dólga dynr, ‘din of battle’), and, as in Grottasõngr, in kennings: dólgrõgnir,‘sovereign of enmity’ (warrior) (Atlakviða 31); dólgspor, ‘battle trace’ (wound)(Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 42); dólgviðr, ‘battle tree’ (warrior) (Sigrdrífumál
29). Siõtull occurs elsewhere only in a lausavísa of Egill (see commentary to
7/3–4), where it means ‘seat’ (cf. English settle); an interpretation of dólgs siõtul
as ‘seat of enmity’ would appear feasible, but instances of ‘seat’ words being
used in the sense of ‘source’ seem hard to adduce in Old Norse. Whilst lexicalinfluence from Egill’s verse is likely, semantically siõtul is better linked here withthe derived verb sjõtlask, ‘subside, settle’, hence siõtul is ‘that which settles’.
Following the pattern of the heroic and skaldic verse known to him, the poet hasformed a striking designation for the mill as a disperser of strife.
16/8 daprt er at Fróða: cf. Hárbarðsljóð 4/3: dõpr ero þín heimkynni, ‘dismal
are your home affairs’ (Óðinn taunting Þórr). In Eddic poetry the word is foundalso in Atlamál 59/7 (dag dapran, ‘dismal day’), Sigurðarkviða in skamma 54/5
(daprar miniar, ‘dismal memories’). In all these instances the word is associatedwith death (respectively a dead mother, the servant’s own forthcoming death, adead husband).
17/4 of hleyti: the manuscript form ‘leiti’ represents a common spelling of
hleyti in the sense ‘share’ (Cleasby and Vigfusson 1957, s.v. hleyti II). Of either
means ‘over, beyond’, hence ‘beyond my share’, or it is the (chiefly poetic) en­clitic
particle, of little semantic weight; in noun phrases the word order adjective +of + noun, as here, is typical (see Cleasby and Vigfusson 1957, s.v. of enclytic
particle II); the meaning then would be ‘for my part I have milled my share’.

54Commentary
17/5 The change of mood, from Menja’s statement that she has milled enoughand will stop, to one of defiant refusal to rest the hands before the milling hasreached completion, indicates the probability of a change of speaker to Fenja,
although there is no indication of this in the manuscripts. The T reading, withthe giantesses as subject, is preferable to that of SR with the unclear singularsubject (in the subjunctive); there has clearly been confusion of minims in the
manuscript tradition.
17/8 The use of the subjunctive þykki emphasises the irony: when Fróði’s
overthrow has been ground out, he will certainly feel enough milling has been
performed.
18 Whereas Menja had prophesied riches for Fróði and had finally resigned
herself merely to cease milling, Fenja proposes to change the milling to oneof hostility, and she prophesies the overthrow of Fróði. He had fallen asleep
earlier, dreaming of riches, but is now taunted by Fenja to awake, if he wishes tohear the song they are now singing. The sõgum fornum may, as SG argue, referto the histories the girls have related in st. 9 and following, but the expression
carries more weight if it is taken to mean the tales of the feuds and wars Fróði
was involved in (such as are alluded to in Beowulf when it recounts the history of
Froda and Ingeld), ancient to the audience of the poem, though still to happen
from the perspective of the characters in the poem; cf. sõgom fornom, ‘old tales’(Oddrúnargrátr 1/2); fornom stõfom, ‘old lore’ (Vafþrúðnismál 1/5); fornar rúnar,‘old runes’ (Võluspá 57/8); forn spiõll fira, ‘old news of men [i.e. of the world]’(Võluspá 1/7); fornra spialla, ‘old news’ (Helgakviða Hundingsbana I 36/2).
18/1 hõndla, an emendation of Gudbrand Vigfusson, appears the best solution for this clearly corrupted passage. The SR reading ‘hõlða’ (‘of freemen’)makes at best strained sense (‘hands of men shall [become] hard staves’), andpresupposes the ellipsis of an infinitive ‘be’ or ‘become’. The T reading ‘holda’
might readily be taken as standing simply for halda (instances of ‘o’ for ‘a’ arelisted for example in Cleasby and Vigfusson 1957, s.v. faldr), but, as von See et al.
(2000, 933–4) point out, halda in the sense of ‘grip’ requires a dative. Suspicions
are aroused too by the fact that that this is the only place where ‘õ’ occurs in the
text of the poem in SR, suggesting innovation by the scribe (such as a misreading of ‘ô’ as ‘õ’ and ‘correction’ to ‘õ’).
18/2 triónor: the usual meaning is ‘snouts’ (trjónu trolls, ‘snout troll’, is found in
Haustlõng 17 (Skj B I, 18) as a designation of Þórr’s hammer). However, von See etal. (2000, 935–6, following SG’s earlier suggestion) point out the likely existenceof another meaning, ‘shaft’, found (arguably) in Eiríks saga rauða and Sturlunga.
A meaning ‘shaft’ and thus ‘spear’ is clearly called for in Grottasõngr.
18/4–5 The repeated call to awaken, used here as a device to link helmingar
together (cf. 21/8, 22/1), is reminiscent of Bjarkamál 1–2 (Skj B I, 171), where acall to awaken as day breaks is made several times: but the call is explicitly to war,
not to old stories, as in Grottasõngr. It seems likely that Grotta­sõngr’s allusion tothe older poem underlines the nature of these old songs as ones of war in whichFróði is overthrown.
18/6 The word-order of T is followed as being metrically preferable; even so,
the fall of the alliteration on the modal verb vill betrays weak poetic technique.

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Grottasõngr
It is possible that the text was corrupted at some point (in which case SR ef þúhlýða vill could be correct).
18/8 Cf. Oddrúnargrátr 1/2: í sõgom fornom, ‘in ancient tales’.
19 The stanza bears a strong resemblance, presumably coincidental, to the
Old English Finnsburh Fragment lines 3 ff.: Ne ðis ne dagað eastan, ne her draca
ne fleogeð, ne her ðisse healle hornas ne byrnað, ac her forþ berað [. . .] nu arisað
weadæda [. . .] ac onwacnigeað nu, wigend mine, habbað eowre linda, ‘This is not
the day dawning from the east, nor is any dragon flying here, nor are the eavesof this hall burning here, but [an army] here brings [weapons] [. . .] now deeds
of woe arise [. . .] but awake now, my warriors, hold your shields’. To this may
be added the opening of Bjarkamál, marking the beginning of battle: Dagr’s
upp kominn, ‘Day has arisen’. Behind the ‘fire to the east’ of Grottasõngr (surely
pointing to the dawning day), and the disavowal of the fiery light at Finnsburh
being the new day, lies the suspicion that a fiery sky marked the onset of battle:
cf. the vígroði, ‘battle reddening’, of Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 19. Also to
be compared with the scene in Grottasõngr is that described by Saxo (VII, i.7),
where Frodo V is attacked and burned in his hall at night, with the implicationthat he may have been asleep (inferred from his punishment of those that woke
him, mentioned previously).
19/1 Cf. Hyndluljóð 49/1: Hyr sék brenna, ‘I see a fire burning’.
19/3 Cf. Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 12/8: vígspiõll segir, ‘tells news of thebattle’. Vígspiõll does not occur elsewhere.
19/4 viti: SG take the mention of beacons as evidence for the poem’s composition in Norway under Hákon góði (935–61), who made use of warning beacons(Hákonar saga góða ch. 22, ÍF 26, 176–7); however, as SG point out, beacons
were also used later in Orkney (see Orkneyinga saga ch. 69–71). This places theuse of such warning beacons in the mid-twelfth century, in both a time and place
more likely for the composition of the poem.
19/6 af bragði: the expression is common in prose, but occurs sporadically in(fairly late) verse: Atlamál 2/7, a vísa of Ragnars saga loðbrókar (Skj B II, 258),
and Krákumál 25 (Skj B I, 655).
19/7 The burning of Fróði in his hall forms the dramatic climax to the revenge
taken by the sons of his murdered brother in Hrólfs saga kraka; however, in Skjõld­unga saga peace-Fróði too is burnt in his hall, by Mýsingr. The poet again has not
focused on an event which can be used to distinguish one Fróði from the other.
19/7–8 Neckel (1908, 428) compares the mid-twelfth century Ívarr Ingimundarson’s Sigurðarbõlkr 24/7–8 (Skj B I, 471): brunnu byggðir fyr buðlungi, ‘thehabitations burnt despite the prince’; this is likely to be borrowed from Grotta­sõngr (see de Vries 1964–7, §129).
19/8 buðlungi: a term for ‘prince’ derived from Buðli, father of Atli, found, in
Eddic poetry, only in heroic poems; it is also used in Ynglingatal 32, 34 (Skj B
I, 13), by Snorri in Háttatal 14, 74 (Skj B II, 64, 81), and in kennings in skaldic
verse (see LP, s.v. buðlungr).
20/2 Hleiðr was regarded as the ancient seat of the Danish kings; it is identified with the modern hamlet of Lejre, near Roskilde. There may have been56

some historical basis in this tradition as far as the Danish kings of the fifth tosixth centuries are concerned (including Hrólfr kraki), but Fróði, as a Heathobard originally, would not have lived there. By the time of all the Scandinavian
records, Hleiðr is regarded as the seat of all the Fróðis, including peace-Fróði, so
little can be concluded from its mention in the poem at this point.
20/3 The T reading rauðom ringom is possibly original. Initial h- before a consonant is also lacking in T’s ‘lyða’ and ‘leiti’. Whilst this would be consistent
with a non-Icelandic origin, Icelandic skalds would also have been open to using
alliteratively felicitous dialectal variants (the same phrase occurs elsewhere inheroic verse, but often requires h-, e.g. at Þrymskviða 29).
20/4 regingrióti: regin normally refers to ‘the powers’, i.e. the gods, but a basic
sense of ‘mighty’ is more likely here: cf. the reginþing, ‘mighty assembly’, i.e.
battle, of Helgakviða Hundingsbana I 51. Compare also reginfjalli, ‘mighty, wild
mountain’, of Heiðreks gátur 10 (Skj B II, 242). Possibly a sense of fatality may
have adhered to the word regin, which is related to Gothic ragin, ‘judgement’,but if he inherited the word regingriót with this connotation the poet of Grotta­sõngr seems not to have been aware of it.
20/4 mõndli: on the ‘handle’ as a cosmological entity, see the section on ‘The
cosmic mill’ in Introduction V.
20/7 vamlar: SR reads ‘val mar’, where the short line beneath ‘lm’ indicatesthat some sort of correction is$ required; it does not appear to indicate deletion,
but may indicate transposition (a similar sign is found elsewhere); possibly thescribe wrote ‘val’ in anticipation of valdreyra. The word vamall does not occur
in modern Icelandic, but is well recorded elsewhere in Scandinavian languages(e.g. Danish vammel, ‘sickly’). Another possibility is to follow the T reading‘valnar’; this word too is not found in modern Icelandic, but is well recordedin all other Scandinavian tongues. Particularly apposite is the sense in Norn:valin, valen, ‘benumbed with cold, of limbs, esp. the hands; fumbling, lacking
handiness in doing a piece of work’ (on this suggestion, see Svavar Sigmundsson1975). Two orthographic developments are thus possible: a. an original ‘valnar’
was miswritten by the SR scribe as ‘valmar’ and then corrected with a small line
between l and m: the only distraction to cause this miswriting would seem tobe the ‘ma’ in the preceding eruma; or b. an original ‘vamlar’ was miswritten in
the antecedent of SR and T (which shows clear signs of being a defective text
by the time of the writing of SR and T) as ‘valmar’, under the influence of theseveral val- compounds in the text, in particular of the following í valdreyra; thisform was copied by the scribe of SR, who marked it as dubious and probably
intended a transposition of l and m by his mark, whereas the scribe of T or his
antecedent corrected the form to ‘valnar’. This implies that the word valinn was
still understood in Icelandic in the seventeenth century – unless the T scribe
was simply interpreting the word as the past participle of velja, ‘chosen’ (forbloodshed, í valdreyra) (which would, however, make nonsense of the girls’
account of their marching into the fray in many wars, assuming that eruma wascorrectly read as ‘we are not’).
20/7 valdreyra is a highly unusual word, occurring in verse elsewhere only inHaraldskvæði 13 (Skj B I, 24); the only other comparable compound appears to
be valblóð (Guðrúnarhvõt 4, Krákumál 2 (Skj B I, 649)).

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21 The reason for the shift to the past tense and to the third person is unclear;
the speech appears to be blending with the narrative of lines 5 to 7.
21/1–2 míns fõður mær: for this periphrasis for ‘I’ cf. míns fõður sveinn, ‘myfather’s boy’ (Þórarinn svarti, Skj B I, 107), Sigurðr [. . .] mun [. . .] mõgr fõður
kallaðr, ‘Sigurðr will be called son of his father’ (Ragnars saga loðbrókar, Skj B
II, 253).
21/7 iárni varðar: cf. Darraðarljóð 2/7: járnvarðr yllir, ‘the shed rod is ironclad’. In the meaningless SR reading ‘iarnar fiarþar’ the -ar of iarnar anticipatesthat of fiarþar; ‘fi’ is doubtless a misreading of an original ‘²’, the use of whichindicates an early manuscript.
22 This stanza is at best corrupt, and probably an interpolation (for a full
discussion, see von See et al. 2000, 952–8). The son of Yrsa, called both son andbrother, is Hrólfr kraki: Helgi married his own daughter Yrsa unaware of theirrelationship (Hrólfs saga kraka ch. 6; a similar history is related in Skjõldunga
saga ch. 11 and Saxo book II). The manuscripts read, in lines 3–4, við hálfdana
hefna Fróða; this would mean, on the most natural reading, that Hrólfr was taking vengeance for Fróði against (though við is rarer than á in this sense) or alongside the ‘half-Danes’. Clearly the vengeance must be taken against Fróði, forwhich we would expect á Fróða (as here emended: the plain dative is, however,possible; see Fritzner 1886–1972 on the various constructions with hefna). HalfDanes are nowhere else mentioned in Germanic literature, other than in the
Old English Finnsburh Fragment (and the associated Episode in Beowulf 1069),
and the use of the word even there is not clear; Tolkien (1982, 37–45) argues
it was rather a ‘surname’ than a tribal name. The only possible sense in thepresent context would be ‘sons of Hálfdan’ (the brother whom Fróði murderedin Hrólfs saga kraka). This would indicate that Hrólfr was acting in concert withhis father and uncle to take vengeance on Fróði – something with no analogue
anywhere in Old Norse literature. Here, the emendation adopted by SG is followed, changing við to vígs. The form ‘halfdana’ would have arisen after a scribe
had wrongly written við, which requires an accusative form, most easily derived
from ‘halfdanar’ by dropping the final -r (even though this changes the sense).
However, problems remain: there is no parallel to Hrólfr taking vengeance forhis grandfather (an unlikely event in itself); the proposal of SG, that Hrólfr ishere regarded as son, not grandson, of Hálfdan is also unparalleled and unlikely.
In addition, the second helmingr presents us with a very weakly expressed
irrelevance scarcely credible as the pinnacle of a curse of vengeance. Moreover, alliteration is weak throughout the stanza: mon (2) should be unstressed;
in 3 Hálfdanar vígs would be better (and við hálfdana would again be weak); in
5–6 both hennar and heitinn are hardly suitable to bear the stress; 8 would be
improved as báðar vitum þat. As Eiríkr Magnússon points out, the time-frame ofthe stanza is also out of kilter with the rest of the poem: in 19 the speaker alreadysees the warning beacon heralding war, yet 22 proclaims a piece of knowledge
presumably unknown as yet to the world, that Hrólfr will be called both son andbrother (and will seek vengeance). Such an array of weaknesses in this stanza
suggest it is a badly constructed interpolation, based perhaps on a marginal
surmise by a previous scribe. Snorri did not know this stanza, or ignored it if he

58

Commentary
did, for his tale of Grotti identifies the Fróði as frið-Fróði, not the later brotherof Hálfdan; indeed, the poet nowhere else makes such a clear identification,
preferring rather to shroud Fróði’s identity in a deliberate ambiguity to produce
an interplay of characteristics associated, in tradition, with separate characters.
23/2 Cf. Rígsþula 9/2: magns um kosta, ‘to test his might’; Víkarsbálkr 16/7–8(Skj B II, 347): alls megins áðr kostaðek, ‘I had exerted all my strength’.
23/4 í iõtunmóði: in Eddic poetry found elsewhere only in Võluspá 47/4 (of theworld-serpent Jõrmungandr). It is also found in prose, of giants and trolls.
23/5–8 The skapttré is probably a framework above the mill for attaching andsteadying the handle (the skapt). SG’s argument against this, on the ground that
tré is plural, does not carry much weight: the use of the plural derives from thefact that the apparatus had several parts to it. The manuscript form ‘skap’ canscarcely be accepted; no sensible meaning for skap can be adduced that has any
parallels. The lúðr would be roughly at waist height; as the great lower stone(hinn hõfgi hallr) fell, it split in two (SG take this to refer here to the upper stone:
elsewhere the reference of hõfgi hallr is to the lower stone; the poet is emphasising that even the mighty unmoving base-stone of the quern is shattered).
24/4 The line is suspect: the use of sem (‘as’) appears to be without sense, andthe alliterative stress on munum is unsatisfactory. It is likely that some lines havebeen lost before 4.
24/5 fullstaðit: this has great ironic value: the girls have stood long enoughto accomplish the full circle of fate encompassed by the poem – long enough tofulfil any engagement they have made, long enough to bore and tire them, longenough to grind out all the good and ill that adhered to the name of Fróði.

59

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