Icelandic Saga - Burnt Njal --- Footnotes lyrics

FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Guðbrandr Vigfússon.] [Footnote 2: This word is invented like Laxdæla, Gretla, and others, to escape the repetition or the word Saga, after that of the person or place to which the story belongs. It combines the idea of the subject and the telling in one word.] [Footnote 3: Many particulars mentioned in the Saga as wonderful are no wonders to us. Thus in the case of Gunnar's bill, when we are told that it gave out a strange sound before great events, this probably only means that the shaft on which it was mounted was of some hard ringing wood unknown in the north. It was a foreign weapon, and if the shaft were of lance wood, the sounds it gave out when brandished or shaken would be accounted for at once without a miracle.] [Footnote 4: There can be no doubt that it was considered a grave offence to public morality to tell a Saga untruthfully. Respect to friends and enemies alike, when they were dead and gone, demanded that the histories of their lives, and especially of their last moments, should be told as the events had actually happened. Our own Saga affords a good illustration of this, and shows at the same time how a Saga naturally arose out of great events. When King Sigtrygg was Earl Sigurd's guest at Yule, and Flosi and the other Burners were about the Earl's court, the Irish king wished to hear the story of the Burning, and Gunnar Lambi's son was put forward to tell it at the feast on Christmas day. It only added to Kari's grudge against him to hear Gunnar tell the story with such a false leaning, when he gave it out that Skarphedinn had wept for fear of the fire, and the vengeance which so speedily overtook the false teller was looked upon as just retribution. But when Flosi took up the story, he told it fairly and justly for both sides, "and therefore," says the Saga, "what he said was believed".] [Footnote 5: Öresound, the gut between Denmark and Sweden, at the entrance of the Baltic, commonly called in English, The Sound.] [Footnote 6: That is, he came from what we call the Western Isles or Hebrides. The old appellation still lingers in "Sodor (i.e. the South isles) and Man".] [Footnote 7: This means that Njal was one of those gifted beings who, according to the firm belief of that age, had a more than human insight into things about to happen. It answers very nearly to the Scottish "second sight".] [Footnote 8: Lord of rings, a periphrasis for a chief, that is, Mord.] [Footnote 9: Earth's offspring, a periphrasis for woman, that is, Unna.] [Footnote 10: "Oyce," a north country word for the mouth of a river, from the Icelandic _ós_] [Footnote 11: "The Bay," the name given to the great bay in the east of Norway, the entrance of which from the North Sea is the Cattegat, and at the end of which is the Christiania Firth. The name also applies to the land round the Bay, which thus formed a district, the boundary of which, on the one side, was the promontory called Lindesnæs, or the Naze, and on the other, the Göta-Elf, the river on which the Swedish town of Gottenburg stands, and off the mouth of which lies the island of Hisingen, mentioned shortly after.] [Footnote 12: Permia, the country one comes to after doubling the North Cape.] [Footnote 13: A town at the mouth of the Christiania Firth. It was a great place for traffic in early times, and was long the only mart in the south-east of Norway.] [Footnote 14: Rill of wolf--stream of blood.] [Footnote 15: A province of Sweden.] [Footnote 16: An island in the Baltic, off the coast of Esthonia.] [Footnote 17: Endil's courser--periphrasis for a ship.] [Footnote 18: Sigar's storm--periphrasis for a sea-fight.] [Footnote 19: Grieve, i.e., bailiff, head workman.] [Footnote 20: Swanbath's beams, periphrasis for gold.] [Footnote 21: "Thou, that heapest hoards," etc.--merely a periphrasis for man, and scarcely fitting, except in irony, to a splitter of firewood.] [Footnote 22: That is, slew him in a duel.] [Footnote 23: This shows that the shields were oblong, running down to a point.] [Footnote 24: "Ocean's fire," a periphrasis for "gold". The whole line is a periphrasis for "bountiful chief".] [Footnote 25: "Rhine's fire," a periphrasis for gold.] [Footnote 26: "Water-skates," a periphrasis for ships.] [Footnote 27: "Great Rift," Almannagjá--The great volcanic rift, or "geo," as it would be called in Orkney and Shetland, which bounds the plain of the Althing on one side.] [Footnote 28: Thorgrim Easterling and Thorbrand.] [Footnote 29: "Frodi's flour," a periphrasis for gold.] [Footnote 30: "Sea's bright sunbeams," a periphrasis for gold.] [Footnote 31: Constantinople.] [Footnote 32: Hlada or Lada, and sometimes in the plural Ladir, was the old capital of Drontheim, before Nidaios--the present Drontheim--was founded. Drontheim was originally the name of the country round the firth of the same name, and is not used in the old Sagas for a town.] [Footnote 33: The country round the Christiania Firth, at the top of the "Bay".] [Footnote 34: A town in Sweden on the Göta-Elf.] [Footnote 35: The mainland of Orkney, now Pomona.] [Footnote 36: Now Stroma, in the Pentland Firth.] [Footnote 37: By so doing Hrapp would have cleared himself of his own outlawry.] [Footnote 38: "Prop of sea-waves' fire," a periphrasis for a woman that bears gold on her arm.] [Footnote 39: "Skates that skim," etc., a periphrasis for ships.] [Footnote 40: "Odin's mocking cup," mocking songs.] [Footnote 41: An allusion to the Beast Epic, where the cunning fox laughs at the flayed condition of his stupid foes, the wolf and bear. We should say, "Don't stop to speak with him, but rather beat him black and blue".] [Footnote 42: "Sea-stag," periphrasis for ship.] [Footnote 43: "Sea-fire bearers," the bearers of gold, men, that is, Helgi and Grim.] [Footnote 44: "Byrnie-breacher," piercer of coats of mail.] [Footnote 45: "Noisy ogre's namesake," an allusion to the name of Skarphedinn's axe, "the ogress of war".] [Footnote 46: Rood-cross, a crucifix.] [Footnote 47: His son was Glum who fared to the burning with Flosi.] [Footnote 48: "Forge which foams with song," the poet's head, in which songs are forged, and gush forth like foaming mead.] [Footnote 49: "Hero's helm-prop," the hero's, man's, head which supports his helm.] [Footnote 50: It is needless to say that this Hall was not Hall of the Side.] [Footnote 51: "Wolf of Gods," the "_caput lupinum_," the outlaw of heaven, the outcast from Valhalla, Thangbrand.] [Footnote 52: "The other wolf," Gudleif.] [Footnote 53: "Swarthy skarf," the skarf, or _pelecan*s cardo_, the cormorant. He compares the message of Thorwald to the cormorant shimming over the waves, and says he will never take it. "Snap at flies," a very common Icelandic metaphor from fish rising to a fly.] [Footnote 54: Maurer thinks the allusion is here to some mythological legend on Odin's adventures which has not come dawn to us.] [Footnote 55: "He that giant's," etc., Thor.] [Footnote 56: "Mew-field's bison," the sea-going ship, which sails over he plain of the sea-mew.] [Footnote 57: "Bell's warder," the Christian priest whose bell-ringing formed part of the rites of the new faith.] [Footnote 58: "Falcon of the strand," ship.] [Footnote 59: "Courser of the causeway," ship.] [Footnote 60: "Gylfi's hart," ship.] [Footnote 61: "Viking's snow-shoe," sea-king's ship.] [Footnote 62: "Boiling Kettle," This was a hver, or hot spring.] [Footnote 63: This was the "Raven's Rift," opposite to the "Great Rift" on the other side of the Thingfield.] [Footnote 64: "Warrior's temper," the temper of Hauskuld of Whiteness.] [Footnote 65: "Snake-land's stem," a periphrasis for woman, Rodny.] [Footnote 66: "He that hoardeth ocean's fire," a periphrasis for man, Hauskuld of Whiteness.] [Footnote 67: "Baltic side." This probably means a part of the Finnish coast in the Gulf of Bothnia.] [Footnote 68: "Wild man of the woods." In the original Finngálkn, a fabulous monster, half man and half beast.] [Footnote 69: "Sand," Skeidará sand.] [Footnote 70: "Sand," Mælifell's sand.] [Footnote 71: "Nones," the well-known canonical hour of the day, the ninth hour from six A.M., that is, about three o'clock P.M., when one of the church services took place.] [Footnote 72: "Son of Gollnir," Njal, who was the son of Thorgeir Gelling or Gollnir.] [Footnote 73: "My friends," ironically of course.] [Footnote 74: "Helmet-hewer," sword.] [Footnote 75: John for a man, and Gudruna for a woman, were standing names in the Formularies of the Icelandic code, answering to the "M or N" in our Liturgy, or to those famous fictions of English Law. "John Doe and Richard Roe".] [Footnote 76: "Gossipry," that is, because they were gossips, _God's sib_, relations by baptism.] [Footnote 77: "Swinestye," ironically for Swinefell, where Flosi lived.] [Footnote 78: This is the English equivalent for the Icelandic Hrepp, a district. It still lingers in "the Rape of Bramber," and other districts in Suss** and the south-east.] [Footnote 79: "With words alone," The English proverb, "Threatened men live long".] [Footnote 80: "Sea crags." Hence Thorgeir got his surname "Craggeir".] [Footnote 81: "Pilgrimage to Rome." This condition had not been mentioned before.] [Footnote 82: "Shieldburg" that is, a ring of men holding their shields locked together.] [Footnote 83: "Thy dog," etc. Meaning that he would go a third time on a pilgrimage to Rome If St. Peter helped him out of this strait.] [Footnote 84: "Helmgnawer," the sword that bites helmets.]