4 Faraday, IvisJi Influence on Icelandic Litenxturc. 



2. Linnar or lindar^ "gen. sing. fern, von linn, sonst lind. 

 Quelle, sclieint aus dem ir. lind oder linn, JVasser, JVei'/iet; 

 kleiner See, entlehnt."^ The derivation is very doubtful, as the 

 phrase in which the word occurs, li/idar loga, a kenning for gold, 

 translated according to this reading " flame of the pool," is a 

 dTvat, Xeyofiei'ov ; and if this spelling is correct, it could as well be 

 read " flame of the shield," which would be an equally appro- 

 priate kenning, and one which might easily occur to a poet who 

 had seen the gold-adorned shield of a northern warrior flashing 

 in the sun. 



3. bjd^um^ earth. " Das Wort stammt muglicherweise von 

 ir. bioth, bith. Welt.''' ^ This is quite impossible. The Irish word 

 means age, or world, and could no more be used in the material 

 sense in which the Norse word occurs in Voluspd, in Egil's 

 Hofii^lausiil" and elsewhere, than inniuliis or saeciiliim could be 

 used as a synonym for terra. Further, the form bioth with 

 infected vowel is middle Irish, and does not occur in Irish MSS. 

 of the date of the Edda. Professor Bugge adds elsewhere," " In 

 later Icelandic poems hjo^ was adopted from Voluspd and used 

 in the meaning of 'earth,' e.g., by the Skald Kormak." But 

 Kormak's verses'' were written in the reign of King Harald 

 Grafeld, within a year or two of whose death in 965 (if not 

 indeed during his lifetime), the poet died**; while another famous 

 skald who uses the word, Egill Skallagrimsson, died in Earl 

 Hakon's time,^ therefore before 995. It is very improbable, for 

 metrical reasons, that Voluspd was composed before the nth 

 century ; therefore the word is found in Skaldic poetry before it 

 occurs in the Edda. 



' Kci^ins/ndt, Facs. p. 57, 1. 13, tinar toga. 



- G'dtter- und Heldcmageii, p. 7. Corpus Poeticum Boreale, p. Ix. 



^ Voluspd, 4 (Facs. bio'56). 



* Goiter- und Heldensagen, p. 7, note. Corpus Pocticuni, p. Ix. 

 ^ HoJltfStausn, 2, "a Engla bjocV. " 



" Home of the Eddie Poems, p. xxxiv. 



' A'ormd/is Saga, ch. 19, Strophe 61, " ' enn /y(>c!i sekkvisk."' {Corpus 

 Poeticum II., 65, Improvisations 9.) 



* See A'ormdks Saga, ch. 25-27. 

 Egits Saga Sl^atlagrtmssonar, cli. ^5. 



