Biarce awakens
Bjarkamál 2: Translation and commentary
Immediately at Hialte’s call, Biarce wakes and rouses his servant:
At these words Biarce awoke. At once he called to his chamber-servant Scalc and spoke to him thus: [1]
Rise now, lad, blow hard and increase the fire! [2] [3] [4]
Sweep the hearth with a stick and scatter the fading embers;
strike up the sparks in the lifeless fireplace,
rekindle the ash and coax forth the flames.
Force the sluggish hearth to blaze in bright fire;
feed it with a dry log and make the coals glow red.
It will do us good to stretch our fingers toward the flames.
A hand must be warm when it guards a friend, [5] [6]
and free from all frost-blue cold.
[1] Scalc: Though understood by Saxo as a proper name, the Old Norse common noun skalkr means “servant, thrall, rogue.” Cognates include Old English scealc (“servant”), Old High German skalk (“serf”) and the proper name Scalco, as well as Gothic skalks (“slave, servant”). Besides this figure, a king Scalc of the Slavs is mentioned in Gesta Danorum, as is the champion Scalc the Scanian.
[2] Rise now, lad, blow hard and increase the fire: Cf. Rístu nú, Fála, farðu í búð hinig (Hafliðamál 1), rís þȧ Víðarr, ok lát ulfs fǫður sitja sumbli at (Lokasenna 10), Rístu nú Skírnir, ok gakk at bęiða okkarn mála mǫg (Skírnismǫ́l 1).
[3] Lad: The Latin puer (“boy, lad, servant”) most likely renders Old Norse skalkr. Two versions of Bjarkamál seem to have existed: an older poem, possibly from the 10th century, and a later one, probably composed in the 12th century. Biarce’s servant Scalc is mentioned in the prose. Assuming that puer translates skalkr, this points toward the later poem. The word skalkr does not appear in early poetry. It occurs in Hlǫðskviða 12 and the lost *Brávallaþula, both dated to the 12th century, and in a verse from Hjálmþés saga ok Ǫlvis, which is unlikely to be earlier than the late 14th century.
[4] Increase the fire: The Latin pasco means “to feed, nourish, or cause to grow.” “Feed the fire” would therefore be a perfectly acceptable and idiomatic translation. The choice to render pasco as “increase” is deliberate, however, since Biarce’s words here appear to echo the repeated formula “increase the fire” in Hrólfs saga kraka: Aukum nú eldana (4), aukið nú eldana (41), and aukum nú eldana at Aðils borg (41), the last of which is spoken by Biarce himself. The same expression also occurs in Skáldskaparmál’s paraphrase of this episode: er eldinn hǫfðu aukit (54).
[5] A hand must be warm when it guards a friend: The line has the character of a proverb. One might imagine an Old Norse equivalent along the lines of gott’s varmri hendi vini at fagna. Up to this point, the stanza gives the impression of an ordinary domestic morning routine; stirring the hearth and warming the hands. Here, however, the language begins, indirectly, to acknowledge the dramatic circumstances unfolding in the king’s hall.
[6] The command to kindle the fire and some of the wording has been likened to a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses viii. 641-645 and the poem Moretum (“Herb Cheese”) 6-14, often ascribed to Virgil. According to the Oxford edition of Gesta Danorum, the likeness is probably due to the similar circumstances rather than by imitation.
In Ovid, Baucis fans the fire; the resemblance to Biarce’s command to Scalc is generic and lexical overlap minimal (flamma, focus, ignis).
Moretum, by contrast, shows a dense lexical overlap with Gesta Danorum: creber, focus, ignis, languens, lumen, manus, producere, pruna, and stipes. To me, the concentration of these terms seems to go beyond mere shared vocabulary and suggests deliberate modeling.
But why borrow from Moretum? It is a mini-epic, an epyllion, describing how the poor farmer Simulus (“Flatnose”) and his African slave woman Scybale (“Rubbish, Garbage”) prepare breakfast: a far cry from the fall of Lejre. Perhaps Saxo drew on it simply for its wealth of technical terms and turns of phrase. Or perhaps the echo is meant to heighten the contrast between the battle raging outside Biarce’s door and the seemingly slow, domestic morning routine inside. Hialte will soon call Biarce out, literally, for lingering indoors.