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In Norse mythology, four stags or harts (male red deer) eat among the branches of the World Tree Yggdrasill. According to the Poetic Edda, the stags crane their necks upward to chomp at the branches. Their names are given as Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór. An amount of speculation exists regarding the deer and their potential symbolic value. ==Primary sources== The poem ''Grímnismál'', a part of the Poetic Edda, is the only extant piece of Old Norse poetry to mention the stags. 1967 W. H. Auden & P. B. Taylor in The Elder Edda The second line is enigmatic. The word ''á'' is hard to explain in context and is sometimes omitted from editions. The word ''hæfingar'' is of uncertain meaning. Finnur Jónsson conjecturally translated it as "shoots".〔"hœfingar: brumknappar (merkíng óviss)", 〕 English translators have translated it as "the highest shoots" (Hollander),〔"Conjecturally", 〕 "summits" (Thorpe), "the highest twigs" (Bellows),〔"''Highest twigs'': a guess; the Mss. words are baffling. Something has apparently been lost from lines 3-4, but there is no clue as to its nature", 〕 "the high boughs" (Taylor and Auden)〔, Lay of Grimnir, strophe 33 given at http://www.germanicmythology.com/PoeticEdda/GRM33.html 〕 and "the highest boughs" (Larrington). This verse of Grímnismál is preserved in two medieval manuscripts, Codex Regius (R) and AM 748 I 4to (A). The text and translations above mostly follow R, the older manuscript. Where R has the word ''hæfingar'', A has the equally enigmatic ''hæfingiar''. Where R has ''gnaga'' ("gnaw"), A has ''ganga'' ("walk"), usually regarded as an error. A third difference is that R has "ágaghálsir" in one word where A clearly has "á gaghálsir" in two words. In this case the A reading is usually accepted.〔"þeirs af hæfingar / gaghalsir gnaga", .〕 In the ''Gylfaginning'' part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda the stanza from Grímnismál is summarized. The word ''barr'' has been the cause of some confusion since it is most often applied to the needles of fir or pine trees. Richard Cleasby and Guðbrandur Vigfússon surmised that Snorri had used the word wrongly due to Icelandic unfamiliarity with trees. Others have drawn the conclusion that the World Tree was in fact a conifer. More recent opinion is that ''barr'' means foliage in general and that the conifer assumption is not warranted.〔"Together, ''bíta barr'' means to eat the foliage off a tree, words suitable for both an ash tree and a pine", .〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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