IL [DORSO – DELLE ACQUE] IN ANTICO NORDICO (BAK BÁRU ‘DORSO DELL’ONDA’) E IN ANTICO INGLESE (SǢS HRYCG ‘DORSO DEL MARE’)

INNOVAZIONE E TRADIZIONE DI UNA METAFORA INDOEUROPEA IN AMBITO GERMANICO

Abstract

At the end of the Eddic poem Lokasenna ‘Loki’s flyting’ (65), the god Loki curses Ægir, a personification of the ‘Sea’, to have flames burn ‘on his back’ (Old Norse á baki). This choice of words is to be traced back to the inherited poetical image of the [BACK – of the WATERS], a metaphor for the surface of waterbasins attested in the same narrative contexts in the poetical phraseology of Germanic languages such as Old Norse (bak báru) and Old English (sMs hrycg), as well as other Indo-European languages such as Old Irish (fairrge al druim), Ancient Greek (νῶτα θαλάσσης), Classical Latin (terga amnis) and Vedic Sanskrit (salilásya p3[shá -).