The Review of English Studies Advance Access published March 3, 2011

‘A NEW ETYMOLOGY FOR HAMLET? THE NAMES

AMLETHUS, AMLOÐI AND ADMLITHI

by l. a. collinson

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The Hamlet-name may have been associated with players several centuries earlier
than has hitherto been thought. It is well-known that Hamlet is related to Amlethus,
found in Gesta Danorum, by Saxo Grammaticus. However, the etymologies of both
Amlethus and the linked Icelandic name, Amloôi, have remained unclear. One pos-
sibility, explored in this article, is that these derive from the player-name, Admlithi,
found in the Irish tale, Togail Bruidne Da Derga. Admlithi could have been trans-
mitted to Saxo either as a player-name, or as a nautical noa-term (perhaps denoting a
dangerous sea whirlpool, such as Coire Brecáin), or both; and it may have carried
some small hint of its meaning with it on its journey into Gesta Danorum and
beyond.

Hamlet, Amlethus, and Amloôi

In discussion of the origins of the play, Hamlet, there is currently broad consensus
of opinion on four points. First, it is agreed that Shakespeare (probably indirectly)
borrowed much material, including the core of his central character, from the early
thirteenth-century Danish pseudo-history, Gesta Danorum, attributed to Saxo
Grammaticus.1 Second, the Gesta Danorum character, Amlethus—on whom
Hamlet is partially based—is held to be related to a figure called Amloôi2 who

1 Julie Maxwell, ‘Counter-Reformation Versions of Saxo: A New Source for Hamlet?’,

Renaissance Quarterly, 57 (2004), 518–60. Heiko Uecker, Der nordische Hamlet, Texte
und Untersuchungen zur Germanistik und Skandinavistik 56 (Frankfurt am Main,
2005), xv–xvi. William F. Hansen, Saxo Grammaticus and the Life of Hamlet (Lincoln
and London, 1983), 6 stated that the names, Amlethus and Hamlet, were ‘not etymologically
related’. This was probably too cautious. In the context of this particular borrowed narra-
tive, Hamlet can be seen as a form of Amleth(us), altered under the influence of a
pre-existing English name.
2 The form *Amloôi has been reconstructed from Amloôa (see below), read as a weak
masculine personal noun in an oblique case. Due to consensus as to the basic form of
the name in question, I shall not in the present study make use of the reconstruction
mark (*). However, I shall omit the conventional length mark above the second vowel
which cannot, in my view, be justified either by manuscript orthography (except extremely
doubtfully by Codex Wormianus), or by the metrical demands of context. (I am most
grateful to Tarrin Wills, for directing my attention towards Kari Ellen Gade, The
Structure of Old Norse Dróttkvætt Poetry, Islandica 49 (Ithaca and London, 1995), 112–7,
and to Gade for kindly confirming that vowel length cannot in this case be determined from
verse structure.) Images of the major manuscripts may be viewed through the Skaldic
Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages Database <http://skaldic.arts.usyd.edu.au> ac-
cessed 12 September 2010. The 1924 edition of Snorra Edda in Codex Wormianus omitted
a dot above the -o- of Amloôa, which could otherwise possibly have been seen as a kind of
length mark (Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Codex Wormianus AM 242 fol., ed. Finnur Jónsson,
The Review of English Studies, New Series
ß The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press 2011; all rights reserved
doi:10.1093/res/hgr008
2 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

appears in a single skaldic verse (and a very short explanatory note) in Snorra
Edda, an Icelandic poetic treatise created around twenty to forty years after Gesta
Danorum.3 Third, it is agreed that the skaldic verse is about the grinding sea.
Fourth and finally, it has been established that Saxo drew upon a variety of add-
itional sources, probably including lost North European texts; one of these is likely
to have been some version of the tale about Haveloc recounted in Geoffrey
Gaimar’s L’Estoire des Engleis (before 1140).4 (None of the additional sources
for the Amlethus-story mentions grinding explicitly, although the sea does play
a major role in the Haveloc-tale, as told by Gaimar.)

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The precise etymologies of Amloôi, Amlethus and ultimately Hamlet have re-
mained unclear, despite many previous attempts to elucidate these. (Currently, the
best-known interpretation of the name(s) is probably that offered in the latest
Arden edition of the play: ‘stupid’.)5 The aim of the following discussion is to
explore the possibility that all of these names might descend from Admlithi, re-
corded as a player-name in the medieval Irish tale Togail Bruidne Da Derga
(TBDD, ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’), and to suggest some potential
implications of this for our understanding of the histories of the Hamlet-figures
developed by Saxo, and by Shakespeare.6 (For the sake of clarity, I shall keep to a
minimum discussion of Haveloc.7

Kommissionen for Det Arnamagnæanske Legat (Copenhagen and Kristiania, 1924), 71).
Likewise, a much more recent study of the manuscript made no mention of ó amongst its
list of miniscule alphabetical graph-types (Karl G. Johansson, Studier i Codex Wormianus:
Skrifttradition och avskriftsverksamhet vid ett isländskt skriptorium under 1300-talet,
Nordistica Gothoburgensia 20 (Göteborg, 1997), 136–44).
3 The current standard edition of the relevant part of Snorra Edda is Snorri Sturluson,
Edda: Skáldskaparmál, ed. Anthony Faulkes, 2 vols (London, 1998). The corresponding
translation is to be found in Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes (London,
1987). Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, vol. 1, xi, gives a date range for composition stretching
from around 1220 to 1241 (when the author died). For hints at the existence of some
relationship between Amlethus and Amloôi, see Hansen, Life of Hamlet, 128–9;
Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, vol. 2, 444 (‘Amlóôi. . . Cf. Amleth’); Clive Tolley, ‘The
Mill in Norse and Finnish Mythology’, Saga-Book, 24 (1995), 63–82 (at 71); Klaus von
See et al. (eds), Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, 6 vols (continuing) (Heidelberg, 1997-
), vol. 3, 844.
4 Inge Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘Amleds rolle i Saxos Danmarkshistorie’, Historisk Tidsskrift,
104 (2004), 1–29 (at 16–8).
5 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor (London: Arden,
2006), 64.
6 The standard edition is Togail Bruidne Da Derga, ed. Eleanor Knott, Mediaeval and
Modern Irish Series 8 (Dublin, 1936). This is based on the manuscript known as the
Yellow Book of Lecan, and gives variant readings from Dublin, Royal Irish Academy,
D iv 2. A monograph by Ralph O’Connor on TBDD will be published later this year
(2011); I am grateful to both O’Connor and Nicholas Evans for their invaluable comments
on the Irish material here discussed.
7 Hansen, Saxo Grammaticus, 16 referred only in passing to Havelok the Dane as a
‘possible’ but uncertain analogue to Hamlet, whilst Uecker, Der nordische Hamlet, made
no mention of Haveloc at all.
 AMLETHUS , AMLOôI AND ADMLITHI 3 of 20

Amlethus
One passage in Gesta Danorum has proved particularly attractive to scholars inter-
ested in the Amlethus character.8 Here, Amlethus behaves with a typical mixture
of apparent oddness and cleverness:
Harenarum quoque pre˜ teritis cliuis sabulum perinde ac farra aspicere iussus eadem albi-
cantibus maris procellis permolita esse respondit.9
(As they passed the sand-dunes they told him to look at this flour, to which he remarked
that it had been ground by the foaming billows when it was stormy.)10

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Of especial note are two specific lexical items: firstly cliuis (‘slopes’), used to de-
scribe dunes; and secondly the rare plural past participle permolita, used of neuter
plural farra, ‘flour’—or better ‘grain(s)’—which means ‘thoroughly, greatly
ground’. Both of these loosely correspond to particular features in the Amloôi-
verse, now to be examined.

Amloôi
The primary reason for interest in the Amloôi-verse has been the fact that it seems to
reflect a grinding-sea-as-flourmill motif, comparable with that underlying the ground-
sand passage in Gesta Danorum (cited above). In addition, the names Amlethus and
Amloôi appear to be similar, at least superficially. The Amloôi-verse (framed by its
medieval attribution and kenning-explanation) reads as follows in Snorra Edda:
Sem Snæbjõrn kvaô:
Hvatt kveôa hrœra Grotta
hergrimmastan skerja
út fyrir jarôa<r> skauti
eylúôrs nı́u brúôir,
ìær er—lungs—fyrir lõngu
liômeldr—skipa hlı́ôar
baugskerôir rı́str barôi
ból—Amlóôa mólu.
Hér er kallat hafit Amlóôa kvern.11

8 This passage is mentioned in every specialist study of the Hamlet-name, or the origins of the
figure. Such studies include the books mentioned above: Uecker, Der nordische Hamlet, and
Hansen, Saxo Grammaticus; also the older monographs, discussed below: Israel Gollancz,
Hamlet in Iceland: Being the Icelandic Romantic Ambales saga (London, 1898); Israel Gollancz,
Sources of Hamlet with Essay on the Legend (London, 1926); Kemp Malone, The Literary
History of Hamlet, Anglistische Forschungen 59 (Heidelberg, 1923). Key articles are Kemp
Malone, ‘Etymologies for Hamlet’, Review of English Studies, 3 (1927), 257–71; Kemp
Malone, ‘More Etymologies for Hamlet’, Review of English Studies, 4 (1928), 257–69; and
especially Wolfgang Krause, ‘Die Hamletstrophe Snæbjõrns’, in Festschrift für Konstantin
Reichardt, ed. C Gellinek and Herwig Zauchenberger (Bern and Munich, 1969), 87–97.
9 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum: Danmarkshistorien, ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen and
trans. (Danish) Peter Zeeberg, 2 vols (Copenhagen, 2005), vol. 1, 222 (Book III, §6, 10).
10 Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes: Books I-IX, ed. Hilda Ellis-Davidson and
trans. Peter Fisher, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1979/80), vol. 1, 85 (§79).
11 Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes vol. 1, 38, v. 133.
4 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

(As Snæbjõrn [‘Snow-Bear’] said:

They say the nine skerry-brides [Ægir’s daughters, waves] turn fast the most hostile
island-box-mill [churning sea] out beyond the land’s edge, they who long ago ground
Amloôi’s meal-ship [Amloôi’s mill = sea]. The ring-damager [generous ruler] cuts with
ship’s prow the dwelling [sea] of the ships’ slopes [waves].
Here the sea is called Amloôi’s mill.)12

Clearly, the medieval individual responsible for the explanatory statement Hér
er kallat hafit Amloôa kvern (‘Here the sea is called Amloôi’s mill’) believed that he
understood the way in which the kenning under discussion worked; he may or

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may not have been correct. Modern commentators, meanwhile, have (despite
minor differences of interpretation) agreed that this verse links the words
Amloôa and Grotta both with each other, and with the grinding sea.13 Grotta
(seen as Grotti in an oblique case) has usually been taken to mean something
like ‘grinder’.14 It is thus understood to support the grinding-idea made explicit
in the final word, mólu (‘milled’)—and probably anticipated by eylúôrs: ‘(of the)
mill-frame’.
The Amloôi-verse is conventionally dated to the tenth (or perhaps eleventh)
century.15 Provided that this is correct, it is by far our oldest source for Grotti as a
name—or (more cautiously) as a word of any kind.16 In fact, Grotti appears solely
in Snorra Edda, in three texts: the Amloôi-stanza; the (possibly twelfth-century,
Orcadian) eddic verse Grottaso˜ ngr, which uses the name only once, to describe
magical milling-apparatus: quern (kvern) and mill-frame (lúôr);17 and a stanza by

12 Snorri Sturluson, Edda, tr. Faulkes, 92–3. In the translated text, I have restored the Old
Norse forms of the names Snæbjõrn and Amloôi; in place of the latter, Faulkes gave Hamlet.
13 In von See et al. (eds), Kommentar, vol. 3, 844 it was noted that the exact meaning of the
second half-stanza, particularly, is ‘disputed’ (umstritten). Faulkes outlined various possible
interpretations (Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, vol. 1, 182–3 and vol. 2, 346) including those
discussed by Tolley, ‘The Mill’, 69-72; see more recently Grottaso˜ ngr, ed. and trans. Clive
Tolley (London, 2008), 26. The most detailed examination to date was made by Wolfgang
Krause, ‘Die Hamletstrophe Snæbjõrns’.
14 Like Amloôi, Grotti has, in this text, been reconstructed from the form Grotta, on the
basis of the nominative Grotti in the eddic verse, Grottaso˜ ngr (discussed below). For Grotti
(in the Amloôi-verse) as for Amloôi, I shall omit the reconstruction mark. Faulkes did not
attempt to translate the name exactly, but described it as ‘a hand-mill’ (Skáldskaparmál, ed.
Faulkes, vol. 2, 467). However, Jan de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd
edn (Leiden, 1962), s.v. grotti traced the name back to unattested Germanic *gruntan, ‘the
grinder’ (der zermalmer). (Similarly, see for example Tolley, ‘The Mill’, 70; and Beatrice La
Farge and John Tucker, Glossary to the Poetic Edda (Heidelberg, 1992), s.v. Grotti).
15 Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages Database <http://skaldic.arts.usyd
.edu.au> accessed 12 September 2010, ‘Snæbjõrn, l.v. 1’. Grottaso˜ ngr, ed. and trans. Tolley,
25.
16 Grottaso˜ ngr, ed. and trans. Tolley, 25.
17 The twelfth-century dating and Orcadian provenance were suggested in Grottaso˜ ngr, ed.
and trans. Tolley, 31–3. Von See et al. (eds) Kommentar, vol. 3, 857 simply noted a
mid-thirteenth-century terminus ante quem, and a possible tenth-century terminus post quem.
 AMLETHUS , AMLOôI AND ADMLITHI 5 of 20

Snorri Sturluson in Háttatal (in the kenning Grotta glaôdript = Grotti’s glad
drift = GOLD).18
Unfortunately, because of their relatively late dates of writing, neither
Grottaso˜ ngr nor the Grotta glaôdript stanza can provide any secure information
about the Grotti of the much-earlier Amloôi-verse—particularly since Grottaso˜ ngr,
especially, appears to mix its influences rather freely. The most that can be said is
that these later Grotti-texts certainly do not speak against the standard interpret-
ation of the Amloôi-Grotti as some kind of grinder; if anything, Grottaso˜ ngr would
tend to support this. The same is true of related prose remarks in Snorra Edda

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(and in the linked text known as Litla Skálda), which describe Grotti (or rather,
apparently feminine ‘Grotta’, in the latter case) sinking into the sea, and creating a
whirlpool in its ‘eye’ (central hole).19 Nevertheless, due acknowledgement of the
paucity of early evidence for Grotti as a sea-grinder should do little, after all, to
undermine the consensus view that the Amloôi-verse is about ‘milling’ seas: the
words mólu and probably eylúôrs establish this securely enough.
Although Amloôi has predominantly been read as a human name, functioning as
only one element in a sea-kenning, it is equally possible to interpret it as a poetic
term (heiti) which in itself signifies the sea.20 The capture of the name Amloôi
within an especially rocky, risky seascape here, together with its great obscurity,
make it tempting to see this as a possible nautical noa-term: a non-taboo word,
employed to avoid speaking a dangerous, taboo sea-word out loud.21 If it was indeed
such a term, there is (I suspect) a fair chance that it was chosen precisely because it
was seen as relatively alien, and therefore relatively opaque.22 In fact, use of a
non-Norse sea-term would not necessarily have been out of character for the
author of this verse: the word, lung, used here and in other poetry to mean
‘ship’, had itself originally been borrowed from a Celtic language, perhaps
Old Irish.23

18 Grottaso˜ ngr, ed. and trans. Tolley, 25. Snorri Sturluson, Edda, tr. Faulkes, 193 translated
this kenning as ‘Grotti’s bright snow [gold]’.
19 Grottaso˜ ngr, ed. and tr. Tolley, 32–3. Litla Skálda identifies the location of Grotta as the
Pentland Firth; this text has been examined by Judith Jesch, ‘The Orcadian Links of Snorra
Edda’, in Jon Gunnar Jørgensen (ed.), Snorres Edda i Europeisk og Islandsk Kultur
(Reykholt, 2009), 145–72.
20 Similarly, Faulkes noted that ‘Grotta might on its own be a metaphor for the churning
sea’ (Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, vol. 1, 183). Tolley, ‘The Mill’, 70, n. 23 proposed that
‘Grotti may be seen as a skerry.’
21 See Richard Perkins, ‘Rowing Chants and the Origins of Dróttkvæôr Háttr’, Saga-Book,
21 (1984–1985), 155–221 (at 168–71) on the significance of sea-language, including noa-
terms, in skaldic verse.
22 William Sayers, ‘Irish Perspectives on Heimdallr’, Alvı́ssmál, 2 (1993), 3–30 (at 23–4)
mentioned similarly-motivated borrowings from Finno-Ugric into Norse, and from
‘Germanic’ into Finnish, Estonian and Saami.
23 Jan De Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, s.v. lung gave the word an Old
Irish origin.
6 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

Haveloc
Another work which has been linked to the Amlethus tale is the story of Haveloc,
which is preserved in L’Estoire des Engleis, a text theoretically old enough to have
been a direct source for Saxo. There are no significant verbal correspondences
between L’Estoire des Engleis and Gesta Danorum (even allowing for the language
difference between these works), but their narratives are close enough to suggest
some relationship, and Inge Skovgaard-Petersen has recently expressed the view
that a ‘Havelok-complex’ of ideas probably was known to the author of Gesta
Danorum.24 This would not be surprising, since the story was about a Danish

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prince, and could therefore be expected to have been of interest to Danish
historians.
It must be emphasized that, at this stage, Haveloc and Amloôi are primarily to
be regarded as two separate (if possibly distantly-related) influences on the
Amlethus-figure: there is, in fact, no inherent need to consider evidence from
the Haveloc-tale in interpretation of the skaldic verse. Nevertheless, one particular
aspect of the character described by Gaimar may here be noted. This is his asso-
ciation with the sea. Most intriguingly, after sleeping with Haveloc for the first
time, his wife dreams that he wants to go to the sea, but that the sea then rises,
endangering him.25 Haveloc interprets the dream as follows: ‘And for the sea, we
take the caldrons, / Where the water rises as a sea, / Until cold makes it cease. /
The flesh of bulls will be cooked in it.’26 More broadly, Haveloc is shipwrecked,
and then lives in the wrecked boat with a salt-selling fisherman and his wife, before
winning a magic ring which prevents drowning. Such a character would clearly
have been potentially compatible with a sea-grinder of the kind apparently named
in the Amloôi-verse—whether or not these figures had previously been related in
any way.
Certainly, if we were to decide that Haveloc and Amloôi were indeed previously
related, we would then need to consider possible implications for our understand-
ing of the origins and development of the Haveloc character itself. However, such
a line of enquiry would require detailed investigation of a kind impossible within
the bounds of the current study. For the moment, let us simply note that prior
relationship between Haveloc and Amloôi would doubtless have tended to help,
rather than hinder, Saxo in his attempts to forge the composite Amlethus-figure
which now appears in Gesta Danorum.

24 Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘Amleds rolle’.

25 Geffrei Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engleis, ed. Alexander Bell, Anglo-Norman Texts 14-16
(Oxford, 1960), 7, ll. 220–6. Translation in Lestorie des Engles solum la Translacion Maistre
Geffrei Gaimar, ed. and trans. Thomas Duffus Hardy and Charles Trice Martin, 2 vols
(London, 1888–1889), vol. 2, 7–8, ll. 222–8.
26 Translation from Lestorie des Engles, ed. and tr. Hardy and Martin, vol. 2, 9, ll. 286–9.
Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engleis, ed. Bell, ll. 284–7.
 AMLETHUS , AMLOôI AND ADMLITHI 7 of 20

Previous scholarship
Given the strongly suspected links between Amlethus and Amloôi, and given the
contents of the Amloôi-verse itself, it would seem that one obvious approach to
investigating the name of Amlethus would simply be to explore further possible
lines of connexion between that character and both the term Grotti and Amloôi’s
nautical verse context more generally. This has not, however, been the commonest
scholarly strategy. Instead, most Amlethus students have been lured by the irre-
sistible pull of the enigmatic Shakespearian Hamlet character into attempting

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personality-based analyses. Because the principal sources are Scandinavian, such
analyses have, naturally, very often sought origins in Germanic words and
names.27 Nevertheless, two early twentieth-century scholars, Israel Gollancz and
Kemp Malone, looked to Irish for answers (with Gollancz justifying this by
claiming Irish, Hebridean and Orcadian family ties for the Amloôi-poet).28 Both
based their theories on a mysterious name (Amlaide) found by Whitley Stokes, in a
short verse from Irish annals.29 Both constructed interesting arguments which
allowed for Celtic influence on the Hamlet-names.30 However—whether or not
there is any truth in their claims that Irish Amlaide is somehow related to these (a
question beyond the scope of the present article)—both also clearly lacked focus
on the specific content of the crucial early Icelandic Amloôi-verse itself. 31
Of the many scholars who have tackled Hamlet-etymologies, only one has thus
far made a serious attempt to argue for a maritime origin. This was the runologist
Wolfgang Krause, who interpreted the central figure in the Amloôi-verse as a
‘storm-spirit’.32 Although Krause had to resort to Tocharian for his etymology
of the name, the ‘storm-spirit’ suggestion was fundamentally rather plausible.33

27 Jan De Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, s.v. Amlóôi.

28 Gollancz, Hamlet in Iceland, xvii and frontispiece. Gollancz, Sources of Hamlet, 9–14 and
fold-out (between 56 and 57).
29 Gollancz, Hamlet in Iceland, li; Gollancz, Sources of Hamlet, 50–1.
30 Gollancz, Hamlet in Iceland, liv proposed that Amlaide was a generic nickname, based
upon ‘the confluence of the characteristic Northern name ‘‘Amlaibh’’ and some such Celtic
word as ‘‘amhaide,’’ sour, sulky, surly (cp. ‘‘amaideac,’’ silly, absurd, fantastic, foolish,
idiotic)’. Gollancz, Sources of Hamlet, 54–55 made it clearer that Amlaibh was the Irish
form of Áleifr (Óláfr). This etymology probably lies behind the unreferenced Arden inter-
pretation, ‘stupid’, noted above. According to Malone, the unattested original Hamlet-name
had been *Anle óôe (Anli the mad), denoting the king, Onela, of Beowulf (Malone, Literary
History, ‘Etymologies’ and ‘More Etymologies’).
31 Máire Nı́ Mhaonaigh, ‘Tales of Three Gormlaiths in Medieval Irish Literature’, Ériu, 52
(2002), 1–24 (at 14) has pointed out that, linguistically, the verse context of Amlaide can
only be very approximately dated, to either the Late Middle Irish or the Early Modern Irish
period. Clare Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ívarr to A.D.
1014, rev edn (Edinburgh, 2009), 245 has recently noted that this verse is ‘of uncertain
origin’, and equated the relevant name with Old Norse Hafliôi.
32 Wolfgang Krause, ‘Die Hamletstrophe Snæbjõrns’, 94, n. 6 traced the Tocharian terms
back to Indo-European *omlios ‘heat’.
33 Tolley, ‘The Mill’, 71 appeared to approve this suggestion. Vigfússon and Powell had
long ago mentioned that in this verse, the ‘occurrence of Amloôi (Hamleth) as Ocean Giant
8 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

What has never previously been suggested is that the name Amloôi may be at once
part-Celtic, and part-maritime. This will be my own argument.

Admlithi
I wish to propose that a further possible Irish Hamlet name appears in the
pseudo-history, Togail Bruidne Da Derga, which is thought to have been compiled
in the eleventh century, based on eighth- or ninth-century materials. In TBDD, an
unjust king is killed in a strange hall, filled with uncanny figures. Amongst these

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are three players, who are first described, then identified, by two of the men who
will eventually carry out the killing. These players appear solely in this passage:
At-chonnarc and triar fer cuitbidi i cind in tened. Trı́ bruit odra impu. Ó no beitis fir
Hérenn i n-oenmaigin 7 cé no beth colaind a máthar nó a n-athar ar bélaib cach fir dı́b, nı́
faelsad nech dı́b cen gáiri impu. Coı́ hi fil in trı́choit cét isin tig, nı́ ermadair nech dı́b a suidi
nach a ligi lasin triar. Nach tan tosn-aidle súil ind rı́g tibid la cach n-aiscin. Samailte 7 rl. Nı́
anse 7 rl. 7 [sic] Mlithi 7 Mael 7 Admlithi, trı́ cuitbigi rı́g Hérenn in sin. Ad-béla fer la cach
n-ae, 7 con-raindfet búaid fir etarru 7 rl.34
(‘I saw three ridiculous men there by the end of the fire, three dun cloaks around them. If
the men of Ireland were in one place, even though the corpse of his mother or his father
were in front of each, not one of them could refrain from laughing at them. In whatsoever
place the ‘thirty hundreds’ [military force of a district] were in the house, none of them
would succeed in sitting or in lying on account of the three. Every time the king’s eye
alights on [or, ‘approaches’] them, he smiles at every glance. Identify!’ etc. ‘Not difficult!’
etc. ‘Mlithi and Máel and Admlithi – these are the three players of the King of Ireland. A
man will die because of each of them, and they will share man-victory among them’ etc.)35

The player names Mlithi and Admlithi are hapax terms, which, to my know-
ledge, occur only in TBDD (although the related form, mlith, is found in other
Irish sources).36 Each derives from the Old Irish verb, melid (‘grinds’). The most
grammatically simple interpretation of Mlithi is that it represents a so-called
‘verbal of necessity’: an uninflected verbal form, roughly equivalent to a Latin
gerundive. Understood this way, Mlithi means ‘Due-To-Be-Ground’. Mlithi

is noticeable’, as well as directing attention to the Saxo ground-sand passage (Corpus

Poeticum Boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the
Thirteenth Century, ed. and trans. Gudbrand Vigfusson and F. York Powell, 2 vols (Oxford,
1883), vol. 2, 570–1); see also 53–5. Faulkes likewise noted the possibility that Amloôi could
be a ‘sea-king’, whose ból is the sea (Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, vol. 2, 444).
34 TBDD, ed. Knott, 41, ll. 1371–81. (An edition of this passage in another important, but
problematic, manuscript, is to be found in Lebor na hUidre: Book of the Dun Cow, ed. R. I.
Best and Osborn Bergin (Dublin, 1929), 239, ll. 7825–33 (‘Imda na fursiri’).
35 Translation based on the extract in Erich Poppe, ‘A Note on the Jester in Fingal Rónáin’,
Studia Hibernica, 27 (1993), 145–54 (at 153), and on the glossary provided in TBDD, ed.
Knott. See also, The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel, ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes (Paris,
1902), 132–3 (first published as Whitley Stokes, ‘The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel’,
Revue Celtique, 22 (1901), 9–61, 165–215, 282–329, 390–437 (at 311–2)). For a newer
translation, see Early Irish Myths and Sagas, tr. Jeffrey Gantz (London, 1981), 101–2.
36 Dictionary of the Irish Language Based Mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials (Dublin,
1913–76) (DIL), s.v. mleith.
 AMLETHUS , AMLOôI AND ADMLITHI 9 of 20

could also be construed as a passive past participle in the nominative case (any
gender), but would then have to be read as a plural, ‘Ground’.37 Alternatively,
Mlithi could be viewed as the nominative plural of the feminine verbal noun, mlith
(‘the action of grinding, crushing, destroying’): Mlithi would mean ‘Grindings’.
Admlithi is an intensified version of the same name: ‘Due-To-Be-Greatly-
Ground’, ‘Greatly-Ground’, or ‘Great-Grindings’. (The combination of the
ad- prefix plus mlith appears to be entirely unattested elsewhere.)
Such names seem appropriate for these player characters. Old Irish meile could
mean ‘fool’, but also ‘the act of grinding’ or even ‘hand-mill, quern’.38 On the one

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hand, ‘Grindings’ and ‘Great-Grindings’ suggest threat, sexual activity,39 or
(insultingly) engagement in the feminine task of flour-grinding with a quern.40
On the other, ‘Grounds’ and ‘Greatly-Ground’, or ‘To-Be-Ground’ and
‘To-Be-Greatly-Ground’ could reflect the fact that these players are themselves
threatened.41 Also, while the major forms of these ‘grinding’ and ‘great-grinding’
names need not necessarily imply meal production, it is interesting that one of the
TBDD manuscripts gives minlithi—apparently miscopied minmlithi ‘small-/
fine-grindings/grounds’ or even ‘flour-/ powder-grindings/grounds’—in place
of Admlithi.42
As far as the pronunciation of the name Admlithi is concerned, it is worth noting
at this point that, by at least the Middle Irish period (from the tenth century
onwards), the first consonant cluster would have been pronounced roughly as
-mm-.43 Also, the medial vowel would, by that stage, have been reduced to a
somewhat ‘obscure’ /@/.44 Despite the fact that this would still have been coloured
to some extent by the surrounding palatal consonants, probably pushing it closer

37 I am extremely grateful to Ruairı́ Ó hUiginn for pointing this out to me. Endings in –i do
appear in some singular forms of passive participle, but these are in oblique cases, and I
have not considered them here.
38 DIL, s.v. meile.
39 On Irish fools and lust, see Thomas Owen Clancy, ‘Fools and Adultery in Some Early
Irish Texts’, Ériu, 44 (1993), 105–24.
40 The low status associated with (womanly) flour-grinding is illustrated in McLaughlin,
Early Irish Satire (Dublin, 2008), 143, v. 25, in which a ‘man to whom is assigned a quern’
is mocked. On the social groups involved in grinding, see Fergus Kelly, Early Irish
Farming: A Study Based Mainly on the Law-Texts of the 7th and 8th Centuries AD
(Dublin, 1997), 439, 450.
41 Jester-figures do otherwise tend to be marginal and thus vulnerable. (One such is, for
example, destroyed at the climax of Fingal Rónáin; for commentary, see Erich Poppe,
‘A Note’.)
42 TBDD, ed. Knott, 65, D iv 2 variant for l. 1379.
43 DIL, s.v. ad-.
44 McCone, A First Old Irish Grammar and Reader Including an Introduction to Middle Irish,
Maynooth Medieval Irish Texts 3 (Maynooth, 2005), 16: ‘Unless in absolute final pos-
ition. . . all short unstressed vowels. . . except /u/. . . had fallen together as an ‘obscure’
mid-central phoneme /@/.’
10 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

to -i- than -o-,45 one might suppose that it would have been unlikely to be regis-
tered distinctly as any particular vowel, by a non-native speaker, and would there-
fore have been relatively vulnerable to oral corruption. (Alteration to -o-,
specifically, in Amloôi, is impossible to explain except as a random error, although
influence from the vowels of the preceding and following words in the verse—ból
and mólu—might be suspected to have played some part in this.)
Etymologically and (to a lesser extent) phonetically, then, the name Admlithi
(‘Great-Grindings’, ‘Greatly-Ground’ or ‘Due-To-Be-Greatly-Ground’) would fit
tolerably neatly into the Amloôi-verse and the ground-sand passage in Gesta

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Danorum, focusing as these do on the grinding sea: at once grinder and self-
ground. But how and why could it have arrived in those sources?

Admlithi as Sea-Grinder: Irish, Norse, or both?

Despite its tiny (almost inconsequential) role in TBDD, it seems to me that the
name Admlithi would have had an exceptionally broad range of potential applica-
tions, and could have been used in many, very diverse contexts. One reasonable
possibility, I think, is that Admlithi was used to refer to a specific area of the sea
when indirect expression was, for superstitious or poetic reasons, desirable. In the
late-ninth or early tenth-century Irish glossary, Sanas Cormaic46—which itself
appears to contain at least two Norse loan words47—the currents surrounding a
whirlpool called Coire Brecáin (‘Brecán’s Cauldron’) are compared to the paddles
of a mill-wheel (orceil or orcéil).48 This complex work is currently being re-edited
for the Early Irish Glossaries Database,49 but Paul Russell has published a provi-
sional translation of the relevant passage, as it stands in the Yellow Book of Lecan
(the manuscript containing the text of TBDD cited above):
Coire Brecáin, i.e. a great whirlpool which is between Ireland and Scotland to the north, i.e.
a meeting place of many seas: the sea which comes round Ireland from the north-west, and
the sea which comes round Scotland from the north-east, and the sea from the south

45 I thank Paul Russell for drawing my attention to this.

46 On the nature and development of Sanas Cormaic, see Paul Russell, ‘The Sounds of a
Silence: The Growth of Cormac’s Glossary’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 15 (1988),
1–30.
47 Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 439, n. 10 noted that Sanas Cormaic contained the Irish
word, tráill, borrowed from Old Norse ìræll. Whitley Stokes suggested that hor was ‘per-
haps a loan from O[ld] Norse hâr’: see Three Irish Glossaries: Cormac’s Glossary,
O’Davoren’s Glossary and a Glossary to the Calendar of Oingus the Culdee, ed. Whitley
Stokes (London, 1862), xxx.
48 Gearóid Mac Eoin, ‘The Early Irish Vocabulary of Mills and Milling’, in B. G. Scott
(ed.), Studies on Early Ireland: Essays in Honour of M. V. Duignan (Belfast, 1981), 13–9,
discussed the etymology and use of orceil, and concluded that in the early legal texts he
examined, it must have meant ‘mill chute’. This apparently cannot, however, have been its
meaning in the passage on Coire Brecáin here examined; in all probability, the chute-term
was simply misunderstood at some point.
49 Early Irish Glossaries Database <http://www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/irishglossaries> accessed
12 September 2010.
 AMLETHUS , AMLOôI AND ADMLITHI 11 of 20

between Ireland and Scotland. Then it takes them each in turn like whirling spirals50 and
puts each of them in the place of the other like the paddles of a millwheel as it goes past, and
sucks them down into the depths so that it is like an open-mouthed cauldron which would
suck down even the whole of Ireland, and would put it in all together. Again it vomits up
that mouthful and its thunderous belching and its crashing and its roaring can be heard
among the clouds just like a cauldron boiling on the fire.51

This descriptive passage is followed by a narrative, belonging to a subgroup

within the Sanas Cormaic entries which, through shared, ‘criss-crossing’ features,
seem to evince particular interest on the part of the compilers in obscure language

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(including poetry), liminality (for example, sea and shoreline locations), and mys-
terious figures (superficially unpromising youths with great futures, and the fool
(drúth), Lomna, whose head speaks after decapitation—and who, incidentally, has
a similar namesake in TBDD).52
In the first part of the Coire Brecáin entry, it is the motion of mill-paddles,
rather than grinding as such, which is invoked to describe the action of the cur-
rents of Coire Brecáin.53 Nevertheless, the content of the following entry (not only
in the Yellow Book of Lecan, but also in the short version of this glossary in
Leabhar Breac, and the Book of Uı́ Maine) does make it possible to suggest that, at
some point in the creation of Sanas Cormaic (or one of its sources), the
mill-reference may have been felt to be connected with grinding, specifically:
‘Cumal [a she-slave] i.e. a woman that is grinding at a quern; for this was the
business of bondswomen before the mills were made’.54 After Cumal, the

50 On ‘whirling spirals’ (lúathrinde) here, see Paul Russell, ‘Notes on Words in Early Irish
Glossaries’, Études Celtiques, 31 (1995), 195-204 (at 201–4).
51 Translation from Paul Russell, ‘Poets, Power and Possessions in Medieval Ireland’, in
Joseph F. Eska (ed.) Law, Literature and Society, CSANA Yearbook 7 (Dublin, 2008), 9–45
(at 33). Proof-reading for the Early Irish Glossaries Database is still in progress, but the
current version of the Yellow Book of Lecan text (Y, entry 324) reads: ‘Coire Brecain .i.
saobhcoire mor fuil eter Erind 7 Albain a leth fothuaid .i. comruc na n-ilmuire, in muir
timcell nErenn anı́arthair 7 in muir timcell nAlban anairtuaidh 7 a mmuir andeass eter
Eirinn 7 Albain. foscerd iarom imonsech fo cossmailess luathrinde 7 docuiredar cach ai i
tuaim alaile amail orceil tairechtae 7 suigthe sis i fudomhoin co mbi a coire obele nosuigfedh
cid Erind, focherad ind for aonchoi. sceid iterum in loimm sin suas 7 rocluinter a torand-
brucht 7 a breisimnech 7 a esgal iter nellaib fo cosmuiless ngaluigedar coire mbis for thein.’
The database shows that the key term orcéil is also mentioned in this passage in Leabhar
Breac (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, 23 P 16), entry 255 and the Book of Uı́ Maine
(Dublin, RIA, D ii 1), entry 250; in other words, orcéil is to be found in both the long
and the short version of Sanas Cormaic. See also Proinsias Mac Cana, The Learned Tales of
Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1980), 146–50, on the relationship between this entry and very
similar works belonging to the Metrical and the Prose Dindsenchas.
52 Russell, ‘Poets, Power and Possessions in Medieval Ireland’.
53 I thank Paul Russell for this observation.
54 Cormac’s Glossary, trans. John O’Donovan and Whitley Stokes (Calcutta, 1868), 42. The
Early Irish Glossaries Database references for this are: Yellow Book of Lecan, entry 325;
Leabhar Breac, entry 256, Book of Uı́ Maine, entry 251. On erroneous derivation of the
term for a sluice, comla, from cumal by early glossators of an Irish legal tract, see Gearóid
Mac Eoin, ‘The Early Irish Vocabulary’, 16.
12 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

next-but-one entry is ‘Cotud ‘a whetstone’ i.e. everything hard [?], ab eo quod est
cotis i.e. a stone (lie) on which iron weapons are ground.’55
The clustering of Coire Brecáin, Cumal and Cotud entries might of course be a
compilatory coincidence, but, on the other hand, it is clear that, in the Irish
glossaries, some entries had in fact been harvested from the same sources as
those found close to them in their manuscripts, or else had been re-ordered, or
even tailor-made, to fit in with their neighbours.56 In other words, entry order
could be significant. The point I wish to make is that, in these manuscripts of
Sanas Cormaic, Coire Brecáin is associated with mills, and mills are, immediately

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afterwards, linked to grinding (indeed, to much the same sort of grinding-context
described in Grottaso˜ ngr), and that this might conceivably reflect some sense that
Coire Brecáin was itself a kind of grinder. Certainly, the whirlpool is depicted in
Sanas Cormaic with a ‘mouth’, like a mill (the feature described as an ‘eye’ in
Grottaso˜ ngr).57 Even its name has a mill-aspect: although presented in Sanas
Cormaic as meaning ‘Cauldron of Brecán’, where Brec(c)án is an untranslated
personal name, Coire Brecáin could, I think, alternatively be interpreted as
‘Cauldron of The-One-Roughened-As-A-Millstone’. According to the
Dictionary of the Irish Language, Coire Brecáin contains Brec(c)án, a ‘fanciful
personal name’, meaning ‘speckled thing’. Brec(c)án is, in its turn, interpreted
in the same source as deriving from brecc, ‘speckled’; this appears to be related to
the verb breccaid ‘speckles’ and the verbal noun breccad, ‘act of speckling’.
However, breccad could, very specifically, refer to the process of ‘picking’ (delib-
erately roughening) a quern or millstone with an instrument called a breccaire,
‘speckler’.58 Consequently, although brec(c)án is not specifically attested in DIL as
meaning ‘one roughened as a millstone’, this would seem to me to be a fairly
unproblematic interpretation of the word found in the genitive in Coire Brecáin. As
‘Cauldron of The-One-Roughened-As-A-Millstone’, the name Coire Brecáin
could, I would argue, reflect some idea that the whirlpool resembled (or seemed
to contain) a roughened millstone, complete with mouth.
Although it must be admitted that there is no evidence that Irish speakers ever
did call a whirlpool ‘Admlithi’, it would seem that, had any wanted to give Coire
Brecáin, for example, a nickname, ‘Great-Grindings’ would probably have made a

55 Cormac’s Glossary, trans. O’Donovan and Stokes, 42. Early Irish Glossaries Database:
Yellow Book of Lecan, entry 327; Book of Uı́ Maine, entry 253 (Cotut); Leabhar Breac,
entry 258 (Cadut).
56 Russell, ‘The Sounds of a Silence’, 27–9. On glossary entry order, see also Paul Russell,
‘Laws, Glossaries and Legal Glossaries in Early Ireland’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie,
51 (1999), 85–124 (at 112–3).
57 Coire Brecáin is described as ‘open-mouthed’ (obele). In Irish, the ‘eye’ of the millstone
was called the ‘mouth’ (bél); see Mac Eoin, ‘The Early Irish Vocabulary’, 16–7. The general
Coire entry which immediately precedes that on Coire Brecáin mentions food consumption:
‘Coire ‘a caldron’ i.e. cói úire ‘passage of the raw’: úr (is) everything raw i.e. raw flesh’
(Cormac’s Glossary, trans. O’Donovan and Stokes, 41); for text, see Early Irish Glossaries
Database, Yellow Book of Lecan, entry 400; Leabhar Breac, entry 254.
58 DIL, s.vv. breccán, brecc, breccaid, breccad, breccaire. Mac Eoin, ‘The Early Irish
Vocabulary’, 16–7.
 AMLETHUS , AMLOôI AND ADMLITHI 13 of 20

perfectly appropriate choice—at least for one or more of the compilers of Sanas
Cormaic. (This would mirror the kind of thinking behind the coining of the Dutch
word maelstrom, ‘grinding-stream’ which has become a common European term
for ‘whirlpool’.)59 Yet such a tag could have packed greater punch still in contexts
which were at least partially Norse, its foreignness rendering it more obscure and
thus more powerful (as a noa-term) and exotic (in poetry).60 Irish words were,
after all, rather rare in Norse literary texts—although, importantly, a handful were
preserved, including (in compound) men/min, the word for ‘flour’ which was
mentioned earlier as an element in one (Irish) version of the Admlithi-name.61

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My suggestion is therefore that Amloôi represents a corruption of an Irish name
which was applied to (or perhaps even coined for) a specific area of grinding sea,62
such as the ‘Coire Brecáin’ of Sanas Cormaic, in the mixed-language region
stretching from Ireland itself, across the North Channel, into the Hebrides and
up towards the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland.63 Where exactly Coire
Brecáin was thought to have been located is another question: the standard view is
that the name probably originally referred to a whirlpool off Rathlin Island, but
that another between Jura and Scarba in the Hebrides was—at some point—also
given the same name (now, Corryvreckan).64 Either of these eddies could, I sus-
pect, have been given a noa-name or heiti (Admlithi) in skaldic verse.

Amloôi in written skaldic verse

In written skaldic verse, the medial vowel of the critical name appears as -o-.
Theoretically, a change from -i- (as in Admlithi) to -o- would not have affected
the structure of the verse, and so could have happened at any time. However, since
medieval Scandinavian scribes tended to copy poetic names with extreme care—
‘slavishly’, even65—it is more likely that this alteration occurred in oral

59 On use of cognate words for whirlpools in Germanic languages, see von See et al. (eds),
Kommentar, vol. 3, 844–5.
60 Perkins, ‘Rowing Chants’, 164 compared the ‘predilection for high-sounding place-
names’ in shanties with a tendency towards use of ‘exotic or impressive names’ in skaldic
verse.
61 Britta Schulze-Thulin, ‘Notes on the Old and Middle Irish Loanwords in Old Norse’,
NOWELE, 39 (2001), 53–84 gathered evidence of ‘around forty’ nouns borrowed into
Nordic languages from Old or Middle Irish, along with about a hundred place- and personal
names; amongst the common nouns was mintach, menadach ‘gruel’, used to mean ‘dough’ in
the Nordic source (67).
62 Tolley noted that ‘use of the superlative may suggest that Snæbjõrn has a particular
whirlpool in mind’ (Grottaso˜ ngr, ed. and trans. Tolley, 26).
63 On the mixed-language situation in ‘Scandinavian Scotland’, and its cultural context, see
Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba 789-1070, New Edinburgh History of Scotland 2
(Edinburgh, 2007), 275–311.
64 See William J. Watson, History of the Celtic Place-names of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1993),
63, 94–5.
65 Lasse Mårtensson, ‘Isolerade graftyper i DG 11 (Codex Upsaliensis)’, in Agneta Ney,
Henrik Williams and Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist (eds), Preprint Papers of the
14 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

transmission, before the name was ever committed to writing. As noted above, the
obscure medial vowel of the name Admlithi could probably have made it somewhat
vulnerable to corruption, especially where the meaning was unclear. This was not,
after all, a standard place-name (which might be expected to have survived trans-
mission into and through skaldic verse relatively well, even across language bound-
aries).66 Rather, it was an extremely rare art- or sea-name, even in Irish, and is
bound to have been opaque to all but those with highly specialist knowledge.67
Even the author of Skáldskaparmál, apparently, lacked that.

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Knowledge of Admlithi as a player-name?
Admlithi (or similar) need not only have been known as a skaldic term in medieval
Scandinavia. It is also possible that it was transmitted as a prose player-name,
perhaps within a work akin to TBDD. What suggests this above all is the name
Klefsan, which is used of an Irish fool, described in the Norwegian text Konungs
skuggsjá (also known as Speculum regale):
En ìo er sa æinn lutr ænn æptir er geta ma æf syniz firir gamans saker oc skemtanar.
Gamans maôr æinn var ı́lande ìvi mioc longu oc ìo var hann cristinn oc var sa maôr kallaôr
klefsan at nafni. at var mælt um ìænn mann at ængi maôr munnde sa væRa er hann sæ at
hann munnde æi lægia gera mæô sinum gamansamlegum orôum oc ìo lygiligum. oc ìo at
maôr væri ryggr ı́hug sinum ìa er ìat sagt at maôr munnde æi latrs binndaz æf ìeir heyrôe
ìæssa mannz rœôu. En hann fecc sott ok do oc var siôan grafinn i kirkiugarôe sæm aôreR
mænn. Hann la længi ı́iorôu, sva at allt var holld fuit af beinum hans oc sva morg bein fuin
mæô ìa gerôez sva til at mænn grofo likami manna iìeim sama kirkiogarôe oc grofo sva nær
ìar sem klefsan var gravinn at ìeir grofo upp haus hans heilan ok sætto siôan up asteı́n æinn
hovan ikirkiugarôenum oc stændr hann ìar iafnan siôan. En hvæRr sa maôr er ìar kœmr oc
ìænn haus litr oc ser ı́ìænn staô er munnr hans var oc tunga ìa læR hann ìægar oc sva ìo
at hann se iryggu skapi aôr en hann se ìætta hafuô. oc lægia nu dauô bæin hans litlu faerri
mænn en ìa er hann var qvicr.68
(And there is yet one thing which remains to be told, if desired, for the sake of entertain-
ment and diversion. An entertaining man lived in this land [Ireland], long ago. He was a
Christian, and his name was Klefsan. It was said of that man that there could be no man
whom he could not cause to laugh with his entertaining yet mendacious words. And even if
a man were sorrowful, it is said that he could not prevent his laughter if they [sic] heard the
speech of this man. But he took ill and died and was then buried in the churchyard like

Fourteenth International Saga Conference, Uppsala 9th-15th August 2009, Papers from the
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Gävle 14 (Gävle, 2009),
2 vols, vol. 2, 657–8 (at 658).
66 On the mainly (but not entirely) precise transmission of place-names in poetry, see
Matthew Townend, English Place-Names in Skaldic Verse (Nottingham, 1998), especially
26, 72–4, 80–1, 99.
67 Niels Lukman, ‘An Irish Source and Some Icelandic Fornaldarsögur’, Mediaeval
Scandinavia, 10, 41–57 (at 56) suggested some substantial ‘Nordic distortions of Irish
names and words’, including leit-rı́, latinized as Litidorum, and Maelsechlainn, divided
into Molda and Sleggja.
68 Konungs Skuggsiá, ed. Ludvig Holm-Olsen, 2nd edn (Oslo, 1983), 26. Text silently
expanded after Holm-Olsen.
 AMLETHUS , AMLOôI AND ADMLITHI 15 of 20

other men. He lay long in the earth, until the flesh had all rotted from his bones, and many
of his bones were rotten also. Then it so happened that men were burying corpses in the
same churchyard, and they dug so near the place in which Klefsan was buried that they dug
up his whole skull, and set it up on a high stone in the churchyard. And there it has
remained ever since. And any man who goes there and looks at that skull, and sees into the
place where his mouth and tongue were, laughs at once, even if he had been sorrowful
before he saw that head. And his dead bones hardly make fewer people laugh now than
when he was alive.)69

Kuno Meyer interpreted Klefsan as a corruption of Irish Clessán, ‘a hypocoristic

form of some name, the first part of which was cless, ‘‘feat, trick,’’ an appropriate

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name for a jester’.70 (Such corruption could have been the result of a misreading of
double insular -ss- as -fs-, pointing to part-literary textual transmission.)71 Meyer
then invited comparison with Clissı́ne, found not in the Yellow Book of Lecan, but
in the problematic Lebor na hUidre version of TBDD.72 (That Klefsan could
alternatively have come, via metathesis, from Clessamun, also mentioned here, is
another—more remote—possibility.)73 I offer here the text, with a rough transla-
tion, based on that made by Whitley Stokes:74
Imdai na clessamnach
Atconnarc triar n-aile isind airidi. Teora caimsi hi foditib impu. scı́atha cethrocairi in ina
lámaib co telaib óir foraib 7 ubla airgit 7 gai bic intlassi leu. Rosfetursa ol se. Cless 7 Clissı́ne 7
Clessamun tri clessamnaig ind rı́g sin. tri comais. tri derbráthir. tri meic Naffir Rochlis.
Atbéba75 fer cach ae léo.76
(The Room of the Feat-Performers
‘I saw another three people on the dais. Three shirts foditib77 about them. Four-sided
shields in their hands, with bosses on them.78 And silver ubla [‘apples’ or ‘balls’], and

69 Translation my own. See also The King’s Mirror (Speculum Regale - Konungs Skuggsjá),
trans. Laurence Marcellus Larson (New York, 1917), 118.
70 Kuno Meyer, ‘The Irish Mirabilia in the Norse ‘‘Speculum Regale’’’, Ériu, 4 (1910),
1–16 (at 14). DIL, s.v. cles.
71 I am most grateful to Paul Russell for this observation.
72 Máire West, ‘The Genesis of Togail Bruidne Da Derga: A Reappraisal of the
‘‘Two-source’’ Theory’, Celtica, 23 (1999), 413–435 (at 434–5) has argued that the section
of TBDD in Lebor na hUidre to which this passage belongs must have been copied by the
interpolator known as H from an unidentified source (rather than having been invented by
him).
73 DIL, s.v. clesamain, ‘feat-performer (?)’. William Sayers, ‘Konungs Skuggsjá: Irish
Marvels and the King’s Justice’, Scandinavian Studies, 57 (1985), 147–61 (at 158, n. 6)
remarked that Meyer could have referred in his explanation to the term clesamnach.
According to DIL, s.v. clesamnach, this is an adjective (meaning ‘feat-performing’),
which as a substantive (here) signifies ‘juggler, acrobat’.
74 TBDD, ed. and tr. Stokes, 115, §120.
75 Read: atbéla.
76 Lebor na hUidre, ed. Best and Bergin, 234, ll. 7641–6.
77 Foditib was glossed by the scribe known as H as ‘.i. hi cenglaib’ (‘in bonds’). DIL, s.v.
foditib, cites only this extract, and like Stokes, gives ‘girt’.
78 Secondary meanings of scı́ath and tul could make these mill-paddles, with wave-crests on
them.
16 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

small spears, ornamented with inlaid work, with them.’ ‘I know them,’ he said. ‘Cless and
Clissı́ne and Clessamun, the king’s three clessamnaig. Three comais79 are they: three broth-
ers, three sons of [?].80 A man will die because of each of them.’)

Klefsan is credited in Konungs Skuggsjá with the power to provoke laughter in

people faced with sight of the dead. This cannot come from Clissı́ne or Clessamun
(as they are here described). Yet it is shared with Mlithi, Máel and Admlithi (in
both the Yellow Book of Lecan and Lebor na hUidre): ‘even though the corpse of
his mother or his father were in front of each, not one of them could refrain from
laughing at them.’ This makes it tempting to speculate that these figures may

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themselves have been known to the author of Konungs skuggsjá. Indeed, the pas-
sage about Klefsan is preceded in Konungs skuggsjá by a short tale about the Irish
royal site at Tara, which is thematically related to TBDD.81 Arguably, this in-
creases the probability that a tale similar to extant versions of TBDD, and perhaps
including the player-name, Admlithi, was found in Nordic areas by the thirteenth
century, at least. But how could it have arrived there? As mentioned above, Klefsan
seems to contain a misreading of insular -s-; perhaps such a misreading was more
likely to have been made by a non-native reader, looking at an Irish manuscript,
but this probably cannot be argued with any certainty. Kuno Meyer was convinced
that most of the name-forms in the associated mirabilia, at least, must represent
‘Norse phonetic renderings of spoken Irish of the thirteenth century’, but Klefsan
itself shows no certain signs of this, as far as I can see.82
A particularly attractive possibility, suggested by the work of Judith Jesch,
Michael Chesnutt, and Russell Poole (amongst others), is that Orkney played
some part in transmission of material from TBDD to Norse-speakers. Jesch has
examined Orcadian literary culture in detail, and has recently argued that it is
likely that ‘Orkney was in fact a highly-developed centre of literary activity in both
poetry and prose in Old Norse.’83 One feature of that literary centre appears to
have been some interest in grinding-imagery, reflected both in the comments in
Litla Skálda about the ‘Grotta’ whirlpool in the Pentland Firth, and in
twelfth-century use of the gold-kenning, ‘meal of Fróôi’. In fact, this research
by Jesch tends to support some of the arguments of Chesnutt, who has emphasized
firstly, the existence of a ‘hybrid cultural environment of the Celtic West’; and

79 The meaning of comais, translated by Stokes as ‘of the same age’ is unclear; see DIL, s.v.
comais.
80 Stokes gave ‘Naffer Rochless’, but this seems strange, and I would very tentatively
suggest that what once stood here was a name similar in form to Fer Rogain, and related
to the verb clisid, which lies behind the preceding names.
81 Both are about the destruction of royal dwellings, in the wake of unjust kingship. On the
significance of the Tara passage in this context, see Sayers, ‘Konungs Skuggsjá’.
82 Meyer, ‘The Irish Mirabilia’, 15. Michael Chesnutt, ‘An Unsolved Problem in Old
Norse-Icelandic Literary History’, Mediæval Scandinavia, 1 (1968), 122–37 (at 125) gave
a balanced summary of the debate about oral versus literary transmission of Irish material
into Konungs skuggsjá.
83 Judith Jesch, ‘The Orcadian Links’, 162.
 AMLETHUS , AMLOôI AND ADMLITHI 17 of 20

secondly, the likelihood that ‘twelfth-century Orkney acted as a bridgehead’ for

part-literary conveyance of material to Iceland, for example.84 More specifically,
Poole has recently drawn attention to stylistic similarities between descriptive
passages in TBDD, and in verse supposedly composed in twelfth-century
Orkney.85 What is most intriguing is that, according to Poole, the subject of
this verse is Starcatherus (Starkaôr), another legendary, liminal Danish hero trea-
ted at length by Saxo. Poole offers the conclusion that ‘Starkaôr’s depiction in the
verses of Rõgnvaldr and Oddi is informed by a richly eclectic mix of Scandinavian
and. . . Hibernian and continental European stylizations.’86 Although Poole em-

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phasizes transmission through live rather than literary performance, his work does
suggest that Orkney (or a very similar location) may, indeed, have been a crucible
in which textual elements from Ireland and Denmark met and mixed.

Did Saxo know what Amlethus meant?

By the thirteenth century, then, Admlithi may have been known in Western
Scandinavia both as an obscure name associated with Grotti in maritime skaldic
verse, and as a player-appellation. But what could have been understood of the
Hamlet-names by Saxo, writing a little earlier, in East Scandinavia?
Very little is known about the life of the author of Gesta Danorum, except that
he lived around the beginning of the thirteenth century in Denmark, and that he
was probably a secular cleric, perhaps at Lund. He studied abroad, possibly in
northern France. Somehow, he acquired Celtic or partly-Celtic material—includ-
ing knowledge of tales explicitly about Ireland, Orkney, and Scotland—which he
incorporated into Gesta Danorum.87 This matter included an extended episode
about Irish players who enter into battle with Vikings, including Starcatherus
(the subject of the Orcadian verse likened to TBDD by Poole), by whom they
are defeated.88 Saxo clearly had some interest in Irish entertainers, and some
opportunity to access sources which could feed that interest.
In the case of the ‘Havelok-complex’, part-Celtic elements may have
come through England.89 Otherwise, Saxo made much of his dependence on

84 Michael Chesnutt, ‘Nordic-Celtic Links in Folk Literature’, in Gillian Fellows-Jensen

(ed.) Denmark and Scotland: The Cultural and Environmental Resources of Small Nations.
Joint Symposium of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Danish Academy of Science
and Letters, Held in Copenhagen, 15th-18th September 1999 (Copenhagen, 2001), 153–70
(at 166).
85 Russell Poole, ‘Ekphrasis: Its ‘‘Prolonged Echoes’’ in Scandinavia’, Viking and Medieval
Scandinavia, 3 (2007), 245–67.
86 Poole, ‘Ekphrasis’, 264.
87 See, for example, Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. Friis-Jensen, vol. 1, 604-6
(Book IX, §4,33–5).
88 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. Friis-Jensen, vol. 1, 384-6 (Book VI, §5,11–3).
89 Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘Amleds rolle’.
18 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

Icelandic sources.90 There is a good chance that he also drew on Norwegian and,
of course, Danish works, in either oral or written form.91 In addition, at least one
French text left its imprint upon Gesta Danorum.92 Since England, Iceland,
Norway, Denmark and Northern France all had close cultural ties to Ireland, it
is possible that Saxo could have gained insight into Celtic texts from any of these
areas. Scotland, including the Hebrides and Northern Isles, would, plainly, have
been another potential source of information.
Saxo could have certainly obtained the Amloôi-verse as a complete unit, and
drawn upon that in creating his Amlethus-text.93 (That this might have been the

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case is suggested by Saxo’s description of dunes as ‘slopes’ (cliuis) of sand, perhaps
faintly tracing the hlı́ô (‘slope’) of the sea mentioned in the Icelandic source.) On
the other hand, he might well have made use of verse content which had already
been altered in some way: there is every chance that such material would have been
transformed in transmission, either by Saxo or by one of his sources—not least
through sheer misunderstanding.94
Did Saxo, then, hold any precise information as to the meaning of the Irish
name contained within the skaldic verse? Probably not—at least, not knowingly. If
he had understood it, he would surely have glossed it quite explicitly. Yet Saxo’s
use of the extremely rare plural past participle permolita meaning ‘thoroughly,
greatly ground’ is interesting, given that this could certainly reflect a possible
interpretation of Admlithi (as a plural past participle passive) which cannot have
been immediately obvious from the skaldic verse itself. If this is not coincidental,
the association of permolita with Amlethus could indicate that Saxo had access to a
source in which the name was already linked to permolita (or perhaps an equivalent
term, understood by him). At any rate, on the basis of his spelling of Amlethus, it
would, at least at first glance, seem unlikely that he ever saw the key name
(Admlithi or Amloôi) written down—except perhaps in contracted, erroneous or
alternative form.95

90 Gesta Danorum, ed. Friis-Jensen, I, 74–6, (Preface, §1, 4).

91 On possible Norwegian sources, see Bjarni Guônason, ‘The Icelandic Sources of Saxo
Grammaticus’, in Karsten Friis-Jensen (ed.), Saxo Grammaticus: A Medieval Author
Between Norse and Latin Culture (Copenhagen, 1981), 79–93 (at 82–3); and Hilda R.
Ellis Davidson, ‘Wit and Eloquence in the Courts of Saxo’s Early Kings’, in Friis-Jensen
(ed.), A Medieval Author, 39–52 (at 40).
92 Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, ed. Friis-Jensen, vol. 1, 59 (Introduction).
93 A reasonable assumption that this was the case appears to have formed the basis for
a comment in Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes (1998), vol. 1, 183 that in Gesta Danorum ‘it
is implied that Amlóôa meldr could mean sand.’ Saxo probably did see Eirı́ksdrápa, for
instance, in written form (Bjarni Guônason, ‘The Icelandic Sources’, 90).
94 On erroneous use of skaldic verse by Saxo, see Bjarni Guônason, ‘The Icelandic
Sources’, 89.
95 The verbal of necessity (‘due-to-be-ground’) could perhaps have been mlithi or mlethi, as
clithi/clethi. Equally, in Old Irish, the verbal noun mlith (‘grinding’) could be written mleth
(for mleith); see DIL, s.v. mleith.
 AMLETHUS , AMLOôI AND ADMLITHI 19 of 20

Finally, could Saxo have known that Admlithi was the name of a menaced,
menacing Irish player? The extant Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá has been dated
to around 1250, making it about fifty years younger than Gesta Danorum, so this
cannot itself have been a source for Saxo.96 However, earlier versions almost
certainly did exist, and these could very well have included fuller Irish material.
Also, as Saxo and the author of Konungs skuggsjá seem to have had very similar
aims and interests (explorations of various sorts of knowledge and wisdom, in
particular relating to kingship and, in discrete episodes, to Irish entertainers), it
would seem fair to assume that they would have gravitated towards similar

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sources.97 In fact, it would perhaps have been surprising if some of these sources
had not contained Irish material, since Hibernian authors were uniquely preco-
cious, and uniquely prolific, in their production of works on sovereignty. All in all,
the existence of a player-name from TBDD, accompanied by rudimentary narra-
tive, in the extant version of Konungs skuggsjá does, I think, open up the possibility
that Saxo could have found himself able to link a form of the name Admlithi with a
figure something like the dangerous yet vulnerable player mentioned in TBDD:
precisely the kind of character he sketched in his own little episode on Irish players
destroyed in battle. Nevertheless, how exactly Saxo might have viewed any per-
ceived relationship between Admlithi (or Amloôi) the sea-grinder, Admlithi the
player, and Haveloc the maritime juggler is impossible, for now, to imagine.

Conclusion
What is the real significance of this etymology (or rather, these etymologies) for
Admlithi, Amloôi, Amlethus and, ultimately, Hamlet? Clearly, we must tread care-
fully here, given the highly speculative nature of the foregoing discussion, but if
the Amloôi of the skaldic verse were indeed to be accepted as a corruption of
Admlithi, and if it were, in addition, to be accepted that the name indicated, in that
context, a dangerous maritime feature, such as a whirlpool, the deeper
literary-historical implications might be interesting, not only for medievalists,
but also for Hamlet-scholars more generally.
It would appear that Hamlet’s association with players might go back several
hundred years longer than has hitherto been believed. Even Yorick seems uncan-
nily like a later version of the dead player, Klefsan, who had been imported from
TBDD into Konungs skuggsjá centuries before. What makes this all the stranger is
the fact that there are no equivalents to these players in the link-text, Gesta
Danorum (or its early translations). There, the sole ‘player’ is Amlethus himself,
who entertains guests by acting as a cup-bearer at the feast during which he will
later kill his uncle.98

96 Sayers ‘Konungs Skuggsjá’, 147.

97 On the interest in kingship manifest in Gesta Danorum and Konungs skuggsjá, respect-
ively, see Skovgaard-Petersen, ‘Amleds rolle’ and Sayers, ‘Konungs Skuggsjá’.
98 Gesta Danorum, 232 (Book III, §6, 23).
20 of 20 LISA COLLINSON

Assuming that Hamlet did (in its Shakespearian context) derive from Admlithi
and that Admlithi had previously been used to denote an infamous eddy would
mean, in fact, that the name of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, once described not
merely a man ‘as mad as the sea’ or threatened by a ‘sea of troubles’, but rather, the
sort of ‘gulf’ to which Shakespeare had Rosenkrantz compare the ‘cess
[cease] of majesty’ itself. Viewed in this light, Hamlet would become, by name,
a multi-identitied, triple-gendered whirlpool-incarnate—in essence, a
saltwater-vortex, somehow made flesh. How that might be played, I could not
even begin to imagine. Perhaps, however, someone else could?

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University of Aberdeen