great+russia

n. vehemence, wrath.

(pl. -ar), m. waterfall.

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n. wrath, rage, ire; snúa fors í frið, grimd í grið, 655 xxxii. 24, Bs. ii. 97; með forsi, haughtily, Sturl. iii. 144, Pass. 13. 2; ferr erkibiskup í fors mikit, he fell into great wrath, Fms. xi. 441; fors ok atköst, Fas. iii. 91; fors ok ílska, Stat. 398.

COMPDS: forsfullr, forsligr, forsmaðr.

mod. foss, m., prob. akin to the preceding word and forr, [Swed.-Dan. foss, North. E. force; a test word of Scandin. language and origin; cp. the curious passage in Constant. Porph. De Admin. Imperii, ch. 9, where the Byzantine author gives some names of waterfalls in Russia in two languages, ρωσιστί and σκλαβινιστί (Russian and Slavonic), with a Greek translation; ρωσιστί, a waterfall, being called βορσί or φόρος (e. g. οὐλ-βορσί = Icel. Hólm-fors, βαρου-φόρος = Icel. Báru-fors), whereas σκλαβινιστί it is called πραχ, i. e. porog or prag: Constantine in another passage states that the Russians were Teutonic or ‘Franks:’ the Garðar (Russia Minor) of that time was in fact a Scandin. country; even the name Russia is by some (P. A. Munch) explained as Scandin., afterwards adopted for the whole empire; it was still regarded so by the Byzantine authors of the 10th century, as opposed to Slavonic]:—a ‘force,’ waterfall, Landn. 291, 292; fors mikill er Sarpr heitir, Ó. H. 49, Landn. 277, v. l.: in many local names, Skóga-f. in southern Icel.; Gýgjar-f. in the north (Goða-f. is a corrupt form, cp. Þorláks-kver, p. 288, and Grett. ch. 68, 69, whence the name); Gull-f., Gold-force, a freq. name in western Icel.

2. a brook, stream; this sense is curious, and peculiar to the Stj. (by bishop Brand, a native of south-eastern Icel.); it is well suited to the district of Skaptafells-sýsla, where all brooks are torrents rushing from glaciers into the ocean; til forsins Bison, Stj. 387. Judges iv. 13; hann grípr einn stein upp ór forsinum, 227; Davíð tók fimm steina ór einum forsi, 464. 1 Sam. xvii. 40; við forsinn Besor, 490. 1 Sam. xxx. 9; yfir fors Cedron, 527. 2 Sam. xv. 23; af forsi drakk hann á götu, 656 C. 2: in the old poem Vsp. fors is evidently used in the same sense; á sér hón ansask aurgum forsi, 31; falla forsar, 58. This idiom perhaps gives a hint as to the native place of this poem; falla forsum, to fall in torrents, Fas. ii. (in a verse). fors-fall, n. a ‘forcefall,’ torrent, Stj. 32, Ó. H. 17, Fms. iv. 361.

Eg. 94.; Snorri (Hkr.) constantly uses the pl. form, but bautaðarsteinn, Fagrsk. 19, and bautarsteinn, Hm. 72; m. the stone monuments of the olden age, esp. in Sweden and Denmark; the Hávamál l. c. (sjaldan bautarsteinar standa brautu nær, nema reisi niðr at nið) tells us that these stones used to be placed along the high roads, like the sepulchral monuments of old Rome; cp. the standing phrase on the Swedish-Runic stones—hér skal standa steinn ‘nær brautu;’ or, má eigi ‘brautar-kuml’ ( a road monument) betra verða; the high roads of old Sweden seem to have been lined with these monumental stones; even at the present time, after the destruction of many centuries, the Swedish-Runic stones (of the nth and 12th centuries) are counted by thousands. A great collection was made and drawings executed during the 17th century (Buræus, etc.), but only published A. D. 1750, under the name of Bautil. The etymology of this word is much contested; some render it by ‘stones of the slain’ (bauta, to slay), but this is contradicted by the passage in Hm. l. c. and by the inscriptions themselves. The bauta stones were simply monuments erected by the piety of kindred and friends without any respect to sex or manner of death, either in war, on sea, or through sickness; some were even erected to the memory of living persons. They were usually tombstones; but many of them are memorial stones for men that died in foreign lands, Greece, Russia, the British Islands, etc. Neither is Snorri right in saying (Hkr. pref.) that the bautasteinar belonged to the old burning age (brunaöld), and were replaced by the cairns (haugar) in the subsequent cairn age (haugaöld)—þá skyldi brenna alla dauða menn ok reisa eptir bautasteina, en síðan er Freyr hafði heygðr verit at Uppsölum þá görðu margir höfðingjar eigi síðr hauga en bautasteina. Svíar tóku lík hans ok var hann brendr við á þá er Skúta heitir, þar vóru settir bautasteinar hans, Hkr. Yngl. ch. 17—the passage in Hávamál and the monuments refute this statement. The great bulk of the Scandinavian bauta stones seem to be of the nth and even 12th century. In Icel. no stones of that time are on record: var hann þá her heygðr skamt frá bsenum, ok settir upp bautasteinar, þeir er enn standa her, Hkr. i. 269; hávir bautasteinar standa hjá haugi Egils ullserks, 153,—where Fagrsk. reads, í þau skip var lagðr í valrinn, ok orpnir þar haugar utan at; þar stendr ok bautaðarsteinn (= bautarsteinn in Hm.?) hár sem Egill féll, p. 19;—en eptir alla þá menn er nokkut mannsmót var at, skyldi reisa bautasteina, ok hélzt sa siðr lengi síðan, Hkr. Yngl. ch. 8. It is worth remarking that the word ‘bautasteinn’ never occurs out of Icel. literature, and there only in the above passages, viz. once in the old Hm., once in the Fagrsk., four times in the Hkr., whence it has passed over to modern writers. The word is most probably only a corruption from brautarsteinar, lapides viae, (by dropping the r); cp. the analogous Swedish word, brautarkuml, monumentum viae, which occurs in the inscriptions themselves.

m. pl. Irishmen, the Irish.

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m. pl. Irishmen; Írland, n. Ireland; Íra-konungr, m. the king of the Irish; Írskr, adj. Irish; Írska, u, f. the Irish tongue, Ld. 72, Fs. 78, Bs. i. 227, the Sagas passim.

II. Írland it mikla, Great Ireland, was the name of Southern America, just as Eastern Russia was called Great Sweden.