Sonatorrek ("the irreparable loss of sons") is a skaldic poem in 25 stanzas, that appears in Egil's Saga (written c.a. 1220–1240), an Icelandic saga focusing on the life of skald and viking, Egill Skallagrímsson (ca. 910–990). The work laments the death of two of the poet's sons, Gunnar, who died of a fever, and Böðvarr, who drowned during a storm. In the assessment of Margaret Clunies Ross, Sonatorrek "has probably received, from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, the greatest literary approbation accorded to any single skaldic poem". According to the saga, after E
Sonatorrek ("the irreparable loss of sons") is a skaldic poem in 25 stanzas, that appears in Egil's Saga (written c.a. 1220–1240), an Icelandic saga focusing on the life of skald and viking, Egill Skallagrímsson (ca. 910–990). The work laments the death of two of the poet's sons, Gunnar, who died of a fever, and Böðvarr, who drowned during a storm. In the assessment of Margaret Clunies Ross, Sonatorrek "has probably received, from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, the greatest literary approbation accorded to any single skaldic poem". According to the saga, after Egill placed Böðvarr in the family burial mound, he locked himself in his bed-chamber, determined to starve himself to death. Egill’s daughter, Thorgerdr, diverted him from this plan in part by convincing him to compose a memorial poem for Böðvarr, to be carved on a rune-staff.
==Manuscripts== The first stanza of the poem is attested in all the main medieval manuscripts of the saga (or, where these are now incomplete, in copies made when they were more complete). Only the K-manuscripts have the whole poem. Möðruvallabók (Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, AM 132 fol) Die Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel (9. 10. Aug. 4to). This MS has a lacuna at this point, but some copies include this stanza. The lost manuscript known as 'K' represented by two nearly identical copies by Ketill Jörundsson, AM 453 and 462 4to.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).