3. Symposium, Construction and Deconstruction in Skaldic Editing

Kiel 2-4 August 2003

The Symposium , Construction and Deconstruction in Skaldic Editing, took place at the Internationales Begegnungszentrum, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, on 2-4 August 2003. It was organised by Edith Marold and her Hilfskräfte, and concluded with a half-day excursion to Haithau/Hedeby and the Danevirke.

Present were: Jayne Carroll, Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade, Guðrún Nordal, Kate Heslop, Edith Marold, Judy Quinn, Russell Poole, George Tate, Matthew Townend, Valgerður Erna Þorvaldsdóttir, Tarrin Wills, Diana Whaley and Yelena Yershova.

Summary of discussion and recommendations for action

The following is a summary of the papers presented and the recommendations to editors emerging from the papers and the ensuing discussion. Some of these will also appear in the Supplement to the Editors’ Manual to be disseminated shortly.

Margaret Clunies Ross, ‘Where should emendation stop?’

The recommendation here is that editors should normally emend if no manuscript produces an acceptable reading and there are grounds for emendation for reasons of metrics, grammar or general sense. An emendation adopted should be conservative and compatible with the variant readings in surviving sources, if such exist. It should also take account of internal poetic evidence, e.g. hendingar, if such things are relevant to the decision. Further, there may be cases where the text is beyond emendation; editors should indicate irremediably corrupt text at both beginning and end by an obelos symbol (†), and this should be added to the list of available symbols in the Supplement to the Editors’ Manual that will be produced shortly.

Kari Gade, ‘Deconstructing and Reconstructing poems in kviðuháttr metre’

There were three recommendations to guide editors in dividing material into stanzas when dealing with poetry in kviðuháttr, in circumstances where the syntax indicates that continuous clause structure continues beyond the 8th line.

1. If a clause is introduced by ok or en, it should not be treated as a bound (subordinate) clause, even though followed by subordinating word order. Hence a separate stanza may begin with Ok or En.
2. If a clause is introduced by another connective that is clearly subordinating, such as svát, þvít, unz, áðr, þars etc., it should not be treated as an independent (main) clause. Hence these connectives should not begin a separate stanza. The same applies to pronouns which function like subordinating conjunctions, e.g. þann in Ynglingatal 19.
3. If 2 stanzas in Skjaldedigtning share a concatenation of nominal elements (e.g. tryggr vinr minn in apposition to Arinbjörn in Arinbjarnarkviða 10-11), these stanzas should be cited together, i.e. made part of a single enlarged stanza.

Kari is willing to be consulted on these and other metrical issues. Anyone who wants to discuss these recommendations or any other metrical questions is urged to send her an email.

Matthew Townend, ‘Inventing a poem: Óttarr svarti’s *Sveinsdrápa’

Russell Poole, ‘Questions of stanza eligibility and sequence, with examples from Sigvatr Þórðarson’s Nesjavísur’

Edith Marold, ‘Content and sequence of stanzas in a skaldic poem, with examples from Hallfreðr’s Óláfsdrápa, Einarr skálaglamm’s Vellekla and Glúmr Geirason’s Gráfeldardrápa’.

These 3 papers dealt with the question of the criteria that could be invoked by editors when deciding either whether there is justification in postulating the existence of a ‘new’ poem (Townend) or sorting out the ‘best’ sequence of stanzas in a single poem when there are several ms. witnesses with different sequences and a variable number of cited stanzas (Poole), or deciding on largely internal grounds on what the likely sequence of stanzas in a long poem should be when they are cited discontinuously in a source such as SnE (Marold).

Recommended criteria to emerge were:

• Historical evidence external to the poetry (e.g. Anglo-Saxon historical writings)
• Evidence internal to the poem, including extended imagery, narrative cohesion and various formal topics, such as the poet’s opening call for a hearing. It was agreed that cogent reasons should always be given for a particular ordering of stanzas in such circumstances.

Judy Quinn, ‘What the raven said: weighing citation evidence against poetic cohesion in Eyrbyggja saga’s quotations of Þormóðr Trefilsson’s verse’.

Discussion here was similar to that around the previously named 3 papers, but, in addition, the question of titles for poems emerged as important. It is recommended that medieval evidence (or lack of it) for particular titles be noted in the Introduction to long poems and that the way in which verses/poems are introduced in prose texts be also noted there or in the Context section (if different verses have different introductions in the prose).

Guðrún Nordal, ‘Some thoughts on kennings’

This paper stressed the necessity to recognise differences between C14 and earlier skaldic verse, specially in the matter of kennings.

One recommendation to emerge was that editors should highlight the different referential world that Christian kennings tap into, while also overlapping in a syncretic fashion with the traditional referential world of the kenning system. Another point of discussion concerned the stylistic feature of blómað mál; it was agreed that both this and the nature of Christian skaldic poetry should be discussed in the General Introduction to the skaldic edition and, where relevant, in the Notes to particular stanzas or poems.

Kate Heslop, ‘Hallfreðr’s Erfidrápa Óláfs Tryggvasonar’

This paper dealt with the ‘hard heart’ of editing, how to choose between variants where there are multiple stemmata and where some ms. traditions may not be helpful to the editor. A practical question was raised of whether mss that are low down on a stemma should appear in the ms. apparatus; it was recommended that some of them at least should be included to begin with, though they might have to be discarded eventually.

References