[2]: Both the translation and meaning of this proverb are uncertain. Möbius (1874) rendered the line: dem aufwärts strebenden wendet es (das glück) sich zu ‘luck turns to the upwardly striving man’, referring to the Latin proverb audaces fortuna juvat ‘fortune favours the bold’. CPB II, 366 restricted its translation to the relatively unambiguous phrase: ‘… aloft’. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) ventured: man holder sig til den, som udbreder noget ‘one sticks to the man who circulates something’. Kock (NN §3272) suggested: till den drar man sig, som jiver ‘one goes toward the man who gives’, i.e., ‘one follows the paymaster’. The translation provided here is equally provisional.
References
- Bibliography
- Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
- Möbius, Theodor. 1874. ‘Malshatta-kvædi’. ZDP Ergänzungsband, 3-73, 615-16.