Note to Egill Frag 1III
[1] vrǫngu ‘awry’: As Björn Magnússon Ólsen (TGT 1884, 199) points out, Óláfr Þórðarson clearly understood this word as the m. or n. dat. sg. (or the adv.) of the adj. (v)rangr ‘wrong, false, twisted, awry’ because he referred to it in his prose text as a nafn (Lat. nomen), a noun or adj. Thus W’s reading has been adopted here rather than A’s vrungu, which would give the 3rd pers. pl. pret. indic. of a hypothetical *vringa (cf. OE wringan ‘wring’). As the prose text of TGT (1884, 87) makes clear shortly after this citation, the use of a word beginning with initial <vr> rather than <r> is an archaism (vinðandin forna, the use of the letter venð <w> in such locations), necessary here to provide correct alliteration in a dróttkvætt line (see also ANG §288). For another example, also using vrangr, see Bragi Þórr 6/1-2 and Note there.
References
- Bibliography
- TGT 1884 = Björn Magnússon Ólsen, ed. 1884. Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske afhandling i Snorres Edda tilligemed de grammatiske afhandlingers prolog og to andre tillæg. SUGNL 12. Copenhagen: Knudtzon.
- ANG = Noreen, Adolf. 1923. Altnordische Grammatik I: Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter Berücksichtigung des Urnordischen. 4th edn. Halle: Niemeyer. 1st edn. 1884. 5th unrev. edn. 1970. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
- Internal references
- (forthcoming), ‘ Óláfr hvítaskáld Þórðarson, The Third Grammatical Treatise’ in Tarrin Wills (ed.), The Third Grammatical Treatise. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=32> (accessed 21 May 2024)
- Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Þórr’s fishing 6’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 52.