Note to Þjóð Yt 15^I

[13-16] at jarlar Fróða eylands hǫfðu of veginn vígfrǫmuð ‘that the jarls of Fróði from the island had killed the inciter of war [WARRIOR]’: Almost all eds associate eylands with jarlar Fróða ‘jarls of Fróði’. However, their views of the syntactic status of the gen. diverge. (a) Taking eylands with jarlar yields the interpretation ‘the island jarls of Fróði’ (Hkr 1893-1901, IV; Skj B; ÍF 26 and this edn). Jarlar Fróða are thus the jarls installed by Fróði as the defenders and administrators of the island. (b) Taking eylands with Fróða results in ‘the jarls of the island of Fróði’ (Noreen 1912b, 130; Yt 1925). But since Þjóðólfr’s lines characteristically constitute logical unities, it is preferable to assume a collocation of jarlar Fróða. (c) For this reason Åkerlund (1939, 98-100) takes a step further and associates eylands with vígfrǫmuð ‘inciter of war’, taking eylands as gen. object of víg-, hence ‘attackers of the island’ (so also Beyschlag 1950, 24 and Hkr 1991). However, the syntactic kenning-type vígfrǫmuð eylands does not occur in kviðuháttr (Noreen 1921, 41), and the object of víg is normally human.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. ÍF 26-8 = Heimskringla. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. 1941-51.
4. Hkr 1893-1901 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1893-1901. Heimskringla: Nóregs konunga sǫgur af Snorri Sturluson. 4 vols. SUGNL 23. Copenhagen: Møller.
5. Hkr 1991 = Bergljót S. Kristjánsdóttir et al., eds. 1991. Heimskringla. 3 vols. Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
6. Noreen, Erik. 1921. Studier i fornvästnordisk diktning. Uppsala: Akademiska bokhandeln.
7. Yt 1925 = Noreen, Adolf, ed. 1925. Ynglingatal: Text, översättning och kommentar. Stockholm: Lagerström.
8. Beyschlag, Siegfried. 1950. Konungasögur: Untersuchungen zur Königssaga bis Snorri. Die älteren Übersichtswerke samt Ynglingasaga. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
9. Noreen, Adolf. 1912b. ‘Forsök till en rekonstruktion af Ynglingatal jämte øfversättning’. In Studier tillägnade Karl Warburg på hans sextioårsdag af vänner och lärjungar. Stockholm: Norstedt, 125-35.
10. Åkerlund, Walter. 1939. Studier över Ynglingatal. Skrifta utgivna av Vetenskaps-Societeten i Lund 23. Lund: Gleerup.