Note to Eskál Vell 6^I

[7] kappi jǫfra ‘with the vigour of rulers’: (a) This edn, with almost all others, takes the dat. kappi ‘with vigour’ with the verb hóf upp ‘raised’. Kappi is interpreted as an instr. dat. or dat. of manner, of which there are prose examples involving abstract nouns (NS §110), though these normally occur in specific circumstances which are not precisely matched here. The jǫfra (gen. pl.) ‘rulers’ are unidentified but could be Hákon’s supporters, or jǫfra could be an adjectival gen., ‘lordly’, as jarla seems to be in Arn Mdr 5/1^II orðgnótt jarla ‘lordly wealth of words’. (b) Jǫfra could be taken with etjulund, but this entails separating jǫfra and kappi, which are consecutive and form a natural phrasal unit. (c) In order to avoid such separation, Kock (NN §1826) takes kappi as a variation of etjulund ‘inclination for strife’, both being dat. objects of setja in the sense ‘to settle, calm, allay’. However, the suggestion is unconvincing because apposition like this is rare in skaldic style (tellingly Kock only produces WGmc parallels). Moreover, Kock claims setja máli as a parallel, but that means ‘to settle a dispute’ (Fritzner: setja 4), whereas here setja would mean ‘to calm an emotion’ (Fritzner: setja 5), and would be construed with the acc.

References

1. Bibliography
2. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
4. NS = Nygaard, Marius. 1906. Norrøn syntax. Kristiania (Oslo): Aschehoug. Rpt. 1966.
5. Internal references
6. Katrina Attwood (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Máríudrápa 5’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 482-3.