Note to Anon (FoGT) 35III
[7-8] sá kemr að dæma drótt dauða á hauðri lífs ‘he will come to judge the host of the dead on the land of life’: This edn follows the interpretation of these lines offered by Kock (NN §3164) as the only one that respects the couplet structure of the stanza and also makes theological sense. There is no doubt that these lines allude to the Last Judgement, in which case ‘on the land of life’ may mean ‘in Paradise’. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) construed lífs á hauðri (l. 8) with hirðandi alls (l. 6) to produce the sense ‘the guardian of all life on earth’, but this violates the couplet-based syntax of the stanza and is therefore unlikely to be correct. Björn Magnússon Ólsen (FoGT 1884) emended the text by adding ok between dauða and lífs in l. 8 (sá kemr at dæma drótt dauða ok lífs á hauðri ‘he will come to judge the host of death [the dead] and life [the living] on earth’), but this produces an unmetrical line and rather strained syntax, and must also be rejected.
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.
- FoGT 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.