Svart Skauf 8^VIII

‘Þú munt heiman         halda verða
og afla bráða         til bús okkars.
Væri það skára         í venju að leggja,
sem virðum má         vest gegna.’

‘Þú munt verða halda heiman og afla bráða til bús okkars. Væri skára að leggja það í venju, sem má gegna virðum vest.’

‘You’ll have to go away from home and provide meat for our household. It would be better to make a habit of whatever will serve humans the worst.’

Mss: 603(81), Rask87ˣ(112v)

Readings: [4] okkars: okkar Rask87ˣ    [5] skára: so Rask87ˣ, om. 603    [6] í venju: so Rask87ˣ, til vinnu 603    [7] má: mætti Rask87ˣ    [8] vest: vestu Rask87ˣ

Editions: Kölbing 1876, 243, Jón Þorkelsson 1888, 230, CPB II, 383, Jón Þorkelsson 1922-7, 155, Páll Eggert Ólason 1947, 59.

Notes: [4] okkars ‘our’: Okkar ‘our’ (Rask87ˣ) is a later form (see Note to st. 5/4 above). — [5-6]: The reading of Rask87ˣ is also adopted by Jón Þorkelsson (1888; 1922-7) and Páll Eggert Ólason (1947). The 603 variant of these lines (væri það | til vinnu að leggja) can be rendered as follows: væri að leggja það til vinnu ‘one should make a habit of doing that’. However, that reading appears to be a lectio facilior. — [8] vest (adv., sup.) ‘worst’: The line is hypometrical and Jón Þorkelsson (1922-7) and Páll Eggert Ólason (1947) opt for the 603 reading vestu. That can only be construed as n. dat. sg. of the sup. adj. verstr (for the assimilation ‑rst- > ‑st- see ANG §272.3) and it is not clear how it can be made sense of syntactically. Gegna ‘avail’ takes a dat. object, but that is provided by virðum ‘humans’ (l. 7), and verstu is not otherwise recorded as a possible adverbial form.

References

1. Bibliography
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Jón Þorkelsson [J. Thorkelsson]. 1888. Om digtningen på Island i det 15. og 16. århundrede. Copenhagen: Høst & søns forlag.
5. Kölbing, Eugen. 1876. Beiträge zur vergleichenden Geschichte der romantischen Poesie und Prosa des Mittelalters unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der englishen und nordischen litteratur. Breslau: Koebner.
6. Páll Eggert Ólason, ed. 1947. Kvæðasafn 1300-1600. Vol. 2 of Einar Ólafur Sveinsson et al., eds. Íslands þúsund ár. 4 vols. Reykjavík: Helgafell.