Cite as: Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 94’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1203.
context: There is no commentary accompanying this stanza, but the metre is a catalectic heptasyllabic variant of hrynhent ‘flowing-rhymed’ (sts 62-4) and thus similar to st. 91 (and also used in Anon Mhkv). Because the identical rhymes involve couplets only, it is ‘the least end-rhyme’ (in minnsta runhenda).
notes: The top right corner of fol. 53r has
been torn off, and the readings of ll. 1 and 4 cannot be reconstructed. — Snorri uses allusions to the exploits of legendary kings and heroes to extol Skúli’s prowess. All of these persons are also commemorated in RvHbreiðm Hl. This stanza is very similar to Anon Mhkv 7-8, which commemorate ancient heroes and are characterised by the same abrupt syntax: each line contains one independent clause. It is not unlikely that Snorri would have been familiar with that poem and used it as a model for the present stanza. — [7-8]: See the verbal echoes of these lines in st.
82/5-8.
texts: ‹Ht 97›,
‹SnE 689›
editions: Skj Snorri Sturluson: 2. Háttatal 94 (AII, 75-6; BII, 86); Skald II, 47; SnE 1848-87, I, 710-11, III, 134, SnE 1879-81, I, 15, 85, II, 33, SnE 1931, 251, SnE 2007, 37; Konráð Gíslason 1895-7, I, 63-4.
sources