Cite as: Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Máríuvísur I 9’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 685.

Drepa liet brúðrin bráða — bráð varð snót í ráðum — mann saklausan sinnar sótt af lífi dóttur.

Glóð-Nanna fekk græðis grát af bóndaláti, en mæðandi móðir mein af sögðum greinum.

Sótt brúðrin bráða liet drepa saklausan mann dóttur sinnar af lífi; snót varð bráð í ráðum. {{Græðis glóð}-Nanna} fekk grát af bóndaláti, en móðir mæðandi mein af sögðum greinum.

The accused, impetuous woman caused the blameless husband of her daughter to lose his life [lit. to be struck from life]; the lady became impetuous in her counsels. {The Nanna <goddess> {of the glow of the sea}} [(lit. ‘the glow-Nanna of the sea’) GOLD > WOMAN] got grief [lit. weeping] from the husband’s death, and the mother oppressing harm for the said reasons.

Mss: 721(12v)

Readings: [5] ‑Nanna: ‘‑ana’ 721;    græðis: græðir 721

Editions: Skj: [Anonyme digte og vers XIV], [B. 4]. Et digt om Marias jærtegn 9: AII, 488, BII, 528, Skald II, 289, NN §1682; Kahle 1898, 33, 97, Sperber 1911, 3, 57, Wrightson 2001, 44.

Notes: [All]: The first version of the miracle in Mar (277) merely informs us that the woman hired two boys to kill the man secretly. The second version (Mar 1202) goes into more detail: The woman hires the two boys for twenty shillings, they strangle the man in the basement of the house and then carry him up to his bedroom to give the impression that he had died of natural causes. — [4] sótt (f. nom. sg.) ‘accused’: This is the p.p. of the verb sœkja ‘accuse, seek, attack’ (see NN §1682). Skj B construes it as the second element of a cpd, in which bráð ‘impetuous, quick’ functions as the first element: snót varð bráðsótt ‘the lady was very rash’. That cpd is otherwise unattested. — [5-6] græðis glóð-Nanna fekk grát ‘the Nanna <goddess> of the glow of the sea [(lit. ‘the glow-Nanna of the sea’) GOLD > WOMAN] got grief [lit. weeping]’: This emendation is conjectural. The ms. reading can be construed as follows: græðir fekk grát glóðanna ‘the Saviour [or sea] got weeping of the embers’ or græðir glóðanna fekk grát ‘the Saviour [or sea] of the embers got weeping’. Neither of these readings makes any sense. It is easy to see how glóð-Nanna ‘glow-Nanna’ (lectio difficilior) could be confused with glóðanna ‘of the embers’ (lectio facilior) and the poetic word græðis ‘of the sea’ with the more familiar græðir ‘Saviour’. The goddess-name Nanna is also used as a base-word in kennings for ‘woman’ in Anon Mey 30/6 and Kálf Kátr 10/2 and 13/7. Most earlier eds emend to glóða Ná fekk græðis, in which Ná glóða græðis ‘the Ná of the embers of the sea’ must be a kenning for ‘woman’ (so Sperber; Skj B; Skald; Wrightson). That l. is syntactically and metrically impossible: in the corpus of dróttkvætt poetry there is no other sentence-introductory Type-A l. in which a trisyllabic cpd in position 1-3 is followed by the finite verb. Furthermore, it is not clear who Ná is supposed to be. There is no entry in LP, but presumably it is a late, otherwise unattested form of the name of the goddess Gn (with loss of initial g-).