2. Stemmata for prose and verse
This is not currently part of the peer-reviewed material of the project. Do not cite as a research publication.
a. The stemma(ta) of the prose work(s) in which the verses are preserved will normally provide preliminary guidance as to the stemma for the verse texts. (Consideration of stemmata will need to take account of the fact that some compilations such as Flateyjarbók depend on a range of sources and hence enter into a variety of different stemmata.) Stemmata produced by the editors of good critical editions are an invaluable guide, and the advice of scholars currently working on major editions will also be sought.
b. However, it cannot (indeed must not) be assumed that the stemmata for prose works and the poetry they cite will necessarily correspond. Medieval or early modern scribes may have had access to verse texts, oral or written, other than those embedded in the prose works they are copying. Further, poetic texts are probably more subject to scribal alteration than the accompanying prose, whether corrupted by scribes who do not fully understand how dróttkvætt poetry works, or ‘improved’ by scribes who do. The making of a complete new skaldic edition is therefore a major opportunity for considering this question and hopefully for formulating hypotheses about the transmission of verses in particular groups of mss, and about the nature and effect of oral transmission.
c. In the selection of individual readings within a skaldic verse, it follows that although normal principles of stemma-based textual criticism will often apply, by which errors arising in the written transmission of the verse can be identified, it will also be necessary to reckon with other possibilities: that the stemma is other than previously assumed and hence that readings favoured by the traditional stemma are not necessarily the best or truest guide to the poet’s original; and that a plausible reading may be not the poet’s original but a scribal emendation on grounds of metre, sense or style.
d. It is also essential that the whole ms. transmission be kept constantly in view. In particular, it should be borne in mind that a ms. chosen as main ms. may, judged by the stemma, have only equal status with a ms. in another part of the stemma.