2. Volume Editor’s Preface and Acknowledgements
Kari Ellen Gade 2017, ‘Volume Editor’s Preface and Acknowledgements’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols [check printed volume for citation].
The present volume is the first in the nine-volume series Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages that ensues from the editorial collaboration between two General Editors, namely, Kari Ellen Gade (Bloomington, Indiana) and Edith Marold (Kiel). We are deeply grateful to our dedicated and hardworking Research Associates and Research Assistants, Lauren Goetting (2009-10) and Megan Barrett (2010-13) from Indiana University and the ‘Kiel team’ consisting of Vivian Busch, Jana Krüger, Ann-Dörte Kyas and Katharina Seidel, as well as the translator of the Kiel editions, John Foulks. We are also grateful to Helen Appleton, who expertly entered all of Margaret Clunies Ross’s editions in the database. A special thanks from the whole project goes to the two manuscript institutes, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi in Reykjavík (former Director Vésteinn Ólason and current Director Guðrún Nordal) and Den Arnamagnæanske Samling in Copenhagen (former Afdelingsleder Peter Springborg and current Afdelingsleder Matthew Driscoll), for their willingness to facilitate access to their collections and their help with the scanning of manuscripts. Margaret Clunies Ross acknowledges the financial support of a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council that enabled her to employ Helen Appleton as a part-time Research Assistant to enter her editions in the skaldic database.
As far as the division of labour between Bloomington and Kiel is concerned, the checking of all in-text bibliographical sources and citations was done by the Kiel Research Assistants, who also did the indexing of the Kiel editions and, in collaboration with Tarrin Wills, the compilation of most of the tables in the front matter of this volume. Wills, who is also the editor of the electronic version of the volume, generated the first-line index, and Hannah Burrows was responsible for the SkP III Bibliography. The different sections of the Volume Introduction were written by Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade, Elena Gurevich, Edith Marold and Tarrin Wills (see Note to Introduction). The remaining editorial work was done by Gade, with the assistance of Barrett and Goetting during the initial phase of data entering.
Gade writes: ‘This volume has been a long time in the making, and I would like first of all to thank all my collaborators for their patience and understanding. The Contributing Editors have been quick to respond, have delivered outstanding work, and have suffered my criticisms and the ‘quality control’ comments with impressive stoicism, equanimity and willingness to help out. They have all been a pleasure to work with. I would also like to thank my colleagues, the other General Editors, so very much for their support and friendship and for all the work they have put into the present volume. Their invaluable participation in the sometimes back-breaking ‘quality control’ more often than not required them to put aside their own work to help ensure the quality of the editions and introductory sections of the present volume. Edith lent her expertise on kennings and word formation, Diana’s scans of the pdfs of the editions with her detailed and highly informative hand-written comments were extremely valuable, and Tarrin was always ready to step in when I hollered from the other end of the world: ‘Tarrin! I’ve screwed up something in the database again!’. Guðrún and her assistant, Soffía Guðný Guðmundsdóttir, have helped out with manuscript references, and Hannah has been patiently deciphering almost illegible bibliographical entries and hunting them down to ensure that the SkP III Bibliography is not the embarrassment it could have been.
I would also like to express my gratitude to my good friend and one of the major contributors to the present volume, Elena Gurevich (aka ‘Queen of the þulur’), for almost daily email correspondence Moscow-Bloomington on such diverse topics as the finer points of skaldic editing, politics and soups. Her support has meant a lot to me. Thanks are due to Beatrice La Farge and the Frankfurt editors of the eddic Kommentar for graciously making available the unpublished manuscript of their commentary on Grímnismál for the þulur editions.
I would like to reiterate my gratitude to the Kiel Research Assistants for their invaluable work on the present volume, as well as to my own Research Associates, Lauren and Megan, and I would also like to thank the former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, Bennett Bertenthal, for making available financial support for these Associateships during my four-year stint as Chair of the Department of Germanic Studies.
Finally, and above all, the birth of this volume would never have taken place without the help of midwife Margaret Clunies Ross. She was always ready to lend her support, from cleaning up tortuous English (including my own) to providing guidance in editorial matters, and she held my hand when I banged my head against the wall screaming and an abortion seemed imminent. Now the child has been born, and if it has any blemishes, it is entirely my own fault’.
Marold writes: ‘First I have to thank my collaborator Kari Ellen Gade who shouldered the heavy burden of organising the volume and the correspondence with the contributing editors. And I express my gratitude to her, Margaret Clunies Ross and Diana Whaley for correcting my English in my sections of the Introduction as well as in my own editions in this Volume. I would like to join the thanks of Kari Ellen Gade to my Research Assistants for their work on this volume, and also for the many helpful discussions which accompanied the editorial work. Last but not least I have to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) whose financial support enabled the employment of the Research Assistants. My thanks also go to the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel which provided us with rooms and all other equipment’.
Kari Ellen Gade
Bloomington, Indiana, January 2017
Edith Marold
Kiel, January 2017