2.5. Editing and the skaldic database
Tarrin Wills 2012, ‘Editing and the skaldic database’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii.
The skaldic project covers three major areas, with three sets of information associated with each. The three areas represent three stages of the project and each has been facilitated and managed electronically. The first area is the gathering and organising of information to assist in the editing process. This type of information has been discussed in §2.2 above. Information associated with this area includes: collected information about manuscripts, editions and source texts; images of manuscripts; transcriptions of stanzas; and information about earlier editions. The existing Skj corpus formed the starting point for the organisation of this information. The administration of the corpus has involved allocating each part of the corpus to a contributor and to one or two coordinating editors.
The second area involves the creation of the new edition and its incorporation into the database. The new edition involves producing a normalised Text, Prose order and Translation, the critical and textual apparatus (Manuscripts, Editions, Readings, Prose Context and Notes) and introductory material for the skalds, poems and in some cases individual stanzas. The attributions, orderings and titles of each work have been adjusted to fit the principles of the new edition, and all the material is organised into volumes for the printed version. The earlier arrangement of the corpus, that of Skj, has been kept in parallel, as the existing reference point for organising the corpus. The third area involves extensions to the electronic edition once each volume or part is completed. Additional information can be added to the edition: an indexed lexicon; index of kennings, heiti, names, metrical forms and so on. These extensions allow further analysis of the poetry and provide additional resources for understanding the corpus.