Note to RvHbreiðm Hl 55^III

[1]: The first line contains three internal rhymes (-ætt : ‑aut- : ‑ótt), and Skj B and Skald emend gætt at (imp.) ‘listen, pay attention’ (‘Giættu at’ papp25ˣ; ‘Giætto at’ 683ˣ) to golli (n. dat. sg.) ‘to gold’ (cf. st. 56/7-8) which is construed with illr ‘bad’ (l. 2): ‘Gautrekr seemed ill to gold (and) good to the kin of men’. That interpretation, which has no support in the mss, forces a violation of syntax (the finite verb occurs in syntactic position 3). Holtsmark suggests the emendation of ‘giættu at’ to ‘getþu at’ ‘guess if’. That emendation is not in keeping with Rugman’s orthography, because [e] is never written <iæ>  (see Hl 1941). The same objection can be made to the syntactically simpler getk, at ‘I say that’. For a similar use of gætt at, cf. the Y redaction of LaufE in which Giæt hier ad ‘Pay attention here’ is used to translate Lat. nota (LaufE 1979, 259, 335). In the present stanza, it looks as though the first poet is presenting the second poet with a riddle, telling him to pay attention (gætt at) and try to unravel why people considered Gautrekr to be both ‘good’ (góðr) and ‘bad’ (illr). The second poet solves that riddle in st. 56/7-8 (see below).

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. LaufE 1979 = Faulkes, Anthony, ed. 1979. Edda Magnúsar Ólafssonar (Laufás Edda). RSÁM 13. Vol. I of Two Versions of Snorra Edda from the 17th Century. Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1977-9.
5. Hl 1941 = Jón Helgason and Anne Holtsmark, eds. 1941. Háttalykill enn forni. BA 1. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
6. Internal references
7. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Laufás Edda’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=10928> (accessed 26 April 2024)