Note to RvHbreiðm Hl 74^III

[5-8]: The second helmingr is problematic and the present interpretation is conjectural. (a) The ms. reading ‘karrar’ (l. 5) cannot be construed as an Old Norse word and appears to be a misreading of knarrar (f. gen. sg.) ‘of the ship’ (emendation in keeping with earlier eds). The kenning veggi knarrar hyggju ‘the walls of the ship of thought [HEART > CHESTS]’ (l. 5) follows the interpretation of Finnur Jónsson (Skj B; LP: knǫrr; veggr). Finnur also emends valskar þjóðir (f. nom. or acc. pl.) ‘French people’ (l. 7) to valskrar þjóðar (f. gen. sg.) as a genitival phrase qualifying ‘chests’, which has been adopted in the present edn (so also Skald). It could well be that the rendering of this phrase in the mss reflects Norwegian forms (vowel reduction in unstressed syllables þjóðar > þjóðer and reduction of the gen. inflectional ending ‑rar > ‑ar, which is found in the oldest Norwegian mss). See Holtsmark in Hl 1941, 110. (b) Jón Helgason (Hl 1941) believed that veggi knarrar hyggju was a kenning for ‘shields’ (‘the walls of the ship of thought [CHESTS > SHIELDS]’) which had been engraved with knives (grafna knífum). He also retains the acc. pl. valskar þjóðar ‘French people’ (l. 7), qualified by trauðar vægðar ‘reluctant to grant mercy’ (l. 7) and takes this as a second object of hjoggu ‘cut, hew’ (l. 6): ‘the leader’s troops cut the decorated shields, [and] French people, reluctant to grant mercy’. This is less preferable from a syntactic point of view and, furthermore, the company performing the slaughter is more likely than the victims to be reluctant to grant mercy.

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. LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
5. Hl 1941 = Jón Helgason and Anne Holtsmark, eds. 1941. Háttalykill enn forni. BA 1. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.