Note to Bjarmij Lv 1^VIII (Heiðr 14)

[2] of lítil efni ‘about little substance’: Neither ms. has a completely satisfactory reading here, and it seems a word or words were missing from the end of the line in both versions, since R715ˣ’s efni is added in the hand of the annotator, Jón Rugman (whose ef lítit er efni appears to be an attempt to make sense of something he did not understand). Nevertheless, as things stand this reading must be accepted, with of interpreted as a prep. + acc. ‘about, of’; cf. Heggstad et al. 2008: of B. 8. ‘om, over (om sak, emne)’ ‘about (a matter, subject)’. Heiðr 1956, 11 gives the line as here, while Heiðr 1960 prefers the arrangement of lítil efni, which is hypermetrical, and translates ‘with little substance’, which would require a dat. object rather than the nom./acc. pl. here. Skj B prefers to omit of/ef and emend R715ˣ’s er ‘is’, omitted in the present edn, to the pl.: lítil eru efni, translating lidet (sandt) er deri ‘little (truth) is in it’; however, this seems unlikely as a scribal error and may be discounted. Kock construes lítil of frétt, perhaps ‘little [is] news’, from 2845, pointing out the contrast mart er logit with lítil er frétt (FF §44). However, frétt seems to belong to l. 3, corresponding to R715ˣ’s frækn (which is to be preferred), which leads Kock to insert there a purely conjectural framr ‘foremost’.

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. FF = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1922. Fornjermansk forskning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 18:1. Lund: Gleerup.
4. Heiðr 1960 = Tolkien, Christopher, ed. and trans. 1960. Saga Heiðreks konungs ins vitra / The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise. Nelson Icelandic Texts. London etc.: Nelson.
5. Heiðr 1956 = Turville-Petre, Gabriel, ed. 1956. Hervarar saga ok Heidreks. Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series 2. With Notes and Glossary by G. Turville-Petre; Introduction by Christopher Tolkien. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London. Rpt. 2014 with minor corrections. Exeter: Short Run Press.