Note to Herv Lv 12VIII (Heiðr 31)
[7-8] arfa þínum einar bænir ‘one boon to your heir’: Hb’s reading is completely acceptable as it stands. However, rather than arfa, dat. sg. of arfi ‘heir’, the other mss have arf, acc. sg. of arfr ‘inheritance’ in l. 7, thus making this the direct object, and eingabarni (dat. sg.) ‘only child’ the indirect object in l. 8. Skj and Skald compromise, printing eingabarni | einar bænir, making the clause read ‘you are reluctant to grant one boon to your only child’, but displacing eingabarni from its position in the stanza as the mss have it. Following on from their emended reading of the previous lines, the eds of Edd. Min. opt for arfa þínum, | einga barni ‘to your heir, your only child’. There is no good reason not to accept the reading of the main ms., however. The line einnar bænar occurs as Ásm 5/3. In the pl., as here, einn takes on the meaning ‘only, just, alone’.
References
- Bibliography
- Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- Internal references
- Peter Jorgensen (ed.) 2017, ‘Ásmundar saga kappabana 5 (Hildibrandr, Lausavísur 5)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 19.