Note to ǪrvOdd Lv 18VIII (Ǫrv 51)
[3] við Hjörvarð ‘with Hjǫrvarðr’: The reading of 7, taking við as a prep. ‘against, with’ plus acc. (though in this sense the dat. is more common) rather than as the dual 2nd pers. pron. vit ‘we two’ of the majority of mss plus the nom. sg. Hjörvarðr, the reading only of 471 and 173ˣ. Skj B and Skald adopt vit Hjǫrvarðr in the sense ‘Hjǫrvarðr and I [exchanged blows]’, while Ǫrv 1888 and 1892 have the same reading as the present edn. The prose text of Ǫrv does not support the notion of a duel between Oddr and Hjǫrvarðr, the second of the berserk brothers after the eldest, Angantýr, but it is possible that an earlier version of the legend had Hjǫrvarðr rather than Angantýr as the original rival with Hjálmarr for the hand of the daughter of the Swedish king.
References
- Bibliography
- Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
- Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- Ǫrv 1888 = Boer, R. C., ed. 1888. Ǫrvar-Odds saga. Leiden: Brill.
- Internal references
- 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ǫrvar-Odds saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 804. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=35> (accessed 25 April 2024)