Note to Egill Frag 1III
[All]: It is impossible to give a definitive sense of this couplet, as it probably lacks a nom. subject and a finite verb, hence no connected prose order or translation of the whole couplet has been attempted here. Skald (cf. NN §844C) constructs one but this requires three words to be emended and cannot be considered as more than speculative. It is possible, as Björn Magnússon Ólsen (TGT 1884, 199) suggests, that the repeated varrar (or várar) in each ms. is a result of textual corruption. On the other hand, the couplet may employ a deliberate play on words with the same form but different meanings (homonyms), and that is how the lines have been interpreted here. It is also curious that two of the words in this couplet, Gungnis ‘of Gungnir’ and lung ‘longship’, also appear in a couplet by Bragi Boddason (Bragi Frag 4/1-2) cited in the very next section of TGT (1884, 87).
References
- Bibliography
- TGT 1884 = Björn Magnússon Ólsen, ed. 1884. Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske afhandling i Snorres Edda tilligemed de grammatiske afhandlingers prolog og to andre tillæg. SUGNL 12. Copenhagen: Knudtzon.
- Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- Internal references
- (forthcoming), ‘ Óláfr hvítaskáld Þórðarson, The Third Grammatical Treatise’ in Tarrin Wills (ed.), The Third Grammatical Treatise. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=32> (accessed 27 April 2024)
- Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Fragments 4’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 59.