Note to Bjbp Jóms 6I
[1] vér sitja ‘we … sat’: The inf. sitja ‘sat’, lit. ‘to sit, sitting’ (the reading of Finnur Jónsson and af Petersens) would form an acc. with inf. construction with acc. pl. hǫfðingja ‘chieftains’, and would suggest that a verb of hearing or learning in the pret. tense is missing; cf. st. 7/1, 2 frák Harald heyja ‘I have heard that Haraldr fought (lit. ‘I have heard Haraldr to fight)’. Frágu/frágum ‘we have heard’ is accordingly supplied in Jvs 1879, 107, followed by CPB II, 303, Skj B and Skald. The same eds have also supplied the adv. suðr ‘south’ as the first word of l. 1, aptly referring to the location of Jómsborg on the Baltic coast. These editorial conjectures are acceptable metrically: suðr alliterates with sitja in l. 1 and seima ‘of gold’ in l. 2, and the phrase suðr frágu/frágum brings the syllable count in l. 1 up to the required six syllables; the munnvǫrp metre does not require hending in odd lines.
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.
- CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
- Jvs 1879 = Petersens, Carl af, ed. 1879. Jómsvíkinga saga (efter Cod. AM. 510, 4:to) samt Jómsvíkinga drápa. Lund: Gleerup.