[4] kona ítrmanns ‘nobleman’s wife’: The marital status of the longed-for woman is not disclosed until this point; she is also of good descent (ll. 5, 8). Passionate admiration or love for an unobtainable woman is one of the staple themes of medieval French troubadour poetry (and romance more generally) and it is found in Old Norse poetry and prose from at least the C12th, though scholars have held differing opinions as to whether the love-theme in Old Norse owes its existence to direct influence from troubadour poetry (Andersson 1969; Bjarni Einarsson 1971; Finlay 1995).