[4] hót ‘somewhat’: I.e., by litotes, Eiríkr launches high stems with full force against Sigvaldi (so also ÍF 26; Konráð Gíslason 1892, 67-9). All mss except FskBˣ (and 51ˣ and 302ˣ, the other two copies of NRA51) have hót ‘a bit, a (significant) something’. In ON, this word is found in the dat. or gen. case (hóti, hóts) with adverbial sense (LP: 2. hót; CVC: hót n.), but ModIcel. also retains adverbial hót (usually in the phrase ekki hót ‘not at all, not a bit’), and it is understood adverbially here, qualifying setti at móti ‘directed against’. Skj B and Skald prefer the adverbial gen. hóts (‘hoz’), the reading of FskBˣ, taking hóts hôva stafna ‘very high stems’ together. A further, remote, possibility is to read hót as the word for ‘threat’ (LP: 1. hót; see Note to l. 3 hôva above).
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.
- LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
- CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
- ÍF 26-8 = Heimskringla. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. 1941-51.
- Konráð Gíslason, ed. 1892a. Udvalg af oldnordiske skjaldekvad, med anmærkninger. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.