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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to GunnLeif Merl I 72VIII

[5] konr vigra ‘scion of pigs’: The latter word is emended in this edn from ms. ‘viga-‘ (refreshed). The heiti vigrir ‘boar’ occurs in Þul Galtar 1/7III; see Note there; cf. LP: vigr, where an etymology based on med tænder som spyd ‘with spear-like teeth’ is tentatively suggested. Scheving (reported in Bret 1848-9) emended the words viga konr more drastically to vígtǫnnum ‘with battle tusks’, guided by the wording of DGB. This solution was adopted in Bret 1848-9 and Skj B and may well be correct. Other possibilities, however, are that Gunnlaugr omitted the mention of tusks, as he evidently does in II 30/5-8, perhaps in order to rationalise the allegory, or that there is a lacuna after l. 6, in which the boar’s tusks could have been mentioned. In Skald ‘viga-’ is read as víga, without explanation: Merl 2012 adopts this reading, translating konr víga as Mann der Kämpfe [= dieser Krieger] ‘man of battles [= this warrior]’, but such a periphrasis would be unidiomatic; also, konr as a heiti for ‘man’ in general is very rarely attested as against the numerous attestations in the sense of ‘scion, descendant, heir’ (LP: konr).

References

  1. Bibliography
  2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
  3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
  4. 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.
  5. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
  6. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
  7. Internal references
  8. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Galtar heiti 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 900.

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