Note to Refr Giz 2^III

[2-3]: Earlier eds have taken skaldi (n. dat. sg.) ‘the skald’ with hniginn ‘fallen’ (p. p. of hníga ‘fall (in battle), pass away, topple, bend down’), sometimes in the sense of ‘passed away from the skald’ (cf. Skj B: nu er manden død fra skjalden (mig) ‘now the man has passed away from the skald (me)’; Clunies Ross 2005a, 61 ‘is departed from the poet’). However, neither hníga nor deyja ‘die’ is attested with a dat. object in the sense of ‘pass away from sby, leave sby behind’. Kock (NN §2463E) compares hníga e-m with falla e-m which he translates as falla för ngns hand ‘fall by sby’s hand’, which would mean that Hofgarða-Refr had killed Gizurr. Faulkes (SnE 1998, II, 315) entertains both of these possibilities. In the present edn, skaldi is taken as a dat. with the adj. hollr ‘loyal, faithful, well-disposed towards sby’, which is regularly construed with the dat. (Fritzner: hollr 1). The sense is that the skald (Hofgarða-Refr) laments the fact that the man (Gizurr) who was loyal to him and taught him the art of skaldic composition has fallen in battle.

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
5. Clunies Ross, Margaret. 2005a. A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
6. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.