Note to BjRagn Lv 4^VIII (Ragn 29)

[3-4] þar er áttum einiga öld ‘where we had no allies’: (a) This edn, with all others except CPB, emends to áttum ‘we had’ and, with Rafn (FSN), Valdimar Ásmundarson (Ragn 1891) and Örnólfur Thorsson (Ragn 1985), takes einiga as f. acc. sg. of pron. and adj. engi ‘no (one)’, or of adj. einigr ‘not any’ (ONP: einigr 2; cf. ANG §476), qualifying öld, to give ‘where we had no people’ (i.e. allies or followers, hence our heroism was all the greater) or alternatively ‘where we spent little time’. This seems the simplest solution and involves little emendation. (b) Olsen (Ragn 1906-8, 214), influenced by a statement about a lack of food in the prose preceding Ragn 28 (Ragn 1906-8, 160), emends to þars vér einig ôttum eldi ‘where we found little to sustain or delay us (in the way of hospitality)’, and is followed here by Eskeland (Ragn 1944) and Ebel (Ragn 2003). However, emendation to n. acc. pl. einig eldi is unnecessary, and it is not certain that eldi referring to the feeding and/or housing of human beings would have a pl. form: cf. LP: elði 1 and ONP: elði 2. (c) Finnur Jónsson (Skj B), followed by Guðni Jónsson (FSGJ), emends einiga to andvíga ‘rivalling’, hence: ‘where we found our match, found people to rival us’. (d) Kock (NN §496) emends einiga to eivíga ‘ever ready for war, very warlike’, postulating an otherwise unrecorded adj. eivígr by analogy with eilífr ‘ever-living’ and eilítill ‘very small’. However, his translation of áttum, 1st pers. pl. pret. of eiga (‘have, own, possess’) as vi … funno ‘we found, we encountered’, is questionable.

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. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
4. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. 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.
6. ANG = Noreen, Adolf. 1923. Altnordische Grammatik I: Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter Berücksichtigung des Urnordischen. 4th edn. Halle: Niemeyer. 1st edn. 1884. 5th unrev. edn. 1970. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
7. 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.
8. ONP = Degnbol, Helle et al., eds. 1989-. A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose / Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. 1-. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission.
9. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
10. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
11. Ragn 1944 = Eskeland, Severin, ed. and trans. 1944. Soga om Ragnar Lodbrok med Kråka-kvædet. Norrøne bokverk 16. 2nd ed. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. [1st ed. 1914].
12. Ragn 1985 = Örnólfur Thorsson 1985, 101-53.
13. Ragn 1891 = 2nd edn (pp. 175-224) of Ragn as ed. in Valdimar Ásmundarson 1885-9, I.
14. Ragn 2003 = Ebel, Uwe, ed. 2003. Ragnars saga loðbrókar. Texte des skandinavischen Mittelalters 4. Vol. II of Ebel 1997-2003.
15. Internal references
16. Rory McTurk (ed.) 2017, ‘Ragnars saga loðbrókar 28 (Bjǫrn Ragnarsson, Lausavísur 3)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 680.