Note to Útsteinn Útkv 9VIII (Hálf 50)
[1]: Most eds have altered this line to produce metrical regularity. Skj B adopts a suffixed negative verb magni fýsit instead of magni fýsir engi. Edd. Min. and Andrews (Hálf 1909) emend the ms.’s magni to man(n)gi ‘nobody’, fýsir to fýsi and delete engi ‘nobody’. Kock (NN §3191) assumes similarly that l. 1 originally read Mangi fýsir ‘No one is eager’ and emends the text accordingly in Skald. He argues that when, at some point, -ng- got confused with -gn-, so that nom. mangi ‘nobody’ was understood as dat. magni ‘strength’, the line came to lack a negation and nom. engi ‘nobody’ was added to it. Since the ms. reading makes perfect sense and the phrase deila magni ‘pit one’s strength’ is also used in Anon Lil 8/8VII (albeit with the younger dat. form megni), emendation seems unnecessary.
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.
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- Edd. Min. = Heusler, Andreas and Wilhelm Ranisch, eds. 1903. Eddica Minora: Dichtungen eddischer Art aus den Fornaldarsögur und anderen Prosawerken. Dortmund: Ruhfus. Rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
- Hálf 1909 = Andrews, A. Le Roy, ed. 1909. Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka. ASB 14. Halle: Niemeyer.
- Internal references
- Martin Chase (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Lilja 8’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 570-1.