Note to ÚlfrU Húsdr 6III
[8] hlaut svá innan minnum ‘thus [the hall] received [decoration] inside with memorable pictures’: This clause, which reappears in st. 10/4, is the poem’s refrain (stef). It refers to the images that inspired the poem, but as it stands, it is problematic for several reasons. The subject is missing, and minnum (dat. pl.) cannot be the object of hlaut, because hljóta is construed with the acc. (see the examples in Fritzner: hljóta). Faulkes (SnE 1998, II, 313) translates the phrase as ‘come to be decorated (with)’, and notes that it is ‘probably only half the refrain, which would then have been a klofastef ‘split refrain’; the rest of the sentence, including the object, would have appeared in the last line of another (lost) stanza’. If so, the sentence can be completed as follows: ‘Thus [the hall] received [decoration] inside with memorable pictures’. Faulkes’ suggestion is plausible, and it is supported by a similar construction in Edáð BanddrI, where the finite verb occurs in position 1 of the first line but the corresponding subject is suspended until the next stef-line (cf. Note to Edáð Banddr 9/1, 2I and NN §1853A).
References
- Bibliography
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- 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.
- SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
- Internal references
- Russell Poole 2012, ‘ Eyjólfr dáðaskáld, Bandadrápa’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 454. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1158> (accessed 19 April 2024)
- Russell Poole (ed.) 2012, ‘Eyjólfr dáðaskáld, Bandadrápa 9’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 468.