Note to Eil Þdr 14III
[5] vas list* fœrðr í fasta ‘was cunningly brought into a tight spot’: The main clause lacks a finite verb, and earlier eds (Finnur Jónsson 1900b, 393; Skj B; NN §461) supply vas ‘was’, which has been adopted in the present edn. However, that emendation makes the line too long (seven syllables); hence ‘listi’ (so all mss) has been emended to list* here, dat. of list f. ‘cunning, skill’. Listi (all mss) can only be the nom. Listi, the name of a peninsula in Vest-Agder, the southernmost part of Norway, which cannot be acommodated syntactically in this clause. Other eds (Finnur Jónsson 1900b, 393; Skj B; NN §461) emend Listi to Lista gen. sg. and include the p. n. as a redundant element in the giant-kenning hreina gnípu ‘of the reindeer of the peak’, but that still leaves a hypermetrical line. The same objection can be made to Reichardt (1948, 374), who takes listi as the dat. (perhaps even with an emendation to listum dat. pl.).
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.
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- Finnur Jónsson. 1900b. ‘Þórsdrápa Eilífs Goðrúnarsonar’. Oversigt over det Kgl. Danske videnskabernes selskabs forhandlinger 1900, 369-410.
- Reichardt, Konstantin. 1948. ‘Die Thórsdrápa des Eilífr Goðrúnarson: Textinterpretation’. PMLA 63, 329-91.