Note to Anon Krm 1VIII
[2] ei fyr löngu ‘not long ago’: With many previous eds this ed. takes the mss’ ‘ei’ or ‘æi’ as the negative ei ‘not’. Wisén (1886-9) and Finnur Jónsson (1893b) have vasa, vasat ‘was not’ (for var ei ‘was not’) respectively, producing a metrically short line. The poet is here allowing the speaker to present himself as dying relatively young, in accordance with the conventions of an internationally attested heroic biographical pattern (de Vries 1963, 216; Ó Cathasaigh 1977, 2-7; McTurk 1991a, 86-9). The eds of CPB and Finnur Jónsson (1905; Skj B) read the ms. forms as æ ‘always, ever’, in the sense of ‘ever so long ago’ (so CPB), while Kock (NN §2273), who is evidently troubled by the juxtaposition of æ ‘always’ and fyr löngu ‘long ago’, emends to æfar löngu ‘exceedingly long ago’, but this is hardly justified.
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.
- 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.
- Wisén, Theodor, ed. 1886-9. Carmina Norrœnæ: Ex reliquiis vetustioris norrœnæ poësis selecta, recognita, commentariis et glossario instructa. 2 vols. Lund: Ohlsson.
- Finnur Jónsson. 1893b. Carmina Norrœna: Rettet Tekst. Copenhagen: Nielsen & Lydiche.
- McTurk, Rory. 1991a. Studies in Ragnars saga loðbrókar and Its Major Scandinavian Analogues. Medium Ævum Monographs new ser. 15. Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediæval Languages and Literature.
- Finnur Jónsson. 1905. ‘Krákumál’. Oversigt over det Kgl. Danske videnskabernes selskabs forhandlinger 1905, 151-83.
- Vries, Jan de. 1963. Heroic Song and Heroic Legend. Trans. B. J. Timmer. London: Oxford University Press. First published in Dutch in 1959 as Heldenlied en heldensage. Utrecht: Spectrum.
- Ó Cathasaigh, Tomás. 1977. The Heroic Biography of Cormac mac Airt. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.