Note to Anon Mgr 42^VII

[2]: This l. is corrupt. It lacks internal rhyme, is one syllable too short, and the inflectional endings are not easy to account for. In the present edn, höfuðfagnaðar (m. gen. sg.) ‘of supreme joy’ has been emended (with earlier eds) to höfuðfagnaði (m. acc. pl.) ‘supreme joys’ to provide an acc. object for the verb kveða ‘to recite’. Skj B emends 713’s kveðju (f. oblique sg.) ‘greeting’ to kveðna (p.p.; m. acc. pl.) ‘recited’ and supplies bragna which is taken as a determinant in the phrase móður grams bragna ‘of the mother of the ruler of men’ (i.e. of Mary). However, the long-stemmed inflected p.p. kveðna ‘recited’ makes the l. one syllable too long (see NN §§2681, 3356). Kock suggests the n. form kveðit ‘recited’, but that form is ungrammatical (see NS §245, Anm.). In the present edn, kveða (inf.) ‘to recite’ is part of an acc. inf. construction with bragna (m. acc. pl.) ‘men’ as the object. That construction is metrically and syntactically correct, but conjectural. Wrightson construes the l. as follows: höfuðfagnaði grams kveðju. According to that interpretation, kveðju ‘greeting’ is a reference to the Hail Mary (‘the greeting of the mother of the prince’) and an object of the verb heyra ‘hear’. However, the l. still remains unmetrical. For the five supreme joys of Mary, see Note to 41/3.

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. NS = Nygaard, Marius. 1906. Norrøn syntax. Kristiania (Oslo): Aschehoug. Rpt. 1966.