Note to Anon Leið 23^VII

[1] dagmærir ‘the day-glorifier’: Skj B emends -mærir, the reading of 624 (B has ‘-męriʀr’), to mærri* and takes this as the fem. dat. sg. comp. form of mærr ‘glorious, great’. He regards this as parallel with beztri ‘best’ (l. 3) qualifying meyju ‘maiden’ (l. 3) and construes mæztr mildingr dýrðar lét berask hingat fyr óttu tíð dróttins dag frá mærri, beztri meyju ‘the most praiseworthy prince of glory allowed himself to be born here before dawn on the Lord’s day from the most glorious, best maiden’. Kock (NN §1264) objects to Finnur’s w.o. and reinstates B’s reading, commenting that the kenning-like expression ‘day-glorifier’ is appropriate in the context of a poem seeking to show how God allowed all great and remarkable things to happen on Sundays in order to endow that day with holiness and lustre. Sveinbjörn Egilsson (1844, 63 n. 11) emended to dagmærar, f. gen. sg. of dagmærr, hap. leg., which he regarded as a heiti for ‘heaven’ (LP (1860): dagmærr), construing it with mildingr dýrrar (retaining B’s reading for the second word) to give the God-kenning mildingr dýrrar dagmærar glossed as rex almi cæli ‘king of the bountiful heaven’.

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. LP (1860) = Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1860. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis. Copenhagen: Societas Regia antiquariorum septentrionalium.
5. Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1844. Fjøgur gømul kvæði. Boðsrit til að hlusta á þá opinberu yfirheyrslu í Bessastaða Skóla þann 22-29 mai 1844. Viðeyar Klaustri: prentuð af Helga Helgasyni, á kostnað Bessastaða Skóla. Bessastaðir: Helgi Helgason.