Note to Þfagr Sveinn 6II
[7] ár, þats of væri ôn ‘that year which never should have been’: So ÍF 28, ÍF 29, Andersson and Gade 2000. Skj B (and Skald?) takes ár as an adv. (‘earlier’), which leaves the rel. cl. (þats of væri n) without an antecedent (translated as det burde ikke være sket ‘that ought not to have happened’). However, treating the cl. as an intercalary cl. in this manner would require emendation of þats ‘that which’ to þat ‘that’. The sense must be that the year in which these events took place was an ill-fated time for the Danes, which could have been avoided (a veiled admonition to Sveinn?).
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.
- Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- Andersson, Theodore M. and Kari Ellen Gade, trans. 2000. Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings (1030-1157). Islandica 51. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
- ÍF 26-8 = Heimskringla. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. 1941-51.
- ÍF 29 = Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sǫgum; Fagrskinna—Nóregs konungatal. Ed. Bjarni Einarsson. 1985.