Note to Sigv Lv 12I
[7] þvísa ‘for that reason’: (a) Neuter dat. sg. of the demonstrative pron. þessi ‘this’, here taken adverbially in the intercalary clause. (b) Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) would place the word in the principal clause, where, if it is not meaningless, it would oddly imply that Óláfr has surrendered his head for another reason. Jón Skaptason (1983, 197) chooses the same arrangement, translating ‘so’. (c) Jón Þorkelsson (1884, 68-9, followed by Gering 1912, 146, Kock, NN §1874, ÍF 27, and Hkr 1991) proposes that it functions adjectivally, modifying heimi ‘world’ in l. 7. The problem is that heimi is m., while þvísa is n., and so he argues that there was in early times a n. form that survives only in gen. compounds like heimisgarðr ‘homestead’. But heimis- is not attested in the sense ‘world’s’ (as observed by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, ÍF 27), and so it seems safer to align þvísa with the intercalary clause than to assume an otherwise unattested form.
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.
- ÍF 26-8 = Heimskringla. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. 1941-51.
- Hkr 1991 = Bergljót S. Kristjánsdóttir et al., eds. 1991. Heimskringla. 3 vols. Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
- Jón Þorkelsson [J. Thorkelsson]. 1884. ‘Bemærkninger til nogle steder i versene i Heimskringla’. Aftryk af oversigt over det kgl. danske videnskabs selskabs forhandlinger 1884. Copenhagen: Luno.
- Jón Skaptason. 1983. ‘Material for an Edition and Translation of the Poems of Sigvat Þórðarson, skáld’. Ph.D. thesis. State University of New York at Stony Brook. DAI 44: 3681A.
- Gering, Hugo. 1912. ‘Beiträge zu der Metrik und Erklärung skaldischer Dichtungen’. ZDP 44, 133-69.