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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Note to Sigv Lv 26I

[4] sem hafrar skaf ‘as goats [eat] peeled bark’: Bark was used as fodder for goats and cattle. Kock (NN §1877) objects to this interpretation, saying that the meaning is instead that ‘we had to content ourselves with fodder’. He also objects that inni ‘indoors’ is meaningless in the present arrangement, and he would instead form a cpd inniskaf (see Readings; so already Fms), referring to bark dried and brought in (i.e. brought home). But inni sufficiently conveys the meaning not that the people ate like cattle (outdoors) but that they had only fodder to put on their tables indoors. Such is the interpretation of Olsen (1945b, 189), who rejects the supposition that farmers ate bark.

References

  1. Bibliography
  2. Fms = Sveinbjörn Egilsson et al., eds. 1825-37. Fornmanna sögur eptir gömlum handritum útgefnar að tilhlutun hins norræna fornfræða fèlags. 12 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
  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. Olsen, Magnus. 1945b. ‘Skaldevers om nods-år nordenfjells’. In Festskrift til Konrad Nielsen på 70-årsdagen, 28. august 1945. Studia Septentrionalia 2. Oslo: Brøgger, 176-92.

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