Note to Þjóð Haustl 12III
[2] apt: Lit. ‘back’. To be understood with the verb svíkja ‘trick, cheat’ in the sense ‘tricked back’, i.e. ‘recovered by trickery’. Both mss have ept, prep. ‘after’ (in sense of motion, with dat.) or ‘after’ in time, with acc. Ept does not fit the context here, so most eds have emended. Skj B and Skald emend to opt ‘often’ and understand l. 2 as an intercalary, emending the mss’ ása to ôsu and choosing R’s leikum to read sveik opt ôsu leikum ‘he [Loki] often betrayed the gods with his tricks’. They then emend flugbjalfa ‘flight-skin’ (l. 4) to fló bjalfa ‘flew [strengthened with a hawk’s] skin/form’ in order to provide a finite verb for the helmingr’s þat-clause. Such emendations are not necessary to achieve good sense, as Holtsmark (1949, 36) and Marold (1983, 166-7) have shown.
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.
- Marold, Edith. 1983. Kenningkunst: Ein Beitrag zu einer Poetik der Skaldendichtung. Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker, new ser. 80. Berlin: de Gruyter.
- Holtsmark, Anne. 1949. ‘Myten om Idun og Tjatse i Tjodolvs Haustlǫng’. ANF 64, 1-73.