Note to Hfr ErfÓl 27I
[3-4] hann vas mest gótt mennskra manna ‘he was the greatest good among human beings’: Jón Helgason (1975, 405) observes that this construction, with a predicate describing a human subject yet in the n. case (gótt ‘good’), lacks parallels in the skaldic corpus. Emendation to góðr (m. nom. sg.) is metrically possible but no ms. spelling hints at that reading. Jón suggests instead emending hann to a finite verb governing the dat. (e.g. lét ‘allowed’ or veitt ‘granted’), then construing ll. 2-4 as a unit: mest gótt mennskra manna vas hugreifum leifi veitt ‘the greatest good among human beings was granted [by God] to glad-hearted Óláfr’, possibly referring to martyrdom. However, the use of n. gótt to refer to a human finds some support in SnSt Ht 83/8III slíkt má skǫrung kalla ‘such [a one] must be called an outstanding person’, where slíkt refers to Skúli jarl.
References
- Bibliography
- Jón Helgason. 1975a. ‘Småstykker 3. Hallfreðr, Erfidrápa 29’. Opuscula 5, 405-6.
- Internal references
- Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 83’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1194.