Note to Svart Skauf 38VIII
[1-4]: Guðbrandur Vigfússon (CPB II, 610) calls attention to a possible parallel in Virgil’s Æneid (Book 4, l. 625, Mynors 1969, 195): exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor ‘arise, some avenger, from our bones’. It comes from a bitter speech by Dido, after Aeneas and his men have sailed away from Carthage and she realises that he has betrayed her. She curses the immigrants from Troy (read human Icelanders) and says that there will always be enmity between them. She hopes that some avenger may arise (read descendant of Skaufhali) from her bones to persecute the settlers of Troy with fire and sword. The parallel is not very close, however, and it cannot be taken as proof that Svartr knew that poem, because examples of sons avenging their fathers abound in Old Norse literature.
References
- Bibliography
- CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
- Mynors, R. A. B. 1969. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. Oxford: Clarendon.