Note to Forað Lv 4^VIII (Ket 24)

[4] ek tadda sk*arn á til Karmtar ‘I spread dung [on the way] to Karmøy’: Both 343a and 471, the only mss which have the stanza in the form given above, have the adv. á (‘ꜳ’) between the pron. ek and the prepositional phrase til Karmtar. Anderson (1990, 53 n. 152) indicates that it is uncertain whether the form which she prints as rada (343a) should not be read as ‘tada’, while Valgerður Erna Þorvaldsdóttir read ‘radri’ (transcription for this edn). Since the form ‘skrarm’ strongly resembles the noun skarn ‘dung’ and a form ‘tada’ could be a way of writing tadda (3rd pers. sg. pret. of teðja ‘dung, manure’) one could perhaps conjecture that the line in 343a should read skarn tadda ek á til Karmtar ‘I spread dung [on the way] to Karmøy’. Such a phrase would allude to labours which Forað has performed during her journey through Norway (cf. the mention of the fire she will kindle, etc. in ll. 5-6). Previous eds adopt the reading skarmtak (skarmta ek) from 471, which Finnur Jónsson tentatively translates as skræve (?) ‘stride?’ but does not include in LP. ÍO: †skarma believes that the form skarmta is the 1st pers. sg. pres. tense; the inf. *skarmta would mean ‘stumble along; drag oneself along’.

References

1. Bibliography
2. LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
3. ÍO = Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon. 1989. Íslensk orðsifjabók. Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans.
4. Anderson, Sarah M. 1990. ‘The Textual Transmission of Two Fornaldarsögur: Ketils saga høings and Gríms saga loðinkinna’. Ph.D. thesis. Cornell University…