Note to ESk Lv 10^III

[All]: The surrounding prose, provided by Óláfr Þórðarson, gives a detailed explanation of the word-play. The first clause plus the last word in the second line (víst erumk hermð á hesti – góðan ‘I truly have anger at the horse – a good one’) can be paraphrased as víst legg ek á jó reiðiþokka góðan lit. ‘I truly place on the horse a strong (lit. ‘good’) dislike’, in which jó (nom. jór) = hesti (nom. hestr ‘horse’) and reiði = hermð (‘anger’). By rearranging the morphological boundaries the poet arrives at the following statement: Víst legg ek á Jóreiði þokka góðan ‘I truly place on Jóreiðr a strong (lit. ‘good’) liking’. The second clause, hefr fljóð, ef vill lit. ‘(he) has the woman if he wants to’, can be paraphrased as konu má ná ‘the woman (he) may obtain’ (if fljóð ‘woman’ is taken as acc. rather than nom.). Changing the morphological boundaries as well as the quantity of the vowel in the last word (má ná > má na) results in the nominal phrase konu Mána ‘the wife of Máni’. Taken together the two lines read as follows: ‘I truly have a strong liking for Jóreiðr, the wife of Máni’ (see also TGT 1884, 174-5 and Meissner 86).

References

1. Bibliography
2. TGT 1884 = Björn Magnússon Ólsen, ed. 1884. Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske afhandling i Snorres Edda tilligemed de grammatiske afhandlingers prolog og to andre tillæg. SUGNL 12. Copenhagen: Knudtzon.
3. Meissner = Meissner, Rudolf. 1921. Die Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Rheinische Beiträge und Hülfsbücher zur germanischen Philologie und Volkskunde 1. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder. Rpt. 1984. Hildesheim etc.: Olms.