Note to Hildibrandr Lv 6VIII (Ásm 6)
[4] þeim er magnar ‘the one that increases’: Both emendation of the ms.’s þannz magna and normalisation is required here. The final ‑z of þannz is a cliticised form of the rel. particle es, common in poetry from before 1200. This has been normalised to er, following the practice of normalizing all SkP VIII texts to the standard of 1250-1300. Þann (m. acc. sg.) must be emended to þeim (m. dat. sg.) to agree with mæki ‘sword’ (l. 3), while the verb should be 3rd pers. sg. pres. indic., not 3rd pers. pl., hence magnar, not magna. The majority of eds adopt the emendations preferred here, while Skald keeps þanns and emends magna to manga (cf. NN §796), claiming a meaning for the verb ‘maim, mutilate’, though that sense is unattested in Old Norse, where the meaning seems rather to be ‘trade, barter, haggle’ (AEW, CVC, Fritzner: manga); according to Edd. Min. 54 n. to 6/8, this suggested interpretation goes back to Möbius (1877, 325); it is interpreted as an unidentified p. n. in CPB I, 191.
References
- Bibliography
- Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
- CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
- 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.
- Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
- SkP VII = Poetry on Christian Subjects. Ed. Margaret Clunies Ross. 2007.
- Möbius, Theodor. 1877. Edda Sæmundar hins fróða, mit einem Anhang bisher ungedruckter Gedichte. 2nd edn. Leipzig: Hinrichs.
- Edd. Min. = Heusler, Andreas and Wilhelm Ranisch, eds. 1903. Eddica Minora: Dichtungen eddischer Art aus den Fornaldarsögur und anderen Prosawerken. Dortmund: Ruhfus. Rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.