Anon Sól 80^VII

Hverju bölvi        þeir belt hafa
        Sváfr ok Sváfrlogi;
blóð þeir vöktu        ok benjar sugu
        ey undir illum vana.

Hverju bölvi hafa þeir belt, Sváfr ok Sváfrlogi; þeir vöktu blóð ok sugu benjar, ey undir illum vana.

Every evil they have ventured, Sváfr and Sváfrlogi; they awakened blood and sucked wounds, always with a bad habit.

Mss: 166bˣ(48v), papp15ˣ(7v), 738ˣ(83v), 167b 6ˣ(4v), 214ˣ(152r-v), 1441ˣ(587), 10575ˣ(11r-v), 2797ˣ(238)

Readings: [1] bölvi: om. all    [2] belt hafa: hafa belt 2797ˣ;    belt: ‘billt’ 738ˣ, 167b 6ˣ, ‘[...]illt’ 214ˣ    [3] Sváfr: sváfni 738ˣ, sváfar 10575ˣ;    Sváfr‑: Sváfar papp15ˣ, 738ˣ, 167b 6ˣ, 1441ˣ, 10575ˣ    [4] vöktu: ‘vok[...]’ 167b 6ˣ    [5] benjar: beinar 167b 6ˣ    [6] ey undir illum vana: undir illum ey vana 166bˣ;    illum: öllum papp15ˣ, 738ˣ, 167b 6ˣ, 214ˣ, 1441ˣ, 10575ˣ, 2797ˣ

Editions: Skj AI, 640, Skj BI, 648, Skald I, 316, NN §§2154, 2218B; Bugge 1867, 370, Falk 1914, 1, Björn M. Ólsen 1915, 23, Fidjestøl 1979, 71, Njörður Njarðvík 1991, 106-8, Njörður Njarðvík 1993, 86, 154.

Notes: [All]: Falk, Guðbrandur Vigfússon (CPB I, 211) and Bugge all move this st. to the beginning of the poem in order to provide names for the characters in the first exemplum. There is no justification for this move. — [1] bölvi (n. dat. sg.) ‘evil’: The required noun is missing in all mss. It must have alliterated on <b>; Bugge, followed by most other eds, supplies bölvi, which makes good sense. — [3] Sváfr ok Sváfrlogi ‘Sváfr and Sváfrlogi’: It is not clear who these figures are; for the names, cf. one of Óðinn’s names, Sváfnir ‘one who puts to sleep’ (LP: Sváfnir). For Björn M. Ólsen 1915, they are men who have fallen completely under the influence of the Deadly Sins. — [6] ey undir illum vana ‘always with a bad habit’: The l., as it stands in the mss, is problematical. Here the w.o. of 166bˣ has been reversed and prep. undir has been construed with vana from vani weak m. noun ‘custom, habit’. Bugge suggests the scribes may have understood undir as ‘wounds’, parallel to benjar in l. 5, rather than as a prep. ‘under’. Bugge, Skj B, Skald and Björn M. Ólsen omit undir and read the l. as illum ey vana, which Skj B translates as med en altid slet skik ‘with an always bad practice’. Njörður Njarðvík (1991, 106-7) accepts undir but does not explain what he thinks the l. means. Lbs 437ˣ, a ms. not used in the present edn, has vandir ‘wicked’, a reading adopted by Falk and Fidjestøl.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. 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.
6. Fidjestøl, Bjarne, ed. 1979a. Sólarljóð: Tydning og Tolkningsgrunnlag. Nordisk Instituts skrifteserie 4. Bergen, Oslo and Tromsø: Universitetsforlaget.
7. Björn Magnússon Ólsen, ed. 1915a. Sólarljóð: gefin út með skíringum og athugasemdum. Safn til sögu Íslands og íslenzkra bókmenta 5.1. Reykjavík: Prentsmiðja Gutenberg.
8. Bugge, Sophus, ed. 1867. Norrœn fornkvæði. Islandsk samling af folkelige oldtidsdigte om nordens guder og heroer. Almindelig kaldet Sæmundar Edda hins frøda. Christiania (Oslo): Malling. Rpt. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 1965.
9. 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.
10. Falk, Hjalmar, ed. 1914a. Sólarljóð. Videnskapsselskapets skrifter II. Hist.-filos. kl. 7. 2 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Dybwad.
11. Njörður P. Njarðvik, ed. 1991. Sólarljóð. Útgáfa og umfjöllun. Íslensk Rit 10. Reykjavík: Bókmenntafræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands og Menningarsjóður.
12. Njörður P. Njarðvik. 1993. Solsången. Akademisk avhandling för filosofiedoktorsexamen i nordiska språk. Göteborgs universitet: Institutionen för svensk språket.