Anon Vitn 11^VII

Vitjar veglig sæta
virktafríð um síðir
sinn elskuga sannan,
— svá spyrr — er var fyrri:
‘Hví vartu svá, hirtir,
hverflyndr, að við fyndumz,
mjög reynir þú, manna,
mín, unnustu þína.’

Veglig, virktafríð sæta vitjar um síðir sannan elskuga sinn, er var fyrri; spyrr svá: ‘{Hirtir manna}, hví vartu svá hverflyndr mín, að við fyndumz? Þú reynir unnustu þína mjög.’

The magnificent, very beautiful woman finally visits her true lover, the one who was [her lover] before; she asks thus: ‘{Chastiser of men} [RULER], why were you so fickle to me concerning the fact that we two should meet? You test your beloved very much.’

Mss: 713(84), 721(12r)

Editions: Skj AII, 484, Skj BII, 522, Skald II, 286 NN §2858; Kahle 1898, 52, 102, Sperber 1911, 25, 70-1, Wrightson 2001, 32.

Notes: [1] sæta ‘woman’: See Note to 6/2 above. Kahle (1898, 102) suggests that the word could have been used here in its original meaning ‘grass-widow’, but that is unlikely in view of the high frequency with which this term occurs in this poem and elsewhere. — [5-8]: The syntax of the second helmingr is difficult. In the present edn, mín (gen. sg.) ‘to me’ (lit. ‘of me’) (l. 8) is construed with the adj. hverflyndr ‘fickle’ (l. 6) (see NN §2858; Wrightson 2001). The cl. að við fyndumz ‘concerning the fact that we two should meet’ (l. 6) is taken as an að-cl. governed by the adj. hverflyndr ‘fickle’ (see NS §252a). Skj B emends to at ei fyndir ‘that (you) did not seek out’ and construes þína unnustu ‘your beloved’ (l. 8) as an object of fyndir ‘seek out’ (l. 6) and mín (gen. sg.) (l. 8) as the obj. of reynir ‘test’ (l. 7). The latter is ungrammatical, because reyna ‘test’ takes the acc. (see NN §2858). Skald emends að við fyndumz ‘concerning the fact that we two should meet’ to at vætr fyndumz ‘that we did not meet’. — [5, 7] hirtir manna ‘chastiser of men [RULER]’: The kenning may have been used here to denote the man’s high rank in society. Skald emends to hirtir meina, translated as beivrare av odåd ‘inciter of misdeeds’ (see NN §2858). Schottmann (1973, 128) suggests hirðir menja ‘keeper of necklaces [GENEROUS MAN]’, which forces the emendation of vartu ‘were you’ to varðu ‘did you become’. The kenning clearly refers to the man, and Finnur Jónsson takes it as such in Skj B (mænds styrer ‘ruler of men’), although in LP: hirtir he construes it as a kenning for God.

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. Schottmann, Hans. 1973. Die isländische Mariendichtung. Untersuchungen zur volkssprachigen Mariendichtung des Mittelalters. Münchner germanistische Beiträge 9. Munich: Fink.
7. Sperber, Hans, ed. 1911. Sechs isländische Gedichte legendarischen Inhalts. Uppsala Universitets årsskrift, filosofi, språkvetenskap och historiska vetenskaper 2. Uppsala: Akademische Buchdruckerei Edv. Berling.
8. Wrightson, Kellinde, ed. 2001. Fourteenth-Century Icelandic Verse on the Virgin Mary: Drápa af Maríugrát, Vitnisvísur af Maríu, Maríuvísur I-III. Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series 14. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
9. NS = Nygaard, Marius. 1906. Norrøn syntax. Kristiania (Oslo): Aschehoug. Rpt. 1966.
10. Kahle, Bernhard, ed. 1898. Isländische geistliche Dichtungen des ausgehenden Mittelalters. Heidelberg: Winter.