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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Anon (TGT) 23III

Tarrin Wills (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Third Grammatical Treatise 23’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 552.

Anonymous LausavísurStanzas from the Third Grammatical Treatise
222324

text and translation

Heldr vill hilmir
herja en erja.

Hilmir vill heldr herja en erja.
 
‘The ruler would rather raid than plough.

notes and context

Cited as an example of paronomasia, i.e. the juxtaposition of words with similar sounds but dissimilar meanings. Óláfr equates this figure with aðalhending and makes reference to SnSt Ht (TGT 1927, 59): Þetta kǫllum vér aðalhendingar í skáldskap ok taka af þessi fígúru upphaf þeir hættir, er með hendingum eru samansettir, ok breytiz þat á marga vega, sem finnaz man í Háttatali því, er Snorri hefir ort ‘We call this aðalhendingar in poetry, and those metres which are composed with rhymes have their origin in this figure, and it is varied in many ways, as may be found in that Háttatal which Snorri composed’. The description of aðalhending here differs from the discussion in the first section of the treatise (TGT 1884, 51) which focuses on the technical requirements of internal rhyme.

In this couplet, aðalhending occurs in l. 2 on the words herja and erja. — Line 1 is fornyrðislag and l. 2 is inn grœnlenzki háttr ‘the verse-form from Greenland’ (SnSt Ht 71). Cf. st. 14 which has the same verse-form and also contains the verb erja ‘plough’.

sources

Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.

editions and texts

Skj: Anonyme digte og vers [XII], C. Vers om ubestemmelige personer og begivenheder 19: AI, 599, BI, 599, Skald I, 292; SnE 1818, 324, SnE 1848, 192, SnE 1848-87, II, 148-9, 419, TGT 1884, 24, 96, 208, TGT 1927, 69, 103.

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