Svart Skauf 6^VIII

‘Lítill er missir         í mínum ungum;
atvinna brestr         okkur bæði.
Hafðir þú áður         hæri útvegu*;
nægtir voru þá         og nógar vistir.

‘Lítill missir er í ungum mínum; atvinna brestr okkur bæði. Áður hafðir þú hæri útvegu*; nægtir voru þá og nógar vistir.

‘There is little lacking in my young ones; sustenance fails for us both. Earlier you had better remedies; there was abundance then and plentiful provisions.

Mss: Rask87ˣ(112v)

Readings: [1] Lítill: Lítið Rask87ˣ;    missir: ‘missur’ Rask87ˣ    [6] útvegu*: útvegur Rask87ˣ

Editions: Jón Þorkelsson 1888, 230, Jón Þorkelsson 1922-7, 154-5, Páll Eggert Ólason 1947, 58-9.

Notes: [All]: This and the following stanza are transmitted only in Rask87ˣ and therefore not edited in Kölbing (1876) and CPB. — [1] lítill missir er ‘there is little lacking’: The Rask87ˣ readings lítið and ‘missur’ have been emended in keeping with the other eds: ‘missur’ is not an Icelandic word, and missir lit. ‘want’ is m. nom. sg., requiring the m. nom. sg. (lítill ‘little’) of the adj. (lítið is n. nom. or acc. sg.). The sense of this clause must be that the vixen is defending her cubs by saying that there is nothing wrong with them; rather, the parents are to blame for the dire situation. — [3] atvinna (f. nom. sg.) ‘sustenance’: Jón Þorkelsson (1922-7) and Páll Eggert Ólason (1947) give atvinnu f. acc. sg., treating this as the object in an impersonal construction, but that is not necessary and not supported by the ms. — [6] útvegu* ‘remedies’: Taken here as m. acc. pl. either declined as a u-stem (see ANG §358.4), or as an a-stem with the later ending ‑u (see Konráð Gíslason 1895-7, II, 175). Both Jón Þorkelsson (1888; 1922-7) and Páll Eggert Ólason (1947) retain the ms. reading útvegur, which can only be construed as a (desyllabified) m. nom. sg. and makes no sense syntactically.

References

1. Bibliography
2. ANG = Noreen, Adolf. 1923. Altnordische Grammatik I: Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik (Laut- und Flexionslehre) unter Berücksichtigung des Urnordischen. 4th edn. Halle: Niemeyer. 1st edn. 1884. 5th unrev. edn. 1970. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
3. 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.
4. Jón Þorkelsson [J. Thorkelsson]. 1888. Om digtningen på Island i det 15. og 16. århundrede. Copenhagen: Høst & søns forlag.
5. Konráð Gíslason. 1895-7. Efterladte skrifter. 2 vols. I: Forelæsninger over oldnordiske skjaldekvad. II: Forelæsninger og videnskablige afhandlinger. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
6. Kölbing, Eugen. 1876. Beiträge zur vergleichenden Geschichte der romantischen Poesie und Prosa des Mittelalters unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der englishen und nordischen litteratur. Breslau: Koebner.
7. Páll Eggert Ólason, ed. 1947. Kvæðasafn 1300-1600. Vol. 2 of Einar Ólafur Sveinsson et al., eds. Íslands þúsund ár. 4 vols. Reykjavík: Helgafell.