Svart Skauf 38^VIII

‘Það hlægir mig:         þó mun hier koma
ór ætt minni         annarr verri.
Hann mun mann gjöra         margan sauðlausan
og aldri upp giefa         ilt að vinna.

‘Það hlægir mig: þó mun annarr verri koma hier ór ætt minni. Hann mun gjöra margan mann sauðlausan og aldri giefa upp að vinna ilt.

‘This cheers me: another, worse, will nonetheless emerge here out of my family. He’ll make many a man sheepless and never desist from doing harm.

Mss: 603(82), Rask87ˣ(115v)

Readings: [1] hlægir: kætir Rask87ˣ    [2] þó: ‘ä þö’ Rask87ˣ;    mun hier: muni Rask87ˣ    [3] ætt minni: ættinni Rask87ˣ    [5] mann: menn Rask87ˣ    [6] margan sauðlausan: marga sauðlausa Rask87ˣ    [8] vinna: gjöra Rask87ˣ

Editions: Kölbing 1876, 245, Jón Þorkelsson 1888, 234, CPB II, 384, Jón Þorkelsson 1922-7, 159, Páll Eggert Ólason 1947, 68-9.

Notes: [1-4]: Guðbrandur Vigfússon (CPB II, 610) calls attention to a possible parallel in Virgil’s Æneid (Book 4, l. 625, Mynors 1969, 195): exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor ‘arise, some avenger, from our bones’. It comes from a bitter speech by Dido, after Aeneas and his men have sailed away from Carthage and she realises that he has betrayed her. She curses the immigrants from Troy (read human Icelanders) and says that there will always be enmity between them. She hopes that some avenger may arise (read descendant of Skaufhali) from her bones to persecute the settlers of Troy with fire and sword. The parallel is not very close, however, and it cannot be taken as proof that Svartr knew that poem, because examples of sons avenging their fathers abound in Old Norse literature. — [1] hlægir ‘cheers’: Kætir ‘cheers’ (Rask87ˣ) is a possible reading, but it was apparently caused by an awkward attempt to achieve alliteration on k- (with koma ‘come’) in the next line (see Note to l. 2). — [2]: The Rask87ˣ version of this line, normalised as að þó muni koma lit. ‘that yet might come’, is unmetrical. Because of the omission of the adv. hier ‘here’, the h- alliteration found in 603 (hlægir ‘cheers’ (l. 1) and hier (l. 2)) is lost, and we must assume illicit alliteration on k- (see Note to l. 1 above), or, more unlikely, on þ- (Það ‘that’ (l. 1) and þó ‘yet’ (l. 2)). Regardless of where the alliteration falls, the line is unmetrical. For muni ‘might’, see Note to st. 37/6. — [3] ætt minni ‘my family’: Ættinni ‘the family’ (Rask87ˣ) must be a lectio facilior. — [5-6]: The Rask87ˣ version of these lines is equally plausible and can be paraphrased as follows in prose: Hann mun gjöra marga menn sauðlausa ‘he’ll make many men sheepless’. — [8] vinna ‘doing’: Lit. ‘do’. Gjöra ‘do’ (Rask87ˣ) is less preferable from a metrical point of view, producing suspended resolution on the second lift, and repeats gjöra ‘do’ in l. 5.

References

1. Bibliography
2. 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.
3. Jón Þorkelsson [J. Thorkelsson]. 1888. Om digtningen på Island i det 15. og 16. århundrede. Copenhagen: Høst & søns forlag.
4. Mynors, R. A. B. 1969. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. Oxford: Clarendon.
5. Kölbing, Eugen. 1876. Beiträge zur vergleichenden Geschichte der romantischen Poesie und Prosa des Mittelalters unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der englishen und nordischen litteratur. Breslau: Koebner.
6. Páll Eggert Ólason, ed. 1947. Kvæðasafn 1300-1600. Vol. 2 of Einar Ólafur Sveinsson et al., eds. Íslands þúsund ár. 4 vols. Reykjavík: Helgafell.