Cookies on our website

We use cookies on this website, mainly to provide a secure browsing experience but also to collect statistics on how the website is used. You can find out more about the cookies we set, the information we store and how we use it on the cookies page.

Continue

skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Menu Search

Anon (FoGT) 2III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 2’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 574.

Anonymous LausavísurStanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise
123

text and translation

Fingr vann eigi eingan
eins með vatni hreinu
guðs á virðum víða
vinning að því sinni.

Fingr eins guðs vann víða að því sinni eigi eingan vinning á virðum með hreinu vatni.
 
‘The finger of the one God gained widely at that time not no [= great] advantage for men with pure water.

notes and context

This helmingr exemplifies another case of litotes and is introduced with the words: Svmstaðar merker æigi eingi nǫkkvrn ęðr mikinn, sem her ‘In some places “not no” denotes “some” or “great,” as here’. After the citation, the author of FoGT comments: her er æigi eingi settr fyrer nokkvrvm ęðr micklvm vinninge ‘Here “not no” is placed instead of “some” or “great” advantage’.

The helmingr refers to the power of the Holy Spirit over men (see following Note). Its likely reference is to the feast of Pentecost or Whitsunday (OIcel. hvítasunnudagr), when the Holy Spirit descended from heaven upon the Apostles (Acts II), after which they were able to begin their mission of baptising people into the Christian faith. This seems to be the point of the helmingr’s statement that ‘at that time’ (i.e. Pentecost) the Holy Spirit gained a great advantage for men (the possibility of salvation) with pure water, i.e. the water of baptism. It was customary in the medieval Church for many catechumens to be baptised at Pentecost in imitation of the events described in Acts, and that is why in a number of Western European languages (West Scandinavian and English in particular; cf. AEW: hvítadagr, hvítasunnudagr) the feast of Pentecost is called ‘White Sunday’, because those about to be baptised wore white garments. SnE 1848-87, III, 154, FoGT 1884, 241 and FoGT 2004, 88 all quote a passage from Isidore of Seville (Isidore, Etym. 7.9.16) which refers to the Holy Spirit as digitus dei ‘the finger of God’, but is otherwise not close to the text of this helmingr.

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 [XIII], [C]. D. Religiøse og moraliserende vers af den 4. grammatiske afhandling 1: AII, 163, BII, 180, Skald II, 94; SnE 1848-87, II, 192-3, III, 153-4, FoGT 1884, 121, 241, FoGT 2004, 32, 60, 87-8, FoGT 2014, 4-5, 55.

Close

Log in

This service is only available to members of the relevant projects, and to purchasers of the skaldic volumes published by Brepols.
This service uses cookies. By logging in you agree to the use of cookies on your browser.

Close

Stanza/chapter/text segment

Use the buttons at the top of the page to navigate between stanzas in a poem.

Information tab

Interactive tab

The text and translation are given here, with buttons to toggle whether the text is shown in the verse order or prose word order. Clicking on indiviudal words gives dictionary links, variant readings, kennings and notes, where relevant.

Full text tab

This is the text of the edition in a similar format to how the edition appears in the printed volumes.

Chapter/text segment

This view is also used for chapters and other text segments. Not all the headings shown are relevant to such sections.