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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Bragi Frag 4III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Fragments 4’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 59.

Bragi inn gamli BoddasonFragments
345

introduction

This fjórðungr ‘couplet’ (Bragi Frag 4) is found in mss A, taken here as the main ms., and W, in both cases within the text of the Third Grammatical Treatise (TGT) by Óláfr Þórðarson. It is difficult to understand because its context is unknown. It exemplifies the use of syncope in poetry in ch. 14 of the so-called Málskrúðsfræði ‘Science of the ornaments of speech’ section of TGT, headed in A Hér eru merktir lestir metaplasmi ‘Here the faults of metaplasmus are noted’. The example here (observed in both mss) is of þar es > þars, i.e. elision of the initial vowel of an enclitic for metrical reasons. Óláfr adds þetta kǫllum vér bragarmál í skáldskap ‘we call that “poetic speech” in prosody’, almost certainly echoing Snorri Sturluson’s discussion of the phenomenon in Ht (SnE 2007, 8), where a different example is given, and the elision is seen as a kind of leyfi ‘licence’.

text and translation

Þars, sem lofðar líta
lung váfaðar Gungnis.

Þars, sem lofðar líta {lung {váfaðar Gungnis}}.
 
‘It is there as men see the longship of the swinger of Gungnir <Óðinn’s spear> [= Óðinn > HORSE = Sleipnir].

notes and context

See Introduction. The couplet is introduced in the following words (text of A, minor variation in W): Sincopa tekr íbrott staf eða samstǫfu ór miðju orði, sem Bragi hinn gamli qvað ‘Syncope takes away a letter or a syllable from the middle of a word, as Bragi the old said’. Björn Magnússon Ólsen (TGT 1884, 87 n. 5) observes that Óláfr seems to have thought of þar es as a single word.

The original context of the stanza of which this couplet presumably formed part is unknown. The reference to a place where men see a representation of Óðinn’s eight-legged horse Sleipnir may indicate that the stanza was part of an ekphrasis; alternatively there may have been a constellation of stars thought to represent Sleipnir. Depictions of a figure presumed to be Óðinn, carrying a spear and sometimes accompanied by birds (probably his ravens) astride an apparently eight-legged horse appear on several Gotland picture stones, though this interpretation has been questioned (cf. Simek 1993, 124, 293-4).

readings

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: Bragi enn gamli, 2. Ubestemmelige vers 2: AI, 4, BI, 4, Skald I, 3, NN §§1004, 2208; SnE 1848-87, II, 134-5, 415, III, 145, TGT 1884 21, 87, 200, TGT 1927, 62, 101.

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