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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Eil Þdr 4III

Edith Marold (ed.) 2017, ‘Eilífr Goðrúnarson, Þórsdrápa 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. 83.

Eilífr GoðrúnarsonÞórsdrápa
345

text and translation

Vôru vǫtn ok mýrar
— verðr hitt, at þau skerða —
(svell vas áðr of alla)
ǫll torráðin (halla).

Ǫlltn ok mýrar vôru torráðin; hitt verðr, at þau skerða; svell vas áðr of alla halla.
 
‘All the lakes and marshes were difficult [to traverse]; it happens that they intersect [the path]; ice was already on all the cliffs.

notes and context

TGT attributes this stanza to Eilífr Goðrúnarson and cites it as an example of a kind of barbarismus, in particular, the lengthening of a short vowel to achieve correct aðalhending on ól and hóla (l. 4). Ólafr comments on the stanza as follows (TGT 1927, 44): Hann kallar torráðin ól vǫndol ok gerir langa þessa samstǫfu ol til þess at hendingar sé jafnhávar ‘He calls difficult ól vǫndol and lengthens the syllable ol so that the hendingar are equally long’. The meaning of neither ól nor vǫndol is known, and so far only guesses have been made about the interpretation of the stanza and also about Óláfr’s commentary (TGT 1884, 169-73; TGT 1927, 91-2; LP: ól, torráðinn). It seems that he assumed tmesis of vǫnd (l. 1) and ‑ol (l. 6), and he lengthened ol to form aðalhending with hóla ‘hills’ in the cadence. His commentary is difficult to explain, because it contains the word ol twice, and that is not corroborated by the stanza. It seems as though he thought that torráðin ól (l. 4) is synonymous with vǫndol (ll. 1, 4), with vǫnd understood as n. pl. or f. sg. of the adj. vandr ‘difficult’. It is likely that Óláfr did not understand the original stanza.

Finnur Jónsson (Skj A; TGT 1927, 44; LP: ól, torráðinn) believed that the stanza ought to be attributed to Eilífr kúlnasveinn rather than to Eilífr Goðrúnarson. However, since the stanza fits well with the rest of Þdr (see Introduction above), the present edn adopts the attribution in TGT, which states explicitly that it was composed by Eilífr Goðrúnarson.

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: Eilífr kúlnasveinn, 2. Lausavísa(?): AI, 573, BI, 566, Skald 274, NN §1216; SnE 1848-87, II, 102-3, 406, 416, 509, TGT 1884, 65, 169-73, TGT 1927, 44, 63, 91-2.

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