Gamlkan Has 58^VII

Katrina Attwood (ed.) 2007, ‘Gamli kanóki, Harmsól 58’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 125-6.

Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses

[1-4]: The first helmingr has been variously interpreted and corrected. At the heart of the problem are the difficulties eds have encountered in deciphering the beginning of l. 3. This edn agrees with Rydberg (1907, 30) in reading ‘sár e᷎’, interpreted as sr eða. The hooked <e> is often used to abbreviate eða in the prose section of B (as, for example, at fol. 5r, l. 27 and 8v, l. 35), and is quite unlike the er-abbreviation. Lines 2 and 3 may therefore be read as a straightforward paralleling of acc. pls, synðir ‘sins’ sár ‘griefs’ and sekðir ‘guilts’, without the need for emendation, though it is syntactically odd, as eða in a group of three nouns is unusual. Other eds have suspected scribal error. Jón Helgason (1935-6, 261) reads sár er here, normalising to sárir. This he takes to be the f. acc. pl. of sárr adj. ‘sore, aching’, qualifying sekðir. Sárir sekðir órar ‘our aching guilts’ is then taken as parallel to synðir ‘sins’ and the verb is emended to megim (subj.). The helmingr is thus construed hvar megim of vætta oss skjóls fyrir synðir, sárir sekðir órar ‘where might we expect to find a refuge in the face of our sins, our aching guilts’. Kock (NN §2926) approves this change. Finnur Jónsson (followed by Kock in Skald) normalises to sárar, which he assumes to be adjectival, qualifying synðar sekðir órar, which he translates vore synders svære skyld ‘our sins’ heavy guilt’.