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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Guðbr Frag 2III

Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Guðbrandr í Svǫlum, Fragment 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. 198.

Guðbrandr í SvǫlumFragment2

text and translation

Upp setr mǫkk inn mikla
móðfjalls verǫld alla.

Inn mikla mǫkk setr upp {alla verǫld {móðfjalls}}.
 
‘The great cloud rises up over the entire world of the mind-mountain [HEART > BREAST].

notes and context

In TGT the couplet illustrates the rhetorical figure macrologia (TGT 1927, 57): Þessi fígúra verðr ok, ef maðr talar þǫrfum fleira um hinn sama hlut ‘This rhetorical figure also occurs if a man speaks more than necessary about the same thing’. In the fragment preserved in A(1r) the context appears to be the same, but the wording of the prose is somewhat different (SnE 1848-87, II, 397): … garð ær þat kallað æf længi ær talat vm hit sama æfni ‘… it is called ‘yard’ [?] if the same topic is spoken about for a long time’.

The couplet is fragmentary, and the present attempt (following TGT 1884, 193-4 and NN §1373) to make syntactic and semantic sense of the two lines remains tentative. According to this interpretation, the poet is lamenting the fact that his soul is being enveloped in a cloud of sorrow. It is not entirely clear exactly how this couplet exemplifies macrologia, however, unless it refers to the overladen phrase used by the poet with expressions for both ‘heart’ and ‘breast’ (see Note to l. 2 below). — For another fragment illustrating macrologia in TGT, see Arn Hryn 2II and Context there.

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: Guðbrandr í Svǫlu(m?) 2: AII, 130, BII, 137, Skald II, 73, NN §1373; SnE 1848-87, II, 126-7, 397, 413, TGT 1884, 20, 82, 159, 193-4, TGT 1927, 57, 98.

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