Sigv Austv 1^I

Hugstóra biðk heyra
hressfœrs jǫfurs, þessar
— þolðak vás — hvé vísur,
verðung, of fǫr gerðak.
Sendr vask upp af ǫndrum
austr (svafk fátt í hausti)
til Svíþjóðar (síðan)
svanvangs í fǫr langa.

Biðk hugstóra verðung hressfœrs jǫfurs heyra, hvé gerðak þessar vísur of fǫr; þolðak vás. Vask sendr upp af {ǫndrum {svanvangs}} í langa fǫr austr til Svíþjóðar; svafk fátt síðan í hausti.

I ask the mighty-hearted retinue of the energetic ruler [Óláfr] to hear how I composed these verses about a journey; I endured hardship. I was sent up from {the skis {of the swan-plain}} [SEA > SHIPS] on a long journey east to Sweden; I slept little after that in the autumn.

Mss: Holm2(26r), 325V(32bis rb), R686ˣ(50r), 972ˣ(180va), 325VI(17va), 75a(15va-b), 68(24v-25r), 61(94rb), Holm4(17va), 325VII(12v), Flat(93rb), Tóm(113v) (ÓH); Kˣ(305v), Bb(153rb) (Hkr)

Readings: [1] ‑stóra: ‑stóran 61, ‑stóran corrected from stóra 325VII;    biðk (‘bið ec’): læt ek R686ˣ, lét ek 75a;    heyra: heyja Tóm    [2] hress‑: hvers 68, 61;    ‑fœrs: ‘fors’ Holm2, 325V, 972ˣ, 68, ‘fǫrs’ R686ˣ, ‑lynds 325VI, fǫr 75a, ‘forst’ 61, ‑lyndr Holm4, 325VII, Tóm, ‑lundr Flat, fœrr Kˣ, dýr Bb;    jǫfurs: jǫfurr 325V, 61, Holm4, 325VII, Flat, Tóm, Kˣ;    þessar: þessa 75a    [3] þolðak (‘þolða ec’): þolða Bb;    hvé: en 325VI, hvé hvé 75a, ok 61, fyrir Flat;    vísur: vísir 75a    [4] verðung: verðumk 325VI;    of: ⸜um⸝ 75a, ok Flat;    fǫr: ‘ford’ Bb;    gerðak: ‘giorþ(c)’ R686ˣ, gørva Tóm, gerðat Kˣ    [5] af: frá 68    [6] fátt: lítt R686ˣ, fast 75a;    í: á Kˣ    [8] ‑vangs: ‑vagns 325V, ‑fangs 68, 61, 325VII, Flat, Tóm, ‘vógns’ Bb

Editions: Skj AI, 233, Skj BI, 220, Skald I, 114-15, NN §§624, 625; Fms 4, 190, Fms 12, 85, ÓH 1853, 82, 274, ÓH 1941, I, 204 (ch. 75), Flat 1860-8, II, 115; Hkr 1777-1826, II, 127, VI, 87-8, Hkr 1868, 310 (ÓHHkr ch. 92), Hkr 1893-1901, II, 174, ÍF 27, 141, Hkr 1991, I, 350 (ÓHHkr ch. 91); Ternström 1871, 20-3, 49-50, Jón Skaptason 1983, 82, 237.

Context: When Sigvatr returns from his journey to the east, he tells of his travels and speaks the following verses (vísur þessar, referring to this and sts 17-20, which follow with only brief interruption).

Notes: [1]: The line is a borrowing from the well-known Eskál Vell 1/1, as pointed out by de Vries (1964-7, I, 244). — [2] hressfœrs jǫfurs ‘of the energetic ruler’: The nom. form hressfœrr/hresslyndr jǫfurr found in some mss may be vocative, and is adopted and treated as such by Noreen (1923, 34; also ÍF 27; Hkr 1991). An address to the king does not sit well with a request to the retinue for a hearing, however, and the gen. hressfœrs jǫfurs appears to have been the form known to Snorri, since the prose following the stanza implies that Sigvatr addresses the king in the next stanza, not this one. — [3] þolðak vás ‘I endured hardship’: The word vás may, as frequently, have the more specific sense of ‘wetness, bad weather’ (cf. st. 9/3 and Note). The present construal is preferable from a syntactic point of view, and is favoured in several eds (from Ternström 1871 to Hkr 1991), though it seems to produce the sense that what Sigvatr proposes to relate is how he composed the verses, rather than the hardships of the journey, as might have been expected. This is presumably the reason that Skj B takes hvé þolðak vás ‘how I endured hardship’ as the clausal object of heyra ‘hear’. However, this produces a ‘syntactic monster’ (so Kock, NN §624), with two sentence elements, including the verb þolðak ‘I endured’, preceding the conj. hvé ‘how’. — [5, 8] upp af ǫndrum svanvangs ‘up from the skis of the swan-plain [SEA > SHIPS]’: Snorri must have understood the phrase to mean simply that Sigvatr and his companions travelled inland, given the point of departure and route of travel he describes in this chapter (see the Introduction). Some scholars have taken it to mean that the first part of the journey was accomplished on shipboard: see, e.g., Barði Guðmundsson (1927, 548). — [6] í hausti ‘in autumn’: This phrase is placed here in the intercalary clause, qualifying svafk ‘I slept’ (so also Kock NN §625, followed by ÍF 27; Jón Skaptason 1983; Hkr 1991). This avoids the tripartite line that results if í hausti is taken with vask sendr ‘I was sent’ (so Skj B), though it is unclear why Sigvatr would refer to autumn in connection with sleeplessness, while the logical connection to his departure is obvious. The present analysis has permitted some (e.g. Edqvist 1943, 63-4) to suppose that the journey began in the spring, though Snorri apparently did not understand the syntax this way since, as noted in the Introduction above, he says that the travellers set out at the beginning of winter. See Notes to st. 10 below. — [7] til Svíþjóðar ‘to Sweden’: This is Sweden as distinct from Götaland. It is not improbable that the journey described in Austv included travel farther east than Skara in Götaland: see the Introduction.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Fms = Sveinbjörn Egilsson et al., eds. 1825-37. Fornmanna sögur eptir gömlum handritum útgefnar að tilhlutun hins norræna fornfræða fèlags. 12 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
4. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
6. Vries, Jan de. 1964-7. Altnordische Literaturgeschichte. 2 vols. 2nd edn. Grundriss der germanischen Philologie 15-16. Berlin: de Gruyter.
7. Flat 1860-8 = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and C. R. Unger, eds. 1860-8. Flateyjarbók. En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler. 3 vols. Christiania (Oslo): Malling.
8. ÓH 1941 = Johnsen, Oscar Albert and Jón Helgason, eds. 1941. Saga Óláfs konungs hins helga: Den store saga om Olav den hellige efter pergamenthåndskrift i Kungliga biblioteket i Stockholm nr. 2 4^to med varianter fra andre håndskrifter. 2 vols. Det norske historiske kildeskriftfond skrifter 53. Oslo: Dybwad.
9. ÍF 26-8 = Heimskringla. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. 1941-51.
10. Hkr 1893-1901 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1893-1901. Heimskringla: Nóregs konunga sǫgur af Snorri Sturluson. 4 vols. SUGNL 23. Copenhagen: Møller.
11. Hkr 1991 = Bergljót S. Kristjánsdóttir et al., eds. 1991. Heimskringla. 3 vols. Reykjavík: Mál og menning.
12. Jón Skaptason. 1983. ‘Material for an Edition and Translation of the Poems of Sigvat Þórðarson, skáld’. Ph.D. thesis. State University of New York at Stony Brook. DAI 44: 3681A.
13. Barði Guðmundsson. 1927. ‘Gøtalands politiske stilling fra 950 til 1050’. HT(N) 27, 533-72.
14. Edqvist, Torgny. 1943. ‘De geografiska problemen i Sigvat Tordssons Austrfararvísur’. NoB 31, 62-71.
15. Ternström, Alfred. 1871. Om skalden Sighvat Thordsson och tolkning af hans Austrfararvísur, Vestrfararvísur och Knútsdrápa. Lund: Ohlsson.
16. Hkr 1777-1826 = Schöning, Gerhard et al., eds. 1777-1826. Heimskringla edr Noregs konunga-sögor. 6 vols. Copenhagen: Stein.
17. Hkr 1868 = Unger, C. R., ed. 1868. Heimskringla eller Norges kongesagaer af Snorre Sturlassøn. Christiania (Oslo): Brøgger & Christie.
18. Noreen, Erik. 1923. Studier i fornvästnordisk diktning: tredje samlingen. Uppsala: Akademiska bokhandeln.
19. ÓH 1853 = Munch, P. A. and C. R. Unger, eds. 1853. Saga Olafs konungs ens helga. Christiania (Oslo): Det kongelige norske Fredriks Universitet.
20. Internal references
21. (forthcoming), ‘ Heimskringla, Óláfs saga helga (in Heimskringla)’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=152> (accessed 25 April 2024)
22. R. D. Fulk 2012, ‘ Sigvatr Þórðarson, Austrfararvísur’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 578. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1351> (accessed 25 April 2024)
23. Edith Marold (ed.) 2012, ‘Einarr skálaglamm Helgason, Vellekla 1’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 283.