SnSt Ht 77^III

Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 77’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1188.

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

The metre is hálfhnept ‘half-curtailed’. According to the commentary, each line contains six syllables, but as a licence they may have five or seven. The odd lines have skothending and the even lines aðalhending. The second hending in all lines always falls on a monosyllable in line-final position (see the odd lines in st. 75 above), which is then considered hnept ‘curtailed, shortened’, whereas the first hending falls on a disyllabic word and is not hnept. The pattern of alliteration in odd and even lines is the same as in st. 76.

This metre is very difficult to account for in terms of metrical patterns. See Section 4 of the General Introduction in SkP I. For this verse-form, see also RvHbreiðm Hl 49-50. — [5-6]: Line 5 is partly damaged in R, and what can be read can be rendered as follows: ‘lypta[…]a lyðr opt’. Ms. W has ‘lyptaz kna of liði opt’, which gives the following version of ll. 5-6: lauki kná opt lyptask of liði við raukn kjalar ‘the mast is often lifted above the crew near the draught-animals of the keel’. Lyptask ‘is lifted’ is then used impersonally with a passive meaning and lauki ‘mast’ as the dat. object. Ms. R furnishes the subject lýðr ‘people’ which means that the m. v. is no longer possible: lýðr kná opt lyptask lauki of raukn kjalar ‘people can often be lifted with the mast on the draught-animals of the keel’ makes little sense. (a) The present edn follows SnE 1848-87, Konráð Gíslason (1895-7) and Skald, assuming an original R reading of l. 5 as lypta kná lýðr opt lit. ‘lift can people often’ with lauki ‘mast’ (l. 6) as the dat. object. (b) Skj B opts for a combination of the R and W readings and renders ll. 5-6 (prose order) as lauki kná opt lypta of liði of kjalar raukn translated as masten rejses ofte på skibene over mandskabet ‘the mast is often raised on the ships above the crew’. (c) Faulkes (SnE 2007) gives the inf. of the first verb as lyptask, but he otherwise retains the R readings of the two lines, taking lyptask in a passive meaning (‘be lifted’) and lauki ‘mast’ as a dat. instr. (‘people are often lifted with the mast on the ships’), which is difficult to understand (see above).