SnSt Ht 84^III

Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 84’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1195.

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

This variant is not named in R (W has með minni runhendu ‘with lesser end-rhyme’, i.e. the end-rhyme does not extend past the helmingr), and the commentary explains that it is a catalectic (hneptr) version of st. 83 above, that is, truncated málaháttr with end-rhyme. The metre is not attested elsewhere.

[5-8]: The syntax of the last helmingr is difficult, because hinn es metr mál ‘the one who judges lawsuits’ (l. 5) is a dependent clause. Following SnE 1848-87, Konráð Gíslason (1895-7) and Skj B (and SnE 2007) take hinn with milding ‘lord’ (l. 6) and read sízt getr milding, hinn’s môl metr, þann es setr … translated as ikke gives der en fyrste, som vurderer sager, der således behandler … ‘there does not exist a lord, who judges cases, who thus treats …’. However, it is unprecedented for a rel. clause to precede the antecedent at the beginning of a helmingr. Kock (NN §2188) treats the clause hinn es mál metr as an independent clause ‘the one who appraises the cases’ i.e. ‘if one looks at the matter right’ (ser man rätt på saken), but his examples from Middle English, Middle High German and Middle Low German are unconvincing. Because the stanza consists of a series of run-on clauses, it seems preferable to regard l. 5 as an extension of the previous helmingr, i.e. fylkir ‘leader’ (l. 4) is the antecedent of hinn es ‘the one who’ (for comparable constructions in kviðuháttr, see Gade 2005).