Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 99’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1207.
Þeir ’ró jǫfrar alvitrastir,
hringum hæztir, hugrakkastir,
vellum verstir, vígdjarfastir,
hirð hollastir, happi næstir.
Þeir jǫfrar ’ró alvitrastir, hæztir hringum, hugrakkastir, verstir vellum, vígdjarfastir, hollastir hirð, næstir happi.
‘Those princes are the very wisest, the most dangerous to rings, the most courageous of heart, the worst to gold, the most battle-brave, the most loyal to the retinue, the closest to good fortune. ’
The stanza is given directly after st. 98 above without intervening prose and there is no heading. The metre is fornyrðislag (see Ht 96) with approximate end-rhymes extending through ll. 2-8. The odd lines (with the exception of l. 1, which is Type A3) have two alliterating staves (Type A1), and the even lines have alliteration in position 1 (Types D1 (ll. 2, 4, 6) and A2 (l. 8)).
In terms of the placement of alliterating staves, this stanza corresponds to the sample stanza (StarkSt Frag) given in TGT (TGT 1884, 68) as an example of bálkarlag.
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.
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