Fjǫl Lv 1^VIII (Gautr 3)

Allar vættir,         er í jörðu búa,
        vilja Fjölmóðar fé fara.
Gulli mínu         er þeir glutruðu;
        skalat því * lengi lifa.

Allar vættir, er búa í jörðu, vilja fara fé Fjölmóðar. Er þeir glutruðu gulli mínu; skalat því * lengi lifa.

All creatures that live in the earth want to destroy Fjǫlmóðr’s wealth. They have squandered my gold; because of that I shall not live any longer.

Mss: 164hˣ(3v) (Gautr)

Readings: [6] skalat því * lengi lifa: skalat því eigi lengi lifa 164hˣ

Editions: Skj AII, 323, Skj BII, 342, Skald II, 184, NN §3292; Gautr 1900, 9, 59; Edd. Min. 121.

Context: This stanza is only preserved in 164hˣ, where it comes immediately before Gautr 4, both stanzas being spoken by another son of Skafnǫrtungr named Fjǫlmóðr. He is distraught because he has found two black snails crawling over his gold bars. He interprets the discoloration produced by their tracks as dents in the gold, which he thinks have diminished his wealth, and he tells his brothers of his loss in this stanza and Gautr 4. Afterwards he and his wife plunge over the family cliff.

Notes: [All]: This stanza is not present in all eds of stanzas from Gautr. In Skj A it is found after the variant readings for Gautr 4 (Finnur Jónsson’s st. 3) as 3b, while in Skj B it is presented within parentheses as st. 3b. Skald also records it as 3b. In Edd. Min. it is given in prose format before the readings of Gautr 4 (= Edd. Min.’s st. 3). — [3] Fjölmóðar ‘Fjǫlmóðr’s’: Both Skj B and Skald emend to the gen. sg. Fjǫlmóðs, though LP: Fjǫlmóðr gives the gen. sg. in ‑ar. Both endings are possible grammatically (Heggstad et al. 2008: ‑móðr) and metrically. — [5] er: Another example of the pleonastic er, as in Gautr 1/3 and 2/2. — [6] skalat því * lengi lifa ‘because of that I shall not live any longer’: The ms. negates the verb with suffixed -at, which the scribe of 164hˣ, Björn Jónsson, may not have recognised as a negation, and gives free-standing eigi as well.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj A = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15a. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. A: Tekst efter håndskrifterne. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1967. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
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. LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
7. Edd. Min. = Heusler, Andreas and Wilhelm Ranisch, eds. 1903. Eddica Minora: Dichtungen eddischer Art aus den Fornaldarsögur und anderen Prosawerken. Dortmund: Ruhfus. Rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
8. Gautr 1900 = Ranisch, Wilhelm, ed. 1900. Die Gautrekssaga in zwei Fassungen. Palaestra 11. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.
9. Internal references
10. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Gautreks saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 241. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=9> (accessed 1 May 2024)
11. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Gautreks saga 1 (Gauti konungr, Lausavísa 1)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 245.
12. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Gautreks saga 4 (Fjǫlmóðr Skafnǫrtungsson, Lausavísur 2)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 248.