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Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Anon (FoGT) 11III

Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise 11’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 584.

Anonymous LausavísurStanzas from the Fourth Grammatical Treatise
101112

text and translation

Grund, taktu, bölvi blandin,
bót fyr glæpsku ljóta!
Þier mun óhlyðni ærin,
Ísland, búa píslir!
Þú mátt ófrið óttaz,
óþýð*, nema vel hlýðið,
fold, þeim er sverðum sjaldan
— siðir breytiz hier — neyta.

Grund, blandin bölvi, taktu bót fyr ljóta glæpsku! Ísland, ærin óhlyðni mun búa þier píslir! Þú mátt óttaz ófrið, óþýð* fold, nema hlýðið vel, þeim er sjaldan neyta sverðum; siðir breytiz hier.
 
‘Country, imbued with evil, do penance for your ugly sin! Iceland, great disobedience will lay punishments in store for you! You can fear hostility, rough land, unless you obey well those who seldom use swords; may morals here change.

notes and context

Stanza 11 is the first example of prosopopoeia given in FoGT. The figure is defined and the stanza introduced thus: Prosopophía er isetning nyrar personv, ok verðr ꜳ̋ .iij. leiðer. Sv er hin fyrsta ef skꜳlldit seger, at lífligr lvtr talí til líf lavss lutar, sem herProsopopoeia is the insertion of a new person, and it occurs in three ways. The first is if the poet says that a living thing is speaking to a lifeless thing, as here’. After the stanza, the prose text explains: her talar skalldit nefndri figvrv, eggiandi vnder menn at hlyða vel for stiorum sínvm, ok nefner landit istað þeirra, er þat [þav W] byggia ‘here the poet speaks in the said figure, exhorting subjects to listen well to their rulers, and names the land instead of those who live in it’.

The moralising tone already evident in sts 7 and 8 is again apparent here, and it intensifies to a Jeremiad. Some eds (most recently FoGT 2004, 99) have linked the upbraiding of Icelanders in this stanza with the reference in st. 7 to the poetic persona’s allegation that a lightning strike on a major church (possibly Skálholt) was God’s judgement upon sinful Icelanders. The two stanzas may be connected, but equally they may be independent expressions of a common theme.

readings

sources

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.

editions and texts

Skj: Anonyme digte og vers [XIII], D. 3. Vers af den 4. grt. afhandling 8: AII, 215-16, BII, 232-3, Skald II, 120-1; SnE 1848-87, II, 200-1, III, 155-6, FoGT 1884, 125, 253, FoGT 2004, 35, 62-3, 98-9, FoGT 2014, 8-9, 66.

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