Herv Lv 1^VIII (Heiðr 13)

Hannah Burrows (ed.) 2017, ‘Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks 13 (Hervǫr, Lausavísur 1)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 372.

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

Hervǫr is enraged at the slave’s claim that she is the illegitimate child of a slave and goes before Bjarmi jarl.

[1-4]: It is unclear who Fróðmarr, a name only appearing in 2845, may be. At one point in the saga, the text of 2845 refers to a Fróðmarr, a jarl in England, as the foster-father of the second Hervǫr to appear in the story, Hervǫr Heiðreksdóttir. This too seems to be the result of confusion since the other mss have Ormarr here, backed up by another prose reference in the section about the battle of the Goths and Huns (though this occurs in the part of the saga lost from 2845 and thus appears only in the U redaction). It could be that the stanza originally related to this part of the story, however (Heiðr 1956, 75 n.). Ms. 2845 reads hon ‘she’ in place of hefði ‘might have’ in l. 3. This has been followed by several eds, necessitating the emendation of p. p. fengit, which both mss agree on, to pret. fengi (inf. fá ‘get, gain, win’), giving the sense ‘though she gained Fróðmarr’s favour’. If this reading is correct, the hon must be Hervǫr’s mother and Fróðmarr could possibly be the swineherd, if the stanza is spoken in irony (Heiðr 1956, 75 n.; Heiðr 1960, 91). See Hall (2005, 7-9) for an alternative theory following this reading. Ms. R715ˣ’s reading avoids the problem, though it is still rather obscure in meaning (as well as being unmetrical): Ætla ek várri vegsemð hrósa, þótt hefði bratt manns fengit hylli ‘I intend to praise our honour, though I/she might have soon gained a man’s favour’. The reading preferred in the present edn is also adopted in Skj B.