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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Herv Lv 3VIII (Heiðr 16)

Hannah Burrows (ed.) 2017, ‘Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks 16 (Hervǫr, Lausavísur 3)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 374.

HervǫrLausavísur
234

text and translation

Skal skjótliga         um skör búa
blæjulíni        áðr braut fari.
Mikit býr í því,         er á morgin skal
skera bæði mér         skyrtu ok ólpu.

Skal skjótliga búa blæjulíni um skör, áðr fari braut. Mikit býr í því, er á morgin skal skera mér bæði skyrtu ok ólpu.
 
‘[I] must quickly dress my hair with a head covering of coloured cloth, before I go away. Much depends on it, that both shirt and cloak shall be cut for me in the morning. ’

notes and context

[1-3]: Given that Hervǫr intends to disguise herself as a man, these lines are problematic in terms of sense, though the implication may be that she will bind up her hair to conceal it (Heiðr 1960, 11 n. 1). Skj B emends to Skal skjótliga | af skǫr búa | blæju líni, translating Hurtigt skal slör-linet bort fra mit hoved ‘Quickly must the linen veil be taken from my head’. This suggestion gives good sense, that she is shedding her feminine trappings, and af could have been misread as of and rendered um by later scribes, but búa af is not attested in the sense ‘take off’, and no other eds have adopted this suggestion. — [1-2] skal ‘[I] must’: This could alternatively be understood as an impersonal construction: ‘My hair must quickly be dressed’. — [5-6]: The interpretation here takes er as introducing a rel. clause, referring to því (l. 5), i.e. ‘much depends on [the fact] that both shirt and cloak shall be cut for me’. Alternatively, því could refer to the statement in the first helmingr (about the dressing of the hair), with er meaning ‘because’, with the sense ‘Much depends on me dressing my hair, because…’.

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], E. 5. Vers af Fornaldarsagaer: Af Hervararsaga I 4: AII, 243, BII, 263, Skald II, 137; Heiðr 1672, 86, FSN 1, 432, Heiðr 1873, 313, Heiðr 1924, 16, 103-4, FSGJ 2, 12, Heiðr 1960, 11; Edd. Min. 88.

15
Heiðr 16
17
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