Anon (Vǫlsa) 3^I

Ek sé gull á gestum         ok guðvefjar skikkjur;
mér fellr hugr til hringa;         heldr vil ek bjúg en ljúga.
Kenni ek þik, konungr minn;         kominn ertu, Óláfr.

Ek sé gull ok skikkjur guðvefjar á gestum; mér fellr hugr til hringa; heldr vil ek bjúg en ljúga. Kenni ek þik, konungr minn; kominn ertu, Óláfr.

I see gold and cloaks of precious material on the guests; I am pleased by the rings; I would rather be crippled than tell a lie. I recognize you, my king; you have come, Óláfr.

Mss: Flat(122ra) (Flat); 292ˣ(54v) (Vǫlsa)

Readings: [4] bjúg: ‘biug’ or ‘buíg’ Flat, 292ˣ

Editions: Skj AII, 219, Skj BII, 237, Skald II, 123, NN §§2359, 2993D; Flat 1860-8, II, 333 (Vǫlsa); Guðbrandur Vigfússon 1860, 135, CPB II, 382, Edd. Min. 123-4, Schröder 1933, 80.

Context: King Óláfr, together with Finnr Árnason and Þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld, visits the farm incognito; all three don grey cloaks and say they are called Grímr. They are greeted warmly by the daughter of the house. She recognizes the guests in spite of their disguise, as she reveals in the stanza. Afterwards King Óláfr asks her to keep the secret to herself.

Notes: [All]: This is the only stanza that deviates from the (irregular) fornyrðislag metre of the others, and it has only six lines rather than the normal (though not invariable) eight. CPB puts it at the end of the poem, while Heusler and Ranisch (Edd. Min.) omit it. — [2] skikkjur guðvefjar ‘cloaks of precious material’: Cf. Anon Ól 7/1 and Note.  — [4] vil ek ‘I would be’: Lit. ‘I want’. The inf. vera ‘be’ is understood (NN §2359; cf. Sigv Vestv 7/2-3). — [4] bjúg ‘crippled’: All eds take ‘bing’ as the ms. reading of Flat. However, the <n> in question cannot be differentiated from a <u>, and the same is true for 292ˣ. Since all paper mss that certainly descend from Flat (cf. Introduction) read ‘biug’, we can assume that this had also been the original version. (For confusion of ‘biug/bing’, cf. Anon Sól 76/1^VII and Hallm Hallkv 8/4^V (Bergb 8)). Kock (NN §2359) emends to biug (normalised bjúg), f. sg. of bjúgr ‘bowed, hooked, crooked, bent’, and this interpretation is adopted here. In order to clarify the word, Kock refers to sayings such as Ger. Lieber möchte mich Gott mit Lahmheit schlagen ‘May God rather strike me with lameness’, or Swed. Så må Herren jöra mig lytt och lam, om jag juger! ‘May God make me crippled and lame if I lie’. Finnur Jónsson’s emendation (Skj B) to þing in the sense of ‘valuables, jewels’ seems less probable. Düwel (1971, 165) holds to the putative ms. reading ‘bing’ and regards the word as bingr ‘a bed, bolster’: in order to avoid telling a lie, the daughter wants to retire to her bed.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
6. Flat 1860-8 = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and C. R. Unger, eds. 1860-8. Flateyjarbók. En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortællinger om begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler. 3 vols. Christiania (Oslo): Malling.
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. Schröder, Franz Rolf. 1933. Quellenbuch zur germanischen Religionsgeschichte. Trübners philologische Bibliothek 14. Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter.
9. Düwel, Klaus. 1971. Das Opferfest von Lade und die Geschichte vom Völsi: Quellenkritische Untersuchungen zur germanischen Religionsgeschichte. Partly published Göttingen: Habilitationsschrift.
10. Internal references
11. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Vǫlsa þáttr’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=28> (accessed 23 April 2024)
12. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, Flateyjarbók’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=44> (accessed 23 April 2024)
14. Carolyne Larrington and Peter Robinson (eds) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Sólarljóð 76’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 349-50.
15. Kate Heslop (ed.) 2012, ‘Anonymous Poems, Poem about Óláfr Tryggvason 7’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1068.
16. Judith Jesch (ed.) 2012, ‘Sigvatr Þórðarson, Vestrfararvísur 7’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 625.
17. Tarrin Wills (ed.) 2022, ‘Bergbúa þáttr 8 (Hallmundr bergbúinn, Hallmundarkviða 8)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 47.