Anon Mhkv 12^III

Skips láta menn skammar rár;
skatna þykkir hugrinn grár;
tungan leikr við tanna sár;
trauðla er gengt á ís of vár.
Mjǫk fár er sér œrinn einn;
eyvit týr, þótt skyndi seinn;
gǫfgask mætti af gengi hverr;
gǫrva þekkik, sumt hvé ferr.

Menn láta rár skips skammar; hugrinn skatna þykkir grár; tungan leikr við sár tanna; trauðla er gengt á ís of vár. Mjǫk fár er sér œrinn einn; eyvit týr, þótt seinn skyndi; hverr mætti gǫfgask af gengi; þekkik gǫrva, hvé sumt ferr.

Men say the ship’s sailyards are short; the heart of magnates seems grey; the tongue plays with the aching tooth; it is scarcely safe to walk on ice in spring. Very few are sufficient in themselves; it helps not at all though the slow one hastens; each man could gain stature from the company he keeps; I recognise fully how some things go.

Mss: R(54v)

Readings: [3] tungan: ‘tvgan’ R

Editions: Skj AII, 133, Skj BII, 141, Skald II, 75, NN §§3154, 3271; Möbius 1874, 6, Wisén 1886-9, I, 74.

Notes: [1-4]: The same rhyme is carried over four lines, as in sts 13/1-4 and 19/1-4. — [1] láta (3rd pers. pl. pres. indic.) ‘say’: The verb could also be taken in the sense ‘let, allow’ (‘men let the ship’s sailyards be short’). — [1] rár (f. acc. pl.) ‘sailyards’: Sailyards are horizontal arms supporting the sail, and the rá was typically long and slender (see McGrail 1998, 232; Jesch 2001a, 162). The meaning of the adage, which also occurs in Hávm 74/3, is disputed. This short yardarm has a long bibliography, beginning with Eiríkr Magnússon (1888, 334), who proposed as context a shipwreck in which a drowning man, clutching a floating yardarm, would wish it longer. Björn Magnússon Ólsen (1915b, 78) made the sensible equation: small sailyard = slow ship. Falk (1922, 174) noted that a short yardarm was a good thing when battling gusts in a fjord. Heusler (1915-16, 115) returned to the improbable reading (CPB II, 365) of ON rár ‘nooks’ as ‘cabins’: ‘scant (i.e. cramped) are a ship’s berths.’ In HHund I 49/4 (NK 137), rár langar ‘long sailyards’ are a good thing. Hermann Pálsson (1999a, 202) recalled the double-entendre proverb in which reiði means both ‘anger’ and ‘(ship’s) tackle’: stutt (or skömm) er skipsmanna reiði ‘short is the anger/equipment of sailors’. See also Ísl. Málsh.: reiði; skipmaður. — [2] hugrinn skatna þykkir grár ‘the heart of magnates seems grey’: The adj. grár ‘grey’ is most likely used in the sense ‘hostile, malicious’ here (cf. Heggstad et al. 2008: grár 2 and Note to st. 6/3). For a discussion of hugr ‘mind, thought, disposition, soul, heart’, see Þul Hugar ok hjarta, Note to l. 1. — [3] sár tanna ‘the aching tooth’: Lit. ‘pain of the teeth’. An international proverb (semper cum dente remanebit lingua dolente ‘the tongue always remains with the aching tooth’), deployed in courtly-love contexts by at least five early troubadours; cf. Bishop Folc of Marseille (Schulmann 2001, 186-7): ‘I know, as “Toward the toothache turns the tongue,” I turn to the lady who snarls at me’. — [4]: Cf. proverbs in Ísl. Málsh.: ís. — [5]: Cf. Ísl. Málsh.: einhlítur; fár 2. — [6]: See Ísl. Málsh.: seinn; cf. the reverse proverb in Njáls saga (Nj ch. 44, ÍF 12, 114): kemsk, þó at seint fari ‘all will come in good time’. — [7]: SnSt Ht 26/8 cites this proverb (vex hverr af gengi ‘each gains from his following’) in a stanza illustrating orðskviðu háttr ‘proverb’s form’; cf. gengileysi ‘lack of a retinue’ (Egill St 9/8^V (Eg 80)), referring to the falling away of the skald’s friends and supporters.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. Jesch, Judith. 2001a. Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse. Woodbridge: Boydell.
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. Wisén, Theodor, ed. 1886-9. Carmina Norrœnæ: Ex reliquiis vetustioris norrœnæ poësis selecta, recognita, commentariis et glossario instructa. 2 vols. Lund: Ohlsson.
7. NK = Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn (1899), eds. 1983. Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. 2 vols. I: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Winter.
8. ÍF 12 = Brennu-Njáls saga. Ed. Einar Ólafur Sveinsson. 1954.
9. Björn Magnússon Ólsen. 1915b. ‘Till Eddakvadene’. ANF 31, 52-95.
10. Falk, Hjalmar. 1922. ‘Hávamál strofe 74’. MM, 173-5.
11. Hermann Pálsson. 1999a. Hávamál í ljósi íslenskrar menningar. Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan.
12. Ísl. Málsh. = Bjarni Vilhjálmsson and Óskar Halldórsson, eds. 1979. Íslenzkir málshættir. 2nd edn. Reykjavík: Almenna Bókafélagið.
13. McGrail, Seán. 1998. Ancient Boats in North-West Europe: The Archaeology of Water Transport to AD 1500. London: Longman.
14. Möbius, Theodor. 1874. ‘Malshatta-kvædi’. ZDP Ergänzungsband, 3-73, 615-16.
15. Schulmann, Nicole M. 2001. Where Troubadours Were Bishops: The Occitania of Folc of Marseille (1150-1231). New York and London: Routledge.
16. Heusler, Andreas. 1915-16. ‘Sprichwörter in den eddischen Sittengedichten’. Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde 25, 105-15 and 26, 42-57. Rpt. in Heusler 1969, 195-222.
17. Internal references
18. 2022, ‘ Anonymous, Njáls saga’ 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, pp. 1220-1313. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=55> (accessed 28 April 2024)
19. Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2022, ‘Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar 80 (Egill Skallagrímsson, Sonatorrek 9)’ 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. 308.
20. Not published: do not cite ()
21. Not published: do not cite ()
22. Elena Gurevich 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Hugar heiti ok hjarta’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 964. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=3243> (accessed 28 April 2024)
23. Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Snorri Sturluson, Háttatal 26’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1132.