Anon Mv II 8^VII

‘Sie eg það, sæl frú;
sonu elr hver kvón
— frjóvaz af því flest víf
fegin — nema sjálf eg.
Gleðifullan gietnað
gjaltu mier, víf snjalt,
meyjan, að eg mega fá
móðurnafn og bera jóð.

‘Eg sie það, sæl frú; hver kvón elr sonu nema eg sjálf; flest víf frjóvaz, fegin af því. Snjalt víf, gjaltu mier gleðifullan gietnað, meyjan, að eg mega fá móðurnafn og bera jóð.

‘I see that, blessed lady; every woman bears sons except I myself; most women multiply, happy because of that. Wise lady, grant me a joyful conception, Virgin, so that I may receive the name of mother and bear offspring.

Mss: 713(86), 721(13v)

Editions: Skj AII, 493, Skj BII, 534, Skald II, 293, NN §1694; Kahle 1898, 39, 99, Sperber 1911, 10-11, 62, Wrightson 2001, 58.

Notes: [2] sonu ... kvón ‘sons ... woman’: The rhyme is imperfect (-on- : -ón). See Note to 1/2 above. — [3] frjóvaz ... víf ‘multiply ... women’: For this rhyme, see Note to 4/5 above. For the meaning ‘multiply’ see Fritzner: frjóa or frjóva 3. — [3, 4] fegin af því ‘happy because of that’: The sense is that most women are happy because they bear children. Skj B takes the prepositional phrase af því ‘because of that’ as the conj. ‘because’, which is not possible. Skald construes fegin ‘happy’ with hver kvón ‘every woman’ (l. 2), and treats flest víf frjóvaz af því (l. 3) as one cl. (‘most women become fertile from that’ (?); see NN §1694), which is unclear. Wrightson translates the cl. as ‘most wives are joyfully fruitful because of that’, with the alternative translations ‘because most joyful women conceive’ or ‘most joyful women conceive as a result of that (i.e. of being married)’.

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. Sperber, Hans, ed. 1911. Sechs isländische Gedichte legendarischen Inhalts. Uppsala Universitets årsskrift, filosofi, språkvetenskap och historiska vetenskaper 2. Uppsala: Akademische Buchdruckerei Edv. Berling.
6. Wrightson, Kellinde, ed. 2001. Fourteenth-Century Icelandic Verse on the Virgin Mary: Drápa af Maríugrát, Vitnisvísur af Maríu, Maríuvísur I-III. Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series 14. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
7. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
8. Kahle, Bernhard, ed. 1898. Isländische geistliche Dichtungen des ausgehenden Mittelalters. Heidelberg: Winter.