Ólsv Love 3^III

Kœnn njóti vel vænnar
vinr minn konu sinnar
— víst esat dapr of drósir
drengr — ok eigi lengi.

Njóti kœnn vinr minn vænnar konu sinnar vel ok eigi lengi; víst esat drengr dapr of drósir.

May my wise friend enjoy his fair wife well and keep [her] for a long time; indeed, the man is not downcast on account of women.

Mss: A(5v), W(105) (TGT)

Readings: [2] vinr: so W, vin A    [3] esat (‘erat’): er að W;    of (‘vm’): af W;    drósir: drósar W

Editions: Skj AII, 98, Skj BII, 110, Skald II, 58; SnE 1848-87, II, 130-1, 414, III, 145, TGT 1884, 20, 84, 198, TGT 1927, 60, 100.

Context: The half-stanza illustrates the rhetorical figure amphibologia, i.e. a word that could have more than one meaning. In the present stanza, this is illustrated by the word eigi (l. 4), which can be either 3rd pers. sg. pres. subj. of the verb eiga ‘have, keep, own’ or the adv. eigi ‘not’ (TGT 1927, 60): Hér er óvíst, hvárt þessi sǫgn, eigi, er viðrorð neitiligt eða orð eiginligt ‘Here it is uncertain whether this word, eigi, is a negative adverb or a real verb’ (see also Note to l. 4 below).

Notes: [1-2]: The lines are peculiar in that they contain an abundance of internal rhymes on vowels + <n> in fully stressed positions: ‑œnn : ‑ænn- (l. 1); ‑in- : ‑inn : ‑inn- (l. 2). — [1, 2] vænnar konu sinnar ‘his fair wife’: Kona ‘wife’ can also mean ‘woman’, and the stanza may be deliberately ambiguous about the relationship between this man and the woman. — [3-4] víst esat drengr dapr of drósir ‘indeed, the man is not downcast on account of women’: In an attempt to retain the W reading drósar f. gen. sg. ‘of the woman’, Finnur Jónsson (TGT 1927, 100) tentatively suggests that the adv. víst ‘indeed’ could have been the noun vist ‘stay, visit’, which would yield the following reading: drengr esat dapr of vist drósar ‘the man is not downcast on account of the woman’s visit’. — [4] drengr ‘the man’: It is not clear who the subject of this parenthetic clause is, and in Skj B Finnur Jónsson tentatively suggests that drengr could refer to the poet rather than to the poet’s friend: manden (jeg?) ‘the man (I?)’. — [4] ok eigi lengi ‘and keep [her] for a long time’: If this verb is taken as an adv. rather than as a verb (see Context above), the clause ok eigi lengi translates as ‘and not for a long time’. Cf. the almost similar ambiguity in Anon (TGT) 15.

References

1. Bibliography
2. TGT 1884 = Björn Magnússon Ólsen, ed. 1884. Den tredje og fjærde grammatiske afhandling i Snorres Edda tilligemed de grammatiske afhandlingers prolog og to andre tillæg. SUGNL 12. Copenhagen: Knudtzon.
3. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
4. SnE 1848-87 = Snorri Sturluson. 1848-87. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar: Edda Snorronis Sturlaei. Ed. Jón Sigurðsson et al. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Legatum Arnamagnaeanum. Rpt. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1966.
5. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
6. TGT 1927 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1927b. Óláfr Þórðarson: Málhljóða- og málskrúðsrit. Grammatisk-retorisk afhandling. Det kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Historisk-filologiske meddelelser 13, 2. Copenhagen: Høst.
7. Internal references
8. Tarrin Wills (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Lausavísur, Stanzas from the Third Grammatical Treatise 15’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 547.