Hildibrandr Lv 6^VIII (Ásm 6)

Nú verð ek liggja         lífs andvani,
mæki undaðr,         þeim er magnar sár.

Ek verð nú liggja andvani lífs, undaðr mæki, þeim er magnar sár.

Now I must lie bereft of life, wounded by a sword, the one that increases wounds.

Mss: 7(43r) (Ásm)

Readings: [2] andvani: andvana 7    [4] þeim er: þannz 7;    magnar: magna 7

Editions: Skj AII, 321, Skj BII, 341, Skald II, 183, NN §796; Peringskiöld 1722, 22 (ch. 9), FSN 2, 486 (ch. 9), Detter 1891, 99, FSGJ 1, 406 (ch. 9) (Ásm); CPB I, 191, Halvorsen 1951, 16; Edd. Min. 54, NK 314.

Notes: [All]: This helmingr is sometimes treated as part of the previous stanza, giving a twelve-line stanza (so FSGJ), or as the second half of an eight-line stanza, although there is no indication in the ms. of missing texts (so Edd. Min.). — [2] andvani ‘bereft’: The ms. reads andvana, but it is necessary to emend in order to give an adj. in the m. nom. sg. in agreement with ek ‘I’ (l. 1). — [3-4]: These lines refer to the dwarf-forged sword destined to bring death to King Buðli’s grandsons (see st. 2 Note to [All]). — [4] þeim er magnar ‘the one that increases’: Both emendation of the ms.’s þannz magna and normalisation is required here. The final ‑z of þannz is a cliticised form of the rel. particle es, common in poetry from before 1200. This has been normalised to er, following the practice of normalizing all SkP VIII texts to the standard of 1250-1300. Þann (m. acc. sg.) must be emended to þeim (m. dat. sg.) to agree with mæki ‘sword’ (l. 3), while the verb should be 3rd pers. sg. pres. indic., not 3rd pers. pl., hence magnar, not magna. The majority of eds adopt the emendations preferred here, while Skald keeps þanns and emends magna to manga (cf. NN §796), claiming a meaning for the verb ‘maim, mutilate’, though that sense is unattested in Old Norse, where the meaning seems rather to be ‘trade, barter, haggle’ (AEW, CVC, Fritzner: manga); according to Edd. Min. 54 n. to 6/8, this suggested interpretation goes back to Möbius (1877, 325); it is interpreted as an unidentified p. n. in CPB I, 191.

References

1. Bibliography
2. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
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. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
6. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. FSGJ = Guðni Jónsson, ed. 1954. Fornaldar sögur norðurlanda. 4 vols. [Reykjavík]: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan.
11. SkP VII = Poetry on Christian Subjects. Ed. Margaret Clunies Ross. 2007.
12. Möbius, Theodor. 1877. Edda Sæmundar hins fróða, mit einem Anhang bisher ungedruckter Gedichte. 2nd edn. Leipzig: Hinrichs.
13. 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.
14. Detter, Ferdinand, ed. 1891. Zwei Fornaldarsögur (Hrólfssaga Gautrekssonar und Ásmundarsaga kappabana) nach Cod. Holm. 7, 4to. Halle: Niemeyer.
15. Halvorsen, Eyvind Fjeld. 1951. ‘On the Sources of the Ásmundarsaga kappabana’. Studia Norvegica 2, 1-57.
16. Peringskiöld, Johann, ed. 1722. Saugu Asmundar, er kallaður er Kappabani. Stockholm: Horrn.
17. Internal references
18. 2017, ‘ Anonymous, Ásmundar saga kappabana’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 15. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=65> (accessed 24 April 2024)