Anon (FoGT) 19^III

Æli telz, það er ólu
ósnotran mann gotnar;
ælir vatn, þar er álar
allstrangir fram hallaz.
Heitir †lær† á †læru†,
læringar kienningar;
kallaz mærr á Mæri,
mæring, ef gjöf tæriz.

Telz æli, það er gotnar ólu ósnotran mann; ælir vatn, þar er allstrangir álar hallaz fram. †Lær† heitir á †læru†, kienningar læringar; kallaz mærr á Mæri, mæring, ef gjöf tæriz.

He is considered a wretch, whom men brought up as an unwise man; water causes dredging, where very strong channels incline forwards. … is named from … , lessons [are called] instructions; [land] is called mærr in Møre, a prestation if a gift is given.

Mss: W(115) (FoGT)

Readings: [3] þar: þat W

Editions: Skj AII, 216, Skj BII, 234, Skald II, 121, NN §§1445, 2356, 2993C; SnE 1848-87, II, 216-19, III, 158, FoGT 1884, 134, 266-9, FoGT 2004, 43, 69, 117-20, FoGT 2014, 22-3, 98-101.

Notes: [All]: This stanza continues the strategy of st. 18, at least in the first helmingr, where ll. 1 and 3 contain pairs of words in one of which the stem vowel is an umlauted ligature and in the other a pure long vowel. In l. 1 we have the pair æli [œli] : ólu and in l. 3 ælir : álar. Although the second helmingr holds some serious difficulties of interpretation, it seems that there the poet’s strategy becomes somewhat different in that there is no change from a ligature to a non-umlauted long vowel, but rather the maintenance of the same ligature in each of the two couplets. Again, as with st. 18, the stanza resolves into four couplets or fjórðungar. — [1] æli ‘a wretch’: Ms. W has ‘Øle’. Sveinbjörn Egilsson (SnE 1848-87, II, 216-17 n. 7) argued for the spelling auli, but there is no problem with <ø> representing original [ø:], later [æ:]. Æli occurs in Old Icelandic nowhere else as a simplex, though the cpd mannæli ‘wretched fellow’ is recorded once, in Finnb (ÍF 14, 256), and in later Icelandic the form ælingi occurs with a similar sense. Corresponding forms are more evident in Norwegian (see Jón Helgason 1970a, 212 for examples). — [2] ósnotran ‘unwise’: Probably with the implication ‘uneducated’ or ‘uncultivated’. — [3] ælir vatn ‘water causes dredging’: The verb æla ‘dredge [a deep channel]’ is impersonal and vatn ‘water’ is acc. (so FoGT 1884, 267 and Jón Helgason 1970a, 213). — [3] þar er ‘where’: Ms. W has þat er, but although þat agrees in gender with vatn ‘water’, being n., sense requires an emendation to þar ‘where’, first proposed by Sveinbjörn Egilsson (SnE 1848-87, II, 216 and n. 4) and adopted by all subsequent eds. — [5] †lær† heitir á †læru† ‘… is named from …’: No fully convincing explanation of these two nouns has been proposed. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) was unable to come up with anything, while Kock (Skald and NN §1445) and FoGT 2004 adopt lær in the sense ‘thigh, upper leg’. Lær must be sg., as the verb heitir is sg., which rules out Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s suggestion (SnE 1848-87, II, 216-17 nn. 9 and 10) that lær stands for lœr, pl. of ló ‘golden plover’. He further proposed that læru could be a variant of léru = leiru ‘mudflat, muddy shore’, but this is highly improbable both phonologically and ecologically (cf. FoGT 1884, 266-8 n. 4). Another hypothesis is that the form læru or lœru may be dat. sg. of a noun that occurs in SnE in a list of pejorative terms for men, viz. leyra (SnE 1998, I, 106, 224-5, II, 345: leyra or løra or løri; cf. AEW: løra and discussion), which appears in various spellings in the mss and seems to mean ‘degenerate person’ or ‘coward’. The sense of l. 5 might then be ‘a thigh is so-called on a degenerate man’ (i.e. just as it is on other men), but this interpretation is really clutching at straws. Jón Helgason (1970, 213-14) postulated a *lór ‘sluggishness, inactivity’ as the basis for the mutated noun lœra, later læra ‘degenerate, good-for-nothing’, giving the sense ‘*lór (sluggishness) is named from/derives from læra (a degenerate, good-for-nothing)’. — [7] mærr ‘mærr’: Ms. W has ‘męr’. This word is here understood as the poetic noun mœrr (later mærr) ‘land’, especially flat land (cf. LP: mœrr), a term that is applied specifically to the western Norwegian district of that name, Møre (OIcel. Mœrr, Mærr). It assumes that the poet understood the semantic relationship between the two terms. To follow the pattern set down in ll. 5-6, all the ligatures in ll. 7-8 must be the same, as they would be if the C13th Old Icelandic change of [ø:] > [æ:] is applied. Other eds have understood mærr to mean ‘a man from Møre’. The problem with interpreting mærr thus is that the name for the inhabitants of Møre only occurs in the pl. Mœrir, Mærir (cf. LP: 2. Mœrir). Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) understands mœrr as meaning ‘swamp, marsh’. Sveinbjörn Egilsson (SnE 1848-87, II, 218-19) proposed mær ‘maiden’, which is a possible reading, although it does not make a great deal of sense, but, in a stanza like this, perhaps that is something one should not expect to find. Jón Helgason (1970a, 216) suggested that the first word was originally mór ‘moor, heath’ and that the line originally read kallaz mór á Mœri ‘it is called heathland in Møre’, which would preserve the [o:] : [ø:] correspondence we find in st. 18 and the first helmingr of st. 19. — [8] mæring ‘a prestation’: Most eds, following Sveinbjörn Egilsson (SnE 1848-87, II, 218 and n. 3), have emended W’s mæring to give the nom. sg. form of the noun, mæringr. Kock (Skald and NN §2356, so also Jón Helgason 1970a, 216) keeps the ms. form, which he derives from mæra ‘praise, honour with gifts’ (cf. LP: mæra 2), interpreting ‘it is called a prestation, if a gift is given’.

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. 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.
4. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
6. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
7. LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
8. SnE 1998 = Snorri Sturluson. 1998. Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
9. FoGT 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.
10. FoGT 2004 = Longo, Michele, ed. [2004]. ‘Il Quarto Trattato Grammaticale Islandese: Testo, Traduzione e Commento’. Dottorato di Ricerca in ‘Linguistica Sincronica e Diacronica’ (XV Ciclo). Palermo: Università degli Studi di Palermo, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia.
11. ÍF 14 = Kjalnesinga saga. Ed. Jóhannes Halldórsson. 1959.
12. Jón Helgason. 1970a. ‘Þriðji íhaldskarl’. Fróðskaparrit 18, 206-26.
13. FoGT 2014 = Clunies Ross, Margaret and Jonas Wellendorf, eds. 2014. The Fourth Grammatical Treatise. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
14. Internal references
15. Edith Marold 2017, ‘Snorra Edda (Prologue, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál)’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols [check printed volume for citation].