Anon (FoGT) 20^III

Hætta verðr á hættu,
hæting ef böl rætir;
ást er nær að næra;
nú er vær konan færi.
Skeind tekr æðrin æðaz;
æðr deyr, þá er br …

Hætta verðr á hættu, ef hæting rætir böl; nær er að næra ást; nú er vær konan færi. Skeind æðrin tekr æðaz; æðr deyr, þá er br …

To take risks leads to danger, if threatening plants misfortune; it is better to nourish love; now placid women are fewer. The scratched vein begins to become angry; the eider duck dies when …

Mss: W(115) (FoGT)

Editions: Skj AII, 216-17, Skj BII, 234, Skald II, 121, NN §2357; SnE 1848-87, II, 218-19, III, 158, FoGT 1884, 134, 269-70, FoGT 2004, 43, 69, 120-2, FoGT 2014, 22-3, 98-101.

Context: Stanza 20 follows immediately after st. 19 with no intervening prose text, nor any following gloss.

Notes: [All]: As with the second helmingr of st. 19, the poet’s desire to pair umlauted vowels (ligatures) with long non-umlauted vowels in the uneven lines seems to have largely gone by the board, in favour of the maintenance of a particular ligature in both lines of a couplet. In l. 2, even though etymologically hæting (from hót ‘threat’) and rætir (from rót ‘root’) are [ø:] ligatures, they would have become [æ:] after c. 1250. Similarly in ll. 3-4, næra and vær have etymologically [ø:] ligatures, but will have fallen together with original [æ:] ligatures, here nær and færi, by the mid-C13th. Again, the ligatures in ll. 5-6 are either of [ø:] (æðaz l. 5) or [æ:] origin (æðr ll. 5 and 6). — [All]: Although st. 20/6 breaks off before it is complete, the final letters obscured by a hole in W, there is no evidence that the scribe was intending to add two further lines to complete the stanza, as it is clear that this stanza completes the chapter of FoGT on euphonia, and the next line on p. 115 begins a new chapter of the treatise with a capital letter. — [1] hætta verðr á hættu ‘to take risks leads to danger’: This statement may well be semi-proverbial and a variation on such adages as hefir sá er hættir ‘he who risks, has [wins]’. Skj B translates the line as man må vove faren ‘one must risk danger’. Jón Helgason (1970a, 217) proposed an emendation of hættu to háttu ‘[bad] habits’, acc. pl. of háttr ‘habits, conduct’, to produce skothending rather than aðalhending in an odd line. — [2] hæting ‘threatening’: Jón Helgason (ibid.) suggested this might rather be hætting ‘danger, risk’, an alternative form of hætta ‘danger’ (as in l. 1) with the pret. verb rœtti ‘rooted down’. — [2] rætir ‘plants’: A rather strained metaphorical usage of ræta (earlier rœta) ‘cause to take root’. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B; LP: rœta), followed by Longo (FoGT 2004, 43), offers a slightly different sense of l. 2, reading hœting, ef bǫl rœtir ‘it is threatening, if misfortune takes root’, understanding the verb as impersonal with bǫl ‘misfortune’ in the acc. case. — [3] nær ‘better’: Normally, nær means ‘near’, but here the comp. seems to mean ‘better, preferable’; cf. LP: nær 3. — [4] er ‘ are’: Lit. ‘is’ (sg.). — [5] skeind ‘scratched’: Editors have debated whether W reads skeind ‘scratched’ or skemd ‘hurt, wounded’ here. Although the meaning is not appreciably different, this ed. considers W’s reading to be skeind, as did Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Finnur Jónsson (Skj A), Kock, Jón Helgason (1970, 222) and Longo, though Finnur preferred skemd in Skj B. Björn Magnússon Ólsen read skemd (cf. FoGT 1884, 270 n. 4). — [5] æðrin ‘the vein’: Ms. W has ‘æðr enn’, where ‘enn’ could be read as a suffixed def. art., as here and by Björn Magnússon Ólsen, or the adv. enn ‘yet, still’ (though, as we do not know the conclusion of l. 6, this is hypothetical). Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) emends to æðr at [œðask] lit. ‘vein to become angry’ and is followed in this by Kock (Skald). The poet is almost certainly using the noun æðr in two senses, ‘vein’ and ‘eider duck’, the first sense in l. 5, the second in l. 6. This homonym appears to have been a popular one among Icelandic poets; cf. Gestumbl Heiðr 35/3^VIII (Heiðr 82) and Anon Gát 1/5.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj A = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15a. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. A: Tekst efter håndskrifterne. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1967. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
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. 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.
9. 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.
10. Jón Helgason. 1970a. ‘Þriðji íhaldskarl’. Fróðskaparrit 18, 206-26.
11. FoGT 2014 = Clunies Ross, Margaret and Jonas Wellendorf, eds. 2014. The Fourth Grammatical Treatise. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
12. Internal references
13. (forthcoming), ‘ Unattributed, The Fourth Grammatical Treatise’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=34> (accessed 3 May 2024)
14. Hannah Burrows (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Poems, Gátur 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 632.
15. Hannah Burrows (ed.) 2017, ‘Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks 82 (Gestumblindi, Heiðreks gátur 35)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 449.