Anon (FoGT) 11^III

Grund, taktu, bölvi blandin,
bót fyr glæpsku ljóta!
Þier mun óhlyðni ærin,
Ísland, búa píslir!
Þú mátt ófrið óttaz,
óþýð*, nema vel hlýðið,
fold, þeim er sverðum sjaldan
— siðir breytiz hier — neyta.

Grund, blandin bölvi, taktu bót fyr ljóta glæpsku! Ísland, ærin óhlyðni mun búa þier píslir! Þú mátt óttaz ófrið, óþýð* fold, nema hlýðið vel, þeim er sjaldan neyta sverðum; siðir breytiz hier.

Country, imbued with evil, do penance for your ugly sin! Iceland, great disobedience will lay punishments in store for you! You can fear hostility, rough land, unless you obey well those who seldom use swords; may morals here change.

Mss: W(112) (FoGT)

Readings: [4] píslir: ‘p[…]lir’ W    [6] óþýð*: óþýðr W

Editions: Skj AII, 215-16, Skj BII, 232-3, Skald II, 120-1; SnE 1848-87, II, 200-1, III, 155-6, FoGT 1884, 125, 253, FoGT 2004, 35, 62-3, 98-9, FoGT 2014, 8-9, 66.

Context: Stanza 11 is the first example of prosopopoeia given in FoGT. The figure is defined and the stanza introduced thus: Prosopophía er isetning nyrar personv, ok verðr ꜳ̋ .iij. leiðer. Sv er hin fyrsta ef skꜳlldit seger, at lífligr lvtr talí til líf lavss lutar, sem her ‘Prosopopoeia is the insertion of a new person, and it occurs in three ways. The first is if the poet says that a living thing is speaking to a lifeless thing, as here’. After the stanza, the prose text explains: her talar skalldit nefndri figvrv, eggiandi vnder menn at hlyða vel for stiorum sínvm, ok nefner landit istað þeirra, er þat [þav W] byggia ‘here the poet speaks in the said figure, exhorting subjects to listen well to their rulers, and names the land instead of those who live in it’.

Notes: [All]: The moralising tone already evident in sts 7 and 8 is again apparent here, and it intensifies to a Jeremiad. Some eds (most recently FoGT 2004, 99) have linked the upbraiding of Icelanders in this stanza with the reference in st. 7 to the poetic persona’s allegation that a lightning strike on a major church (possibly Skálholt) was God’s judgement upon sinful Icelanders. The two stanzas may be connected, but equally they may be independent expressions of a common theme. — [1] blandin ‘imbued’: Lit. ‘mixed’. — [3] ærin ‘great’: Lit. ‘sufficient’. — [4] píslir ‘punishments’: Ms. W’s reading is obscured by a hole, but the emendation píslir is confirmed by aðalhending and by sense and has been adopted in all eds. — [6] óþýð* ‘rough’: Ms. W’s m. adj. óþýðr ‘rough, hard, unfriendly’ must be emended to the f. form (so SnE 1848-87, II, 200 n. 2 and all subsequent eds) to agree with fold ‘land’ (l. 7). — [7, 8] þeim er sjaldan neyta sverðum ‘those who seldom use swords’: I.e., members of the clergy, priests and monks. Neyta ‘use’ usually takes the gen. of what is used, but here the dat. sverðum ‘swords’ is found, possibly (cf. FoGT 1884, 253 n. 5) in imitation of a Latin construction with the same sense, uti gladiis (Lat. utor takes the ablative rather than the dat. case, but the forms are identical).

References

1. Bibliography
2. 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.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. FoGT 2014 = Clunies Ross, Margaret and Jonas Wellendorf, eds. 2014. The Fourth Grammatical Treatise. University College London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
7. Internal references
8. (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 26 April 2024)