Anon (TGT) 4^III

Geima mærum heima.

Mærum geima heima.

We praise the sea at home.

Mss: A(4r), B(2v), W(102) (TGT)

Readings: [1] heima: so B, hríma A, heimi W

Editions: SnE 1818, 312, SnE 1848, 184, SnE 1848-87, II, 106, 408, 510, TGT 1884, 15, 69, 177, TGT 1927, 47, 93.

Context: Cited as an example of metacism or mytacismus (‘moytacismus’; TGT 1927, 47): Moytacismus er þat, ef samtenging sagna verðr af optligri samanlostning eins stafs m ‘Metacism occurs if the conjunction of words results in the frequent collision of one letter, <m>’.

Notes: [All]: Óláfr adds after the fragment (TGT 1927, 47): ok kǫllum vér þat dregit á stál, ef á meðal hendinga verðr ‘and we call that “pulled on to the intercalary” if it comes between hendingar’. Donatus lists this figure but does not elaborate further. It is explained in Hiberno-Latin commentaries, e.g. Ars Laureshamensis (CCCM 40A, 198): Myotacismus est, quotiens m inter duas uocales ponitur, ut ‘bonum aurum’ ‘Mytacismus is whenever <m> is placed between two vowels, as in bonum aurum [good gold]’. Normally the term is only applied to where <m> occurs at the end of a word which is followed by a word starting in a vowel or <m> (cf. OED: metacism). Here, Óláfr has applied it more loosely to any instance where the letter <m> occurs between vowels. — [All]: This one-line fragment is omitted from Skj, Skald and the verse commentary in SnE 1848-87, III. It forms a syntactic whole and is punctuated here as a sentence. However, it cannot be determined whether the line is a fragment of a longer stanza; the fact that it is an even dróttkvætt line suggests that it may originally have followed another line. — [1] geima ‘the sea’: Geimi (lit. ‘extensive one’) is a heiti for ‘sea’ (see Þul Sjóvar 1/5 and AEW: geimi). — [1] heima ‘at home’: Ms. B’s reading is chosen by earlier eds for the aðalhending with geima. Heima may also be acc. or gen. pl. of m. heimr ‘home’. Ms. W’s reading heimi (dat. sg. of heimr) also supplies aðalhending and W normally has better readings than B. However, heimi is not normally used in the sense ‘at home’ without a prep.

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. 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. SnE 1848 = Sveinbjörn Egilsson, ed. 1848. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, eða Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál og Háttatal. Reykjavík: Prentsmiðja landsins.
5. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
6. AEW = Vries, Jan de. 1962. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd rev. edn. Rpt. 1977. Leiden: Brill.
7. CCCM = [Anonymous] Corpus Christianorum. 1971-. Continuatio mediaevalis. Turnhout: Brepols.
8. OED = Murray, J. A. H. et al., eds. 1884-1928. The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon. 2nd edn 1989. Simpson, J. A. and E. S. C. Weiner, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
9. 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.
10. SnE 1818 = Rask, Rasmus Kristian, ed. 1818a. Snorra Edda ásamt Skáldu og þarmeð fylgjandi ritgjörðum. Stockholm: Elmen.
11. Internal references
12. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Sjóvar heiti 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. 833.