Hannah Burrows (ed.) 2017, ‘Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks 85 (Heiðrekr, Heiðreks gátur 1)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 452.
Undr ok argskap ok alla bleyði!
En engi vissi þín þau orð
útan þú einn, ill vættr ok örm.
Undr ok argskap ok alla bleyði! En engi vissi þau orð þín útan þú einn, ill ok örm vættr.
Shame and depravity and all cowardice! But no one knew those words of yours except you alone, evil and wretched creature.
Mss: 597bˣ(51r), 281ˣ(101r) (Heiðr)
Readings: [6] örm: ormr corrected from örm in the margin in another hand 597bˣ, ormr 281ˣ
Editions: Skj AII, 228, Skj BII, 247, Skald II, 128, NN §2364; FSN 1, 487, Heiðr 1873, 263, Heiðr 1924, 83; Edd. Min. 120.
Context: Heiðrekr’s response to Gestumblindi’s unanswerable final question.
Notes: [All]: Edd. Min. does not treat this response as poetry, but all lines except l. 4 are metrical, though l. 6 has two alliterating staves. — [All]: Mss 2845 and R715ˣ have the prose response (Heiðr 1960, 44), Þat veiztu einn, rǫg vættr! ‘You alone know that, depraved creature!’. Cf. Lok 57/1, 59/1, 61/1, 63/1 Þegi þú, rǫg vættr! ‘Be silent, depraved creature!’. On the implications of the word ragr (and argskapr ‘depravity’ in l. 1) see Meulengracht Sørensen (1983, 18-20). — [3]: Kock (Skald, NN) rearranges to En engi þau | þín orð vissi ‘but no one knows those words of yours’ and so restores alliteration to the line. — [5] örm ‘wretched’: Kock (Skald, NN) emends to rǫg ‘depraved’, som duger ‘which fits’, as he says in NN, and is in line with 2845’s prose reading, although traces of the metrical response are not present in this or the U redaction.
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