Þhorn Harkv 2I/8 — of ‘of’
Vitr þóttisk valkyrja; verar né óru þekkir
feimu inni framsóttu, es fugls rǫdd kunni.
Kvaddi in kverkhvíta ok in glæ*hvarma
Hymis hausreyti, es sat á horni of bjarga.
Valkyrja þóttisk vitr; verar né óru þekkir inni framsóttu feimu, es kunni rǫdd fugls. In kverkhvíta ok in glæ*hvarma kvaddi hausreyti Hymis, es sat á horni of bjarga.
The valkyrie thought herself wise; men were not pleasing to the aggressive maid, who understood the voice of the bird. The white-throated and the bright-eyelashed one greeted the skull-picker of Hymir <giant> [RAVEN], which sat on the edge of a cliff.
readings
[8] horni of: horni vin‑ 51ˣ, FskBˣ, 302ˣ, ‘hormum’ FskAˣ, 52ˣ, ‘bormum’ 301ˣ
notes
[8] of bjarga ‘of a cliff’: In the pl., bjarg ‘rock’ is used in a collective sense to mean ‘precipice, cliff’: see CVC: bjarg. Here it is gen. pl., hence á horni bjarga ‘on the edge of a cliff’. The next syllable is problematic. (a) The FskA transcripts read ‘-um’, which is here taken as the expletive particle, normalised to the more archaic of; this appears before nouns, though more commonly before verbs (LP: of C). All the ms. readings, ‘horni vin-’, ‘hormum’ and ‘bormum’, are readily understood as due to copyists’ misdivisions of the minims of horni um. The form ‘hormum’ is presumably for hǫmrum ‘crags’, the reading adopted by Wisén (1870, 49), following LP (1860): hausreyti. (b) Previous eds, following the FskB transcripts, generally read vinbjarga, which LP: vinbjǫrg defines as klipper ved (omgivende) eng(e) ‘rocks with (surrounding) field(s)’. The first constituent of the cpd would then be vin f. ‘meadow’, a word common in Norwegian place names (see Jón Helgason 1946, 134-5). Kershaw (1922, 83) adopts the vin- reading, but it is not represented in her translation, ‘as he sat on a jutting ledge of rock’; similarly Magerøy (1963, 82): som sat høgt på eit berg. Von Friesen (1902, 66-9; so Noreen 1926, 163) would emend to vindbjarga ‘wind-rocks’, which he interprets as a kenning for ‘clouds’.