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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Hildibrandr Lv 6VIII (Ásm 6)/4 — magnar ‘increases’

Nú verð ek liggja         lífs andvani,
mæki undaðr,         þeim er magnar sár.

Ek verð nú liggja andvani lífs, undaðr mæki, þeim er magnar sár.

Now I must lie bereft of life, wounded by a sword, the one that increases wounds.

readings

[4] magnar: magna 7

notes

[4] þeim er magnar ‘the one that increases’: Both emendation of the ms.’s þannz magna and normalisation is required here. The final ‑z of þannz is a cliticised form of the rel. particle es, common in poetry from before 1200. This has been normalised to er, following the practice of normalizing all SkP VIII texts to the standard of 1250-1300. Þann (m. acc. sg.) must be emended to þeim (m. dat. sg.) to agree with mæki ‘sword’ (l. 3), while the verb should be 3rd pers. sg. pres. indic., not 3rd pers. pl., hence magnar, not magna. The majority of eds adopt the emendations preferred here, while Skald keeps þanns and emends magna to manga (cf. NN §796), claiming a meaning for the verb ‘maim, mutilate’, though that sense is unattested in Old Norse, where the meaning seems rather to be ‘trade, barter, haggle’ (AEW, CVC, Fritzner: manga); according to Edd. Min. 54 n. to 6/8, this suggested interpretation goes back to Möbius (1877, 325); it is interpreted as an unidentified p. n. in CPB I, 191.

grammar

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