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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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SnH Lv 7II/4 — Dǫnum ‘the Danes’

Ortak eina        of jarl þulu;
verðrat drápa        með Dǫnum verri;
fǫll eru fjórtán        ok fǫng tíu;
opits ok ǫndvert,        ǫfugt stígandi:
svá skal yrkja,        sás illa kann!

Ortak eina þulu of jarl; verðrat drápa verri með Dǫnum; eru fjórtán fǫll ok tíu fǫng; opits ok ǫndvert, ǫfugt stígandi: svá skal yrkja, sás kann illa!

I composed a þula about an earl; a drápa cannot be worse among the Danes; there are fourteen dips and ten lifts; it is open-ended and twisted, moving backwards: that’s how he shall compose who is poorly skilled!

notes

[4] með Dǫnum ‘among the Danes’: This sheds an interesting light on Halli’s opinion of the poetic skills of the Danes in the C11th. The sense is that not even Dan. poets could compose a worse poem. We know little about poetic compositions by Danes in the C11th (all skalds who eulogised Dan. rulers and noblemen were Icelanders), and most of the earlier surviving poetry attributed to Danes is characterised by metrical irregularities (see Kuhn 1983, 268-9).

grammar

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