Gripla - 20.12.2015, Page 42

GRIPLA42
gular personal pronoun, dative case. In this case, the line could read: ‘as it
seemed to me’, ‘which appeared to me’, or ‘when it appeared to me’, the
first person being the völva who is narrating the events in the poem.
the reading is particularly tricky because the reflexive verb sýndiz
(which has been corrected from the present tense form, sýniz, through a
superscript d over the i) allows both readings: ‘seemed/appeared to me’
and ‘seemed delicate’. the orthographical evidence of the manuscript is
also not unambiguous. Most probably, the scribe would have written the
adjective mær with a hooked e. By comparison, the word mær ‘maid’ is only
once written with a hooked-and-slashed o (Hávamál 96), but on the whole,
the scribe’s use of hooked e to represent æ is fairly consistent.44 On the
other hand, the adjective mjór, spelt míor, was used to describe the mistle-
toe just some lines before in stanza 31, and is also used in Skírnismál 23 and
25, spelt mjófan (normalised spelling: mjóvan). the uncommon form mær
was not used at the time of the writing of r and is not found anywhere in
the manuscript.
Resen’s edition had mønnum [to men] in place of mér [to me] in the
main text (mier appears in the textual apparatus), but the Latin translation
had mihi [to me].45 Rask’s edition from 1818 adopted mjór (noting that R
had mier) and the edition of Guðmundur magnússon and others from 1828
had mér.46 Bugge’s reconstructed poem from his 1867 edition also had mér,
a reading that he had previously defended in an article on the basis of the
manuscript’s orthography, although acknowledging his preference for the
reading mjór.47 Later, Bugge changed his mind because of the following
44 see Lindblad, Studier i Codex Regius av Äldre Eddan, 107–11, 141–42; Håndskriftet nr. 2365
4to, ed. jónsson and Wimmer, xxviii. It may also be noted that the abbreviation for mær
‘maid’ was used on only four occasions when its contextual meaning could not be confus-
ing. In Skírnismál 25 the abbreviated form of mær appears in a refrain in which all words
are abbreviated; in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 9 in direct reference to Sigrún, ‘nú er sagt,
mær’ [now it is said, girl]; in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 17 in ‘Hǫgna mær’ [Högni’s girl],
an expression which also appears unabbreviated in stanza 13; and in Gripisspá 28 in direct
reference to Brynhildr in the previous stanza, ‘þótt mær sié fǫgr aliti’ [although the girl be
of beautiful appearance].
45 Vøluspå, in Edda Islandorum, ed. Resen, sig. A2r, B2r. For a detailed explanation of the
disparities between the old Icelandic transcription of the poem and its Latin translation,
see Faulkes, Two Versions, 2:77, 90.
46 Edda Sæmundar, ed. Rask, 6. Edda Sæmundar, ed. guðmundur Magnússon et al., 3:39.
47 Norræn fornkvæði, ed. Bugge, 6; Bugge, ‘Sjældne ord’, 96–7.
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