Gripla - 20.12.2010, Side 144

GRIPLA144
SUMMARY
The Register of Háttatal in Codex Upsaliensis of Snorra Edda, DG 11 4to:
Its function and origins
Keywords: Háttatal, Snorra Edda, Codex Upsaliensis, Textual Criticism.
The subject of this paper is the register over Háttatal, called Ö, which is to be
found in the manuscript DG 11 4to, the so-called Uppsala-Edda. Ö consists of
the first verse line of the first 36 strophes (strophe 35 is missing) of Háttatal,
accompanied by the name of the specific verse form. The aim of the article is
twofold. The first purpose is to investigate why this register has been included in
a manuscript of Snorra Edda, when it is directly followed by a complete Háttatal-
text (56 strophes), here called HtU. The second purpose is to investigate the
textual background of Ö, that is to say, if it was copied from the same exemplar as
HtU (as Finnur Jónsson 1931 claimed).
It seems that the purpose of this register in DG 11 4to is to be a complement to
HtU regarding the names of the verse forms: of the 33 names in the register, only
12 stand together with their respective strophe in HtU. One explanation for the
fact that the register ends with strophe 36 is that the exemplar was fragmentary,
and that it consisted of one page only. The textual origin of Ö is not the same
as that of HtU. The most important difference between the two texts is Ö’s
reading braut (of brjóta) in strophe 27 where HtU has skar ek. Ö shares its reading
with Codex Wormianus, whereas the reading in HtU is also found in Codex
Trajectinus and a 14th-century correction in Codex Regius. It seems, however, that
the scribe in some cases has turned to the same exemplar as that of HtU, as these
two texts share a number of readings where all other manuscripts diverge. One
example is eldum (of eldr) in strophe 34, where all other manuscripts have ǫldum
(of ǫld). It appears that the register represented in Ö has been copied once or twice
independently of a complete version of Háttatal before it was copied into DG
11, as there are quite a few readings that are only in this text. One example is the
reading eisu in Ö where HtU has ǫldu, which is shared by all other manuscripts.
This is in strophe 27, and the previous verse line in strophe 26 in Ö ends in eisu. It
is thus easy to see how this error has occurred when a scribe is copying an Ö-text,
as he/she only copied the last word of the wrong verse line. It is less likely that this
confusion would take place in a complete text of Háttatal, as there is much more
text between the two lines there.