Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 34

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Segjǫndum fló sagna
snótar ulfr at móti
í gemlis ham gǫmlum
glammi ó- fyr -skǫmmu.162
‘Þjazi [the wolf, i.e., predator, of the lady] flew noisily to meet the
Æsir [the commanders of the crew] no short time ago [“un- ago
-shortly”] in an ancient eagle’s form.’163
the manuscript evidence is complex164 but the direct testimony of one
manuscript along with the variants in the others presupposes an original ‘ó
fyr’, which has been the subject of misunderstandings and paraphrases of
various kinds in the paradosis. Venturing into emendation, with kock, is
unnecessary. this type is as uncommon in Carolingian poetry as in skaldic,
but Alcuin’s Pontificalis apex, meritis archi- que -sacerdos, with insertion of
enclitic que, bears a general resemblance.
the above discussion has demonstrated that the skaldic practice of
tmesis can be traced back to early attestations that are congruent with
late eighth-century and ninth-century Carolingian usage. Amory draws a
tentative conclusion: ‘It is just possible that the first recorded occurrence
of onomastic tmesis in skaldic poetry, i.e., Þjóðólfr’s Ið- með jǫtnum -uðr…,
was a Latinate stylism … Word-splitting and syntactic hyperbaton of the
noun phrase were favorite compositional techniques of the Carolingian po-
etæ and the skalds alike.’165 despite de Vries’s cautions against assumptions
of influence from Latin texts,166 Amory’s case deserves entertaining, and the
more so because, as we have seen, some very early examples of tmesis in
skaldic poetry are associated with ekphrasis, another feature that is firmly
established in Carolingian poetics.
Given these formalistic and genre commonalities, it seems altogether
less likely that tmesis originated independently in the two poetic corpora as
162 Haustlǫng, 2.1–4: Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, 3 (B.1):14; finnur jónsson,
‘kenningers led-omstilling’, 10; Reichardt, ‘A Contribution’, 202–3; contrast kock, Nota-
tiones norrœnæ, §1810.
163 snorri sturluson, Edda, 86, with modifications.
164 Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, 1 (A.1):16.
165 Amory, ‘tmesis’, 47–8.
166 de Vries, Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, 1:119.