Gripla - 20.12.2013, Page 214

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her study, but a survey of his use of manuscript sources confirms that Þulur
og þjóðkvæði presents the editor’s own vision of Grýlukvæði rather than a
reflection of its preservation at any one given time. of particular note is
the fact that js 481 8vo, the manuscript ólafur davíðsson claims to have
used as a base text with the “occasional” deviation, contains not one version
of the poem but two: a main text and variant readings.8 A comparison of js
481 8vo with Þulur og þjóðkvæði reveals that ólafur’s printed text alternates
between these two versions, in some stanzas favouring the main text and
in others discarding it for the variant version. discarded text is not noted
in the critical apparatus, and the editorial choice of variant readings indeed
seems somewhat arbitrary: á Gægishól and úr Gægishól are listed as variants
in the first stanza, for example, but frá Gægishól (as in the main text of js
481 8vo) is ignored.
ólafur davíðsson was born in fell in sléttuhlíð, and the confidence
with which he edits the text could stem in part from his familiarity with
the topography of the song. In the eighteenth stanza, he rejects út að
Tjörnum (found in all extant manuscripts of the poem) in favour of suðr að
Tjörnum — a change for which there is no textual evidence whatsoever.9
Alliteratively speaking, út is not wrong, nor is there an obvious error in
the metre of the poem. there is, however, a serious directional error if fell
is assumed to be the starting point of the poem. tjarnir is south of fell,
but to go út að in this context is to travel north, hence ólafur davíðsson’s
insistence on suðr in the face of overwhelming manuscript evidence.10 the
Reverend Bjarni Þorsteinsson (1861–1938), who collected and printed a
version of the melody to Grýlukvæði in his Íslenzk þjóðlög collection, based
his interpretation of the first stanza on just such geographical background
knowledge; he preferred the reading úr Gægishól, however, which he ex-
8 “Handrit frá jóni Árnasyni, líklega eftir hrs. hans A, XII, 8vo, bls. 689 o.s.frv. tvær af-
skriptir í hrs. j. sig. 398, 4to. Handriti þessu er fylgt að mestu, en vikið þó frá því á einstaka
stað.” Þulur og þjóðkvæði, 118. Grýlukvæði in js 398 b 4to is a copy of js 481 8vo (including a
selection of the variant readings). In js 481 8vo, the source of these variant readings is given
as Grundarbók, an unknown manuscript that may also be the exemplar for one of five cop-
ies of Grýlukvæði in js 289 8vo (5r–8v). oddly enough, ólafur davíðsson mentions neither
of two copies of Grýlukvæði in js 398 a 4to.
9 “út í öllum hndr., en það mun vera rángt.” Þulur og þjóðkvæði, 113.
10 see stefán einarsson, “terms of direction in Modern Icelandic,” in Scandinavian Studies
Presented to George T. Flom by Colleagues and Friends, ed. Henning Larsen et al. (urbana, IL:
university of Illinois Press, 1942), 43.