Gripla - 20.12.2015, Page 45

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it is inevitable that in paper editions only the editor’s choice can make it
into the main text; but there should be space in such editions to highlight
the ambiguities of the text, especially when the edition is accompanied by
a commentary. Bugge’s explanation for his choice of the reading er mær
sýndiz was tendentious and even if it can be preferred on metrical or sty-
listic grounds,58 the text written by the scribe of r is our only witness of a
medieval version of Völuspá – for this reason alone it is worth concentrat-
ing our efforts on analysing all the possibilities that the orthographic and
linguistic evidence support.
vördr – váða – vá
In R, the seventh line of stanza 33 (f. 2r, l. 7) has undergone a series of cor-
rections by one or more scribes, but the text without the scribal corrections
reads as follows:
Þo hann ęva hendr
ne hꜹfuþ kembþi
aþr a bal vm bar
baldrs andscota.
en frig um gret
ifensꜹlom
uorþr val hallar
vituð er enn eða hvat.
[He did not wash his hands, nor comb his head, before he bore
Baldr’s enemy to the pyre. But Frigg cried in Fensalir. Guardian of
Valhöll. Do you know yet or what?]
the seventh line, vörðr Valhallar [guardian of valhöll], may refer to him
who bears Baldr’s enemy to the funeral pyre, the same ‘he’ who in stanza
32 is called Óðinn’s son, Baldr’s brother, and who was born to avenge
58 For instance, Paul Bibire (pers. comm.) says that the pronoun mér would probably not have
the necessary full stress to carry the alliteration; on the grounds of the voice of the passage,
Anatoly Liberman, ‘Some Controversial Aspects of the Myth of Baldr’, alvíssmál 11 (2004):
29, says about the reading mér: ‘this reading is arguably the worst and the least reliable:
who would expect a polite disclaimer in such a passage?’.
sCRIBAL PRACtICes ANd tHRee LINes IN V ö L U S P Á
GRIPLA XXVI. - 12.12.B.indd 45 12/13/15 8:24:29 PM