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explains why the scribe did not mark þ for deletion by a subscript dot; he
corrected the word vorþr (vörðr) to vaþa, that is, váða (genitive singular;
nominative singular váði). A possible explanation for this correction is
that after the original scribe had corrected vörðr to váða, somebody did not
understand, or did not like, the reading váði and then scraped the second
subscript a.73 this occurrence can be compared to the scraping of the end-
ing -ur in the word íviðjur in f. 1r, l. 5, of the accusative ending -o in the
personal noun Gullveigo in f. 1v, l. 11 and of the character -z in þannz in
f. 2r, l. 16.74 Katrín Axelsdóttir argues that the latter two corrections are
not necessarily mistakes made by an ignorant person; indeed, in the case
of the accusative of Gullveig, the deletion of the ending -o may be under-
stood as an attempt to adjust the text to fourteenth-century orthography.75
Accordingly, vá [damage, woe, danger] may have been thought to be a bet-
ter reading than váði [damage, woe, accident] even though both words have
at first sight very similar meanings.
On the other hand, váði may be of special significance in the context
of Baldr’s death as narrated in stanzas 31–33 of Völuspá. the völva sees
that Höðr hurls the mistletoe and kills Baldr, Baldr’s death is the váða
Valhallar for which frigg cries, an accident, an unintentional killing.76 In
the stofnun. I thank Guðvarður már Gunnlaugsson for his generosity in letting me see an
even higher resolution photograph of the leaf, and confirming that there is a subscript a. It
is almost impossible to see the subscript a in both Heusler and jónsson’s facsimile editions
(but once it is known to be there, one can recognise its contour).
73 It may also be conjectured that the original scribe corrected the word for váða first and then
changed his mind and scraped the second a himself. However, the fact that the he did not
mark the character þ for deletion is strong evidence against this. the scraping of characters
was not the scribe’s most common method for deletion; when he used it, he made super-
ficial scrapings which left the original text still seen on the page. See Håndskriftet nr. 2365
4to, ed. jónsson and Wimmer, lxvi.
74 the superscript ur cannot be seen in the manuscript now but Stefán Karlsson saw it with
the help of ultraviolet light. Stefán Karlsson, ‘Samtíningur’, 227. Þannz is a contraction of
þann er ‘the one that’ – the z is the enclitic form of the relative particle er.
75 Katrín Axelsdóttir, ‘Brottskafnir’, 136–37.
76 In Icelandic and norwegian laws preserved in thirteenth-century manuscripts, váði is used
for accidental deeds, thus váða verk, a deed which causes unintentional harm. the choice
of váði may have caused the audience to make a mental association between Höðr’s act and
his lack of bad faith. see Grágás: Islændernes lovbog i fristatens tid udgivet efter der kongelige
bibliotheks haandskrift, ed. Vilhjálmur finsen, 4 vols. (Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard,
1850–52) 1:166; Norges gamle love indtil 1387, ed. rudolf Keyser et al., 5 vols. (oslo:
gröndahl, 1846–95), 1:266 (Járnsíða), 2:59 (Magnus Lagabøtes landslov); Jónsbók: The Laws
of Later Iceland, ed. and trans. Jana K. Schulman (Saarbrücken: A–Q Verlag, 2010), 54.
sCRIBAL PRACtICes ANd tHRee LINes IN V ö L U S P Á
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