Gripla - 20.12.2017, Page 208

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Since the church was unable to abolish secular verse, Bishop Guðbrand ur
commissioned the composition of poetry on religious subjects but based
on secular forms as what Margrét Eggertsdóttir describes as an effort to
“meet the public halfway.”39 Many of the poems that came about as a result
of this effort are found in the two hundred or so poems of Guðbrandur’s
Vísnabók (1612), including Einar Sigurðsson’s “Kvæði af stallinum Kristí”
and other religious songs, which are in the form of vikivakakvæði.40 As
such, it is not at all unusual that rev. Jón á Kvíabekk would have com-
posed a poem in praise of notable biblical and historical Christian women
to vikivaka metre.
“Sprundahrós” shows close similarities to a group of the so-called kap-
pakvæði (poems of champions), which are also written in vikivaka metre.41
In particular, the refrain prefacing and then extracted throughout this
group of kappakvæði (K) is nearly identical to that found in “Sprundahrós”
(S), with a few small differences in wording that result in a very different
meaning:
S: Ég sá þann sóma, silki og fötin blá,
þær vilja mínum fundinum frá.
[I saw the honourable ones wearing silk and blue garments,
none of them want an audience with me.]
K: Ég sá þá ríða riddarana þrjá,
þeir vilja mínum fundinum ná.42
[I saw the three knights riding,
they all want an audience with me.]
The kappakvæði treat heroes from riddarasögur, Íslendinga sögur, and þæt-
tir – sometimes in a manner that is joking or ironic.43 the oldest known
39 Margrét Eggertsdóttir, “from reformation to Enlightenment,” transl. Joe allard, A History
of Icelandic Literature, ed. Daisy neijmann, Histories of Scandinavian Literature 5 (Lincoln:
university of nebraska Press, 2006), 174–250 at 180.
40 Vésteinn ólason, The Traditional Ballads of Iceland, 46.
41 Bergljót Soffía Kristjánsdóttir, “‘Egill lítt nam skilja…’ um kappakvæði Steinunnar finns-
dóttur,” Skírnir 172 (1998): 62–63; Jón Helgason. Íslenzk fornkvæði. Islandske folkeviser 8:
119–20.
42 Jón Helgason, Íslenzk fornkvæði, 8: 119.
43 Jón Helgason, Íslenzk fornkvæði, 8: 120.