Studia Islandica - 01.06.1956, Síða 43

41
thing in the line of booty’ (ef ngkkut verði tU fengjar).1
Fritzner translates: ‘om jeg kan komme over noget (o:
nogen af dem, som jeg vil overfalde)’. V and R. add:
Því at nú hefir langt verit síðan (vér h)ittum menn ár
heraðinu (passage 2 in section 7.2).
This addition inadvertently gives away the secrecy of
Skúta’s planning. Only he and his sendimaðr know of
his scheme against Glúmr. As it stands it is a rather
stupid remark, revealing his purpose to the others. I
cannot agree with Fritzner’s second, explicative ren-
dering, which is probably an attempt ad hoc to translate
fengjar in the light of what follows. I take this to be a
misleading interpretation, an attempt to render a shade
of meaning of the noun in the light of a context which
is taken at its face value.
Among all these extra passages (cf. also section 7.2)
in V and R. I have not met with a single one which
could not be stigmatized as superfluous and even as a
deterioration as to contents and style.
As to M being a shortened version: would it not
amount to aimost a miracle for a mediaeval author, or
scribe, to have left out from his source exactly what
was irrelevant and to have kept exactly what was es-
sential?
8.3. Ch. 15 is in V by 50 per cent longer than it is in M.
The additions in V on the whole are mere elabora-
tions.
Such adverbial phrases like með mikilli sœmd and
1) In this phrase M uses the optative veröi, V and R. the indi-
cative verör. Lotspeich, p. 39, is of opinion that R. is a precise
rendering of the original, while V. Gl. — in casu M — made an
alteration. I think it rather dangerous to draw such a far-reaching
conclusion. The rules goveming the use of the modi are not strict
enough for that. Scribes will have obeyed them still less than the
original authors perhaps did.
L