Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 2020, Page 321

klaus johan myrvoll
Comments from the second opponent
at the doctoral defence of Þorgeir Sigurðsson
Introduction
Þorgeir Sigurðsson has written a good thesis, with many original and important
contributions to various aspects of Old Norse studies: to manuscript studies in
general, and to the study of Möðruvallabók in particular, to skaldic poetry and
Old Norse metrics, and not least to the reconstruction and understanding of one
of Egill Skallagrímsson’s great poems, Arinbjarnarkviða. The thesis is a fine piece
of scholarship, which brings our knowledge in the field a solid step forward. It
shows its author as a critical and methodologically cogent scholar, without fear of
challenging previously held opinions or conceptions.
This opposition will concentrate on the metrical and linguistic parts of the
dissertation, not implying that other of its varied aspects are any inferior. On the
contrary, I hope to demonstrate through my comments that Þorgeir’s thesis is a
very rich one, and more importantly, that its hypotheses are mostly progressive,
in the sense that they point forward to new ideas and insights.
Methodology
Among the merits of this thesis is its author’s methodological awareness. This is
most evident in the chapter on the assumption that a part of Arinbjarnarkviða
(Arbj) is missing in Möðruvallabók (M; ch. 3, pp. 63–76).1 Because the end of the
poem on fol. 99v of the manuscript is mostly illegible, scholars have claimed that
the poem could have included even more stanzas than those for which there is
space on the page in M. Þorgeir Sigurðsson rejects such speculations by pointing
out that “[a] good scientific method is, however, only to assume the existence of
a missing part, if the more restrictive alternative has been excluded or at least
shown to be unlikely for good reasons” (p. 63). He then goes on to demonstrate
convincingly that the hypothesis of a missing part of the poem in M is unneces-
sary and, indeed, counterproductive. The greater confidence we attain in the
poem as we have it in M is one of the positive results of this thesis. The conclu-
sion in ch. 3 about the assumed missing part is as clear as it can be (p. 76):
1 For a list of abbreviations used here, see Þorgeir Sigurðsson’s thesis, pp. xviii–xix.