Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 2020, Page 322

I have shown that it is possible to do without a lost part, and for that reason
alone its existence should not be assumed. The scientific reason for this is
that one should always opt for the more restrictive option when two are
available (this is implied in what is referred to as Occam’s razor).
The hypothesis that there is nothing of Arbj missing in M turns out to be a pro-
gressive one, in so far as it makes Þorgeir able to exclude the stanza Var ek árvakr
(of the Third Grammatical Treatise = 3GT) from Arbj, since none of the erased
stanzas on fol. 99v of M begins with the letter ‹v› (p. 84). In other words, if noth-
ing of the poem is missing on fol. 99v, then the stanza beginning with Var ek ár -
vakr in 3GT cannot stem from Arbj. This is backed up by an internal argument:
Egill’s initial statement in the stanza in question, that he “was up early” and
“gathered words together”, fits better with the circumstances of composition of
Hǫfuðlausn, at least as this story is told in Egils saga, and for that reason it cannot
function as the final stanza of Arbj, as commonly assumed.
The stanza reads in full (text and translation following the thesis, on pp.
83f.):
Var ek árvakr, ‘I was up early,
bar ek orð saman I gathered words together
með málþjóns with speech-servant’s
morginverkum. morning tasks.
Hlóð ek lofkǫst, I raised a pile of prise
þann er lengi stendr, that will long stand,
óbrotgjarn unbreakable
í bragar túni. in the field of poetry.’
This sounds as if the skald is recalling the situation of the composition of
Hǫfuðlausn in retrospect, even though the stanza cannot be part of that poem,
since Hǫfuðlausn is in a different metre and employs end-rhyme. I find Þorgeir’s
hypothesis about the genesis of this stanza persuasive (p. 84):
... the stanza does not need to belong to any poem. Egils saga has an example
of a lausavísa by Egill in the kviðuháttr meter (Erumka leitt ...) in the York
episode of Egils saga and this could be another lausavísa on the same subject.
A possible original context for this stanza in Egils saga is discussed by Þorgeir
Sigurðsson in an article from 2018, to which I refer for further reading.
Another example of Þorgeir’s attention to methodology is his statement on
conjecture in skaldic textual criticism at the end of Part II (p. 168), before he
turns to the reconstruction of the poem in Part III: on the one hand we should
not be too eager to correct readings because of metrical faults, and on the other
hand all corrections made should at least conform to the metrical rules. In Þor -
geir’s words: “A plausible rule of conduct seems to be that another independent
Klaus Johan Myrvoll322