Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Page 176

162
(the version rimée form of O v. 2507) speak of les reliqes, celles reliques,
although they mention only one, the point of the lance.
The Kms passage is thus translated by M. Aebischer:
---ceint de la bonne épée qui s’appelle Jouis, qui était de trente couleurs chaque
jour; et il a un clou, au moyen duquel le Seigneur avait été fixé å la croix, dans
la poignée de l’épée, et la pointe était un fragment de la lance avec laquelle le
Seigneur avait été blessé (Rol. Bor. p. 225).
This translation, which is also that of Koschwitz (Stengel’s ed., note
to v. 2503), is primarily based on the punctuation, which is modern. Unger
apparently read the text in the same way as M. Aebischer. But if we put
the text of a beside O, we see that the line
ok hann hefir einn nagla er drottinn var krossfestr me5
is an addition, while the rest of the clause,
i hjoltum sverSsins, var hinn efsti hlutr af spjoti drottins er hann var saerSr me5,
corresponds to vv. 2503-06, although the order of the verses is different:
2506: En l’oret punt---- i hjoltum sverSsins
2505: Caries en ad la mure----- var hinn efsti hlutr
2503: Assez savum de la lance parler af spjoti
2504: Dunt Nostre Sire fut en la cruiz nasfret: drottins er hann var særSr meS.
The comma after sverSsins should be deleted, and another should be
inserted after krossfestr meS. Actually, the translation given by Koschwitz,
M. Aebischer and apparently Unger is impossible: they take var hinn efsti
hlutr af spjoti drottins-----to mean “the upper part (sc. of the sword, as
opposed to i hjoltum) was (a fragment) of the spear with which Our
Lord------”. But the upper part of a sword is surely the hilt, not the point,
and not even our translator could fail to know that. The correct transla-
tion must be “(in the hilt) was the upper part of the spear----------” (i.e. the
point). It is, in a way, fortunate that the saga uses the peculiar term hinn
efsti hlutr instead of the more usual oddr, which would apply to both
sword and spear.
The reason for Unger’s punctuation is probably that the expression hinn
efsti hlutr af spjoti is unusual in classical Norse, which prefers the partitive
genitive hinn e. h. spjotsins, but expressions of the former type are not
unusual in the translated sagas, where the use of the preposition de in
French might easily lead to a translation with the prepostion af25.
“ Cp. Nygaard: Norrøn Syntax, § 130, note 6, on the use of expressions with the
preposition af instead of the partitive genitive.