Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1960, Blaðsíða 65

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window above their bed and sent the child to sleep with tbis poem.
The word Ijuflingur in modern Icelandic has the two meanings of
‘darling’ and huldumadur.
In Ljuflingsmal there are listed various creatures which sleep
each in their own place: ‘sefur selur i sjo, / svanur å båru, / mår i
holmi, / ... Jrorskur i djupi’, etc. The boy to whom the poem is
addressed must sleep as they do. The lines in this part of Grettis-
færsla have a similar form: ‘sem sjor at sandi / ... e5ur lax at
straumi, / sem frost å breSum / e5ur fjuk yfir heiSum’. There are a
few verbal resemblances:
53r, 11. 3-4: ‘lax at straumi’, cf. ‘guølax i geimi’ (p. 258 of the edition, from
AM 154 XVII, 8vo).
I. 4: ‘sem prn å bjprgum’, cf. ‘arnsa i bjargi’ (p. 258, from the same
manuscript).
II. 4-5: ‘eSur ålft at dum’, cf. ‘ålpt å isi’ (p. 255), ‘svanur å merski’,
v. 1. ‘svanur å båru’ (p. 258).
1. 5: ‘sem kyr å båsi’, cf. ‘kyr é båsi’ (pp. 255, 258).
The difference between this section of Grettisfærsla and Ljuflings-
mdl is that in the latter poem, with few exceptions, only living
creatures are described as sleeping (cf. however: ‘vin å vi&i, vindur
i skyi’ (p. 258); ‘vatn i keldu’ (p. 259); ‘lauf å limi, ljos å haldi’ (p.
259)), whereas in Grettisfærsla a much larger proportion of the
examples are of inanimate objects: ‘sem sjor at sandi, / ... / sem
frost å breSum / ebur fjuk yfir hei&um’. As in Ljuflingsmal, the
examples are poetical and suggestive at the beginning; but the
coarser strain, which has appeared earlier in Grettisfærsla, shows
itself again in line 7 (‘hiand å kamri’).
In the poem’s present state, it is difficult to see what the inten-
tion of this section was. But from the resemblance to Ljuflingsmal
we might imagine that an attempt is being made to send Grettir
to sleep. Although a full explanation cannot be given, the section
has interest for literary history. The close resemblance to Ljuflings-
mal shows that in this poem are elements which go back at least to
the fifteenth century, though there are no manuscripts of it older
than the seventeenth.
The name Grettir occurs again in line 9 of 53 recto, and a new
section of the poem probably begins here. Everything that can be