Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1960, Blaðsíða 75

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that this is the poem actually referred to. The oldest manuscripts
of Orettis saga are from the fifteenth century. They must all derive
from one archetype in which Grettisfærsla was mentioned, and it
seems to me not unreasonable to believe this to have been from
about 1400. If, on the other hånd, we take this archetype to be the
archetype of the saga itself, from about or shortly after 1300 (the
date to which most scholars ascribe Grettis saga, cf. the introduction
to tslenzk fornrit, VII, p. LXX), we must conclude that Grettis-
færsla was written not later than c. 1300. But in the form in which
it is preserved in AM 556 a, 4to, Grettisfærsla cannot be as old as
this. Certain linguistic features in the rhymed section of the poem,
e.g. the rhymes alla: jalla (52v, 1. 20) and Jcalla: alla (52v, 1. 23),
point clearly to the fourteenth century. There are examples of the
shift of ri > Il from the thirteenth century (cf. Bjorn K. E>6rolfs-
son: Um islenskar ordmyndir a 14. og 15. old ..., Reykjavik 1925,
p. XXX)1, but the change does not become common until the
fourteenth century. In 52 v, 1. 21, medur appears to be rhymed with
redur (or medr: redr). Examples of medr for the older med are found
in Norwegian in the thirteenth century—the oldest example given
by D. A. Seip in Norsk språkhistorie (Oslo, 1955), p. 185, is from
1210. In Icelandic the form became common about 1300 (cf. Bjorn
K. Borolfsson, ih., p. 73). It is difficult to say anything with cer-
tainty about the use of the svarabhakti vowel in a poem with so
irregular a metre as Grettisfærsla-, but it seems necessary to as-
sume its presence in 52v, 1. 13: ‘å bækur skruma’, and in 52v,
1. 30: ‘norOur’, which rhymes with ‘orSum’ (if our reading is cor-
rect). In the first example the consonant group would be very
difficult without the svarabhakti vowel. The oldest examples of the
insertion of u before nominative -r are from the latter part of the
thirteenth century, but the innovation becomes more common in
the course of the fourteenth century. Ernst A. Kock held that in
some fourteenth-century poems nominative -ur and -r (after a
consonant) were used in accordance with definite rules: A. Not
forming a syllable before an unstressed vowel; B. Eorming a syll-
ahle before a consonant and before a stressed vowel (Notationes
Norrænæ, § 1763); C. Of variable metrical value before h- (ib.,
1 Cf. also D. A. Seip: Nye studier i norsk språkhistorie, Oslo 1954, pp. 63-65.