Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Qupperneq 256
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Part Two
main stave, which means that it is unmetrical, or it can be taken as an in-
stance of v- alliterating with a vowel, which according to some scholars
is a possible, albeit rare, form of alliteration.11 The third stage, which
corresponds to the written form, is even more questionable than the
second one from the metrical point of view; it may still be an instance of
vocalic alliteration in v-, but in this case, the only stave in the first line is
in the second part of a composite noun, which is considered at best as a
bad rhyme. The rhyme distribution form ax/ax is to be preferred to the
actual xa/ax. The latest stage would give a normal consonantal allitera-
tion in v-, but still in the form xa/ax. On the other hånd, if this were the
original reading, the omission in the manuscripts of initial v- in unnit
would be easy to explain, since the restoration of v- before -u is so infre-
quent in Icelandic.
As Solarljod is a Christian poem, I do not think that the chronology
will admit either of the two first possibilities,12 but the last two both
seem possible. If vocalic alliteration in v- is considered impossible, the
last form would have to be chosen, and this would be an argument in fa-
vour of a late dating, not anterior to the late 13th century.
In principle the vr- test will divide the Eddie poems into three groups
(there is also a residual group of poems where the test is not appli-
cable).13 The three groups are defined as follows:
1) Alliteration in r-. The words in question alliterate with words in r-, in
such a way that the metrical rules prevent the restoration of forms in
11 Sophus Bugge apparently opted for this solution (Bugge 1867: 361).
12 Grundtvig preferred the second alternative, and thought that the poem was from “den
første kristne tid” (Grundtvig 1866-67: 569), but Konrad Gislason disagreed: “Det nævn-
te Digt er øiensynlig alt for ungt til at opvise Spor af ægte VR-” (1870: 79). Gudbrandur
Vigfusson went a step further: “In island. Gedd. vom 14. Jahrh, findet es sich hier und da,
z. B. in der Lilja (c. 1350) nicht weniger als sechsmal, in der Gudmundard[r]åpa des Arni
åboti (c. 1370) lmal, und lmal in den Solarljod, str. 26: ‘reidiverk er bu vunnit hefir’ -,
dies eine Mal aber gleichsam ein Taufschein iiber das Alter dieses Gedichtes, wonach es zu
gleicher Zeit wie die Divina comedia entstanden sein mag, beide demselben Zeitgeiste
entsprossen” (Gudbrandur Vigfusson 1864: xxxvii n. 1). Later, Gudbrandur thought that it
was an older poem (“c. 1100”, 1878: ccx; “early part of the eleventh century”, Corp. Poet.
Bor. 1883, vol. 1: lxix).
13 Since I base my examination on examples used in scholarly literature, in which the to-
tal number of relevant poems is not explicitly stated, the residual group will have to be left
out. This reservation, which I hold to have no practical consequences, will also apply to
some of the following tests.