Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 258
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Part Two
This is in my opinion a very judicious and important remark. It is
always possible - probably even inevitable - that a poem will be to
some extent modernized in language, style and metre in the process of
oral transmission, and this inevitably means that the evidence of a
young form weighs less than that of an obsolete form. Certainly, it is
also possible that antiquated forms may be introduced into a text, at
the moment of its composition as well as during its transmission, but
such forms presuppose some active effort at archaizing the text, which
have to be argued for on the basis of independent evidence. In con-
trast to archaization, modernization requires no particular effort.
In this particular case the problem is more complicated, however.
We are dealing not merely with younger word-forms evincing obsolete
forms in the normal process of transmission, but with word-forms met-
rically bound by alliteration. In the manuscripts only forms with r- are
found, but on the one hånd forms with vr- have been reconstructed by
editors “metri causa”, and on the other hånd, what in this context is
recognized as forms in r-, are forms bound as such by alliteration.
Forms in r- will therefore not result simply from exchanging some
word-form during the process of transmission, they will also have re-
quired a metrical restructuring of the verse. On the other hånd, the per-
sistence of examples of vr- alliteration down to the time of writing,
when the word-forms were taken down without a v-, demonstrates that
a metrical reconstruction did not necessarily follow from the loss of v-
before -r.
Grundtvig’s line of reasoning can be tested on a “mixed” case, Håva-
mål for instance. Stanza 32.3 (a Ijodahåttr full line) is in Codex Regius
written:
eN at v/rfri recaz
Recaz (normalized: rekask) must here be read vrekask in order to get al-
literation. Stanza 106.1-2, however, which is written
Rata mvN
letome rvms vm få