Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 267
IX Contracted fonns
247
The latter two cases thus resulted in a shift, where a bisyllabic word of
the metric form ei x was changed into an monosyllabic word of the met-
ric form — ,2 Examples of rule 2) are: fåa > få, féi >fé, truu > tru,fgum
> fgm. Examples of rule 3) are:féar > fjår, knéum (knéom) > knjom.
The chronology of this shift is established partly by written forms in
manuscripts, and partly by evidence in skaldic verse, where the original
word-forms can sometimes be recovered with the help of the metre, in
much the same way as when a manuscript word-form with initial r- for
metrical reasons is replaced by a reconstructed form in vr-. According to
standard grammars the contractions chiefly took place before 1200; cf. A.
Noreen 1923: 115-18 [§ 130-35], Since the shift took place that late, it
has much less interest as a criterion of dating than the early shift vr- > r-,
but may nevertheless have at least some theoretical interest.
Unlike the vr-lr- test, however, there is a remarkable asymmetry in
the metrical test. Metre is namely far more powerful in spotting uncon-
tracted forms than contracted forms. When the metre requires the form
^ x, the verse will normally be too short if js used instead, but if the
metre on the other hånd normally requires —, it can as a general rule be
replaced by ^ x and still remain normal.
In Sigv XII st. 13.6, for example, the drottkvætt metre requires the un-
contracted form in order to fulfill the rule that the verse consists of six
syllables:
ormfrqn séa hqnum (Skj. A 1: 260, B 1: 242)3
According to rule 3) séa will be contracted to sjå, and in many metrical
contexts the two forms will be equivalent. The equivalence -*- = ^ x
does not apply, however, when the word is preceded by a stressed (or
half-stressed) syllable, which is the case here (-frgn), and therefore the
uncontracted word-form filis in two positions (metrical syllables) in the
verse. In the main, uncontracted forms are revealed in drottkvætt by Sie-
vers’s type A2k (^ ^ ^ x), as in this case, and more generally by
Sievers’s type C3 (x ^ x).
2 In Old Norse metrics a long vowel in front of another vowel counts as short (cf. Bugge
and Sievers 1891).
3 In order to facilitate the scansion of the verses 1 mark the alliteration with bold type
throughout this chapter.