Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Page 268
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Part Two
KonråS Gi'slason has called attention to the faet that in several in-
stances there is variation in the manuscripts, so that the contracted form
actually appears imbedded in a normal verse of six syllables. In one
manuscript the first word in the above-mentioned verse by Sigvatr is
thus written ormfrani (ormfrgni), which is apparently to be explained as
an effort at restoring the six syllable verse by a scribe knowing only the
contracted form sjå.4 Variants like these rather add to the plausibility of
the reconstruction of uncontracted forms.
On account of the rule of resolution (~c = ^ x), the only means of
spotting a contracted form by means of metrical scansion is, as far as I
can see, given by a rule formulated by Sievers, according to which a two
syllable word with short first syllable (like e.g. séa) is avoided in forn-
yrdislag in the second lift.5 This rule is not without exceptions, but they
seem to be rare. We are mostly concemed with Sievers’s types B and E,
and for these two types Gering notes fewer than ten exceptions in the total
of fornyrdislag verses in the “classical” Eddie corpus (Gering 1924: 24,
26,31,190). Thus, the last word in a verse like Gripisspå st. 22.3: pann er
fleira sé (subj. pres. 3. p. sg. of sjå), filling the second lift, is according to
these statistics mueh more likely to be read as sé than as séi.
In skaldic poetry contracted forms may also sometimes be revealed
with more certitude when they rhyme.
It is very important to bear in mind that the test by its very nature is
heavily biased in favour of uncontracted forms. That may be the reason
why the evidence for the existence of uncontracted forms in older skal-
dic poetry is undisputed, needing no further proof (cf. Sievers 1878:
514-17). The only problem is determining the chronological dividing
line between the contracted and the uncontracted forms.
I do not find it necessary to give the skaldic evidence for uncontract-
ed forms in the older period, but in order to search for the chronological
dividing line, I give the examples mentioned in the literature of such
forms supposed to be posterior to 1100. All the examples are Sievers’s
4 Ms. GI. kgl. Saml. 1008 fol. (Tomasskinna), cf. KonråS Gi'slason 1889: 260. Finnur
Jonsson (Skj. A 1: 260) does not give this variant. The manuscript reading is unclear. Kon-
råS Gi'slason (1889: passim) mentions several parallel instances.
5“Auflosung der zweiten hebung aller typen wird bis auf vereinzelte ausnahmen
(am ehesten noch zu gunsten eines ausgangs c. x -i-statt — —, Beitr. 6, 307 [Sievers 1879:
307]) gemieden” (Sievers 1893: 64-65).