Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Page 430
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Michael Chesnutt
Both texts, however, have preserved the appellation hilmir ‘chieftain
(here: earl)’ in the next line.57
(9) Where A, st. 41,1 and st. 47,1 has retained the poetic word dr os
‘woman’ (which the SuSuroy informant seems to have declined as a
neuter), B has the everyday Faroese word frugv.
(10) Bevus, when describing his experiences at the banquet, says in A,
st. 44,2: kurtans slag vår fih meg all (B: hvort eitt ord vær fy ri mær
bold). The first word is misread in FK (following Jørgen Bloch) as kart-
ons, but it can be explained as gen. sing. of the Icelandic appellation
kurteinn ‘sword’ attested once in Bjarkarimur (III, st. 40,2).58 Bevus is
thus saying that he found himself in the midst of ‘swordplay’, which an-
swers very well to the preceding description of the altercation at the
banquet (cf. A and B, st. 41,3; Bevers saga MS y, ch. 4,59, etc. [peyr]
lietu sem peyr villdu taka hann).
(11) A, st. 48,3 has heingir upp millum (B: hangjir so upp). Comparison
with Bevers saga MS B, ch. 4,21 lett heingia pau sidann ah eina mylnu
(cf. y, ch. 4,72-73) shows that the A reading is a corruption of heingir
*å milnu.
(12) A, st. 51,3 reads seggar filgdu svein so ung. The first two words
have been changed to selur burtur in B, the ancient poetic word seggur
not having been understood.
(13) In A the Egyptian princess of the saga is referred to as (hinfiida)
faldalln, a kenning for ‘woman’ that was also forgotten in the Sandoy
tradition, for the incrementally repeated couplet in which the expres-
sion occurs (A, st. 52,3-4 and 53,1-2) is left out completely in B.
57 See Bevers saga, introduction cxxxvi. I am not so convinced by the conjecture of Jon
Helgason, there reported, that line 5,1 as a whole is a corruption of (Icelandic) *Hrotta
geymir hringa (g)na. More likely smtåa at the end of the line is authentic and ringar a
corruption of a disyllabic form *(h)ringnå, alliterating in Icelandic - but not Faroese! -
with hrotta in the first line and hilmin in the second. Cf. hring\>Qll, of which there are five
instances in Finnur Jonsson, Ordbog til [...] rimur, Samfund til udgivelse af gammel
nordisk litteratur 51 (Copenhagen 1926-28), 186.
58 Finnur Jonsson (ed.), Hrolfs saga kraka, Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk lit-
teratur 32 (Copenhagen 1904), 130, cf. commentary 167.