Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2021, Page 20

11% of odd lines are without rhyme in Vellekla; this is the highest pro-
portion in a poem after Haustlǫng.
Húsdrápa by Ulfr Uggason from c. 983 has one line without rhyme in
14 half-stanzas.
1.3 hann vilk at gjǫf Grímnis

Hákonardrápa by Tindr from c. 987 has 20 half-stanzas. One odd line is
without rhyme:20
10.5 mikinn gerði herr hjǫrva21

Þórsdrápa has 40 half-stanzas. It is the last poem of the 10th century with
more than ten half-stanzas in Finnur Jónsson’s chronological 1912–1915
edition.22 Four lines are without rhyme:
11.1 Ok sifuna síðan
10.5 ógndjarfan hlaut Atli
19.1 Glaums niðjum23 fór24 gǫrva
20.3 undirfjalfrs at afli

Line 20.3 appears not to be without rhyme, and it is not a clause-line.
Reichart (1948:390) chooses the reading alfi rather than afli from two of
the three main manuscripts, and so does Myrvoll (2014:354–355). Line
10.5 has arfi and not Atli in its manuscripts, and arfi is adopted by
Myrvoll, loc. cit. This means that only two lines are without rhyme and
both are clause-lines.
I have now discussed all dróttkvætt poems of the 10th century with
more than 20 odd lines extant. Odd lines without rhyme did not disap-
pear suddenly at the end of the century, but they became infrequent in the
11th century25 and were abnormal in Snorri’s time around the year 1200.
Þorgeir Sigurðsson20
20 I do not list line 10.7. It reads in Finnur’s (1912–1915) edition: mærðar fúss á Mœri. It
is garbled in its only manuscript: nunnar fus á mæti and Finnur’s restored text has little value.
21 It could be claimed that the pair her-r and hjǫr-va forms a half-rhyme. However I
assume that rhyme cannot be in the fourth metrical positions. Most, perhaps all, of the
examples that exist of lines with such rhyme are in clause-lines and do not need rhyme.
22 Poems by Hallfrøðr vandræðaskáld are presumably from c. 1000.
23 Glaums niðjum ‘Glaumr’s descendants’ is one constituent (the two words fill one
sentence position).
24 The half-rhyme fór and gǫr-va in line 19.1 is not normal because fór is not in one of
the first three metrical positions.
25 The percentage of odd lines without rhyme in king-sagas went from 7.7% in the 9th
and 10th century to 1.1% in the 11th century, according to Myrvoll (2014:130).