Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1978, Page 41

Sniolvs kvæði
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raped the wives of men he has killed is in the end poisoned by
his own wife. This ballad is best understood as a reflex of the
Sniolv cycle as it developed on Sandoy and, as such, contains
the same confusion concerning the portrayal of Ásmund that
marks that island’s tradition of the cycle as a whole.
Gríms ríma and Heljars kvæði are different from all the
other ballads concerned with the Sniolv cycle in two important
ways. First, they are both composed in couplet rather than
quatrain stanzas. It seems likely that their ballad men com-
posed them this way in order to be able to use one of the
couplet melodies that had been introduced into the Faroes in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries via the extremely
popular Danish ballads. Native Faroese tradition is completely
dominated by the quatrain stanza type — there are only ten
native couplet ballads that are not reflexes of Danish ballads.
Since most of these appear to be rather late, like Gríms ríma,
they also seem to illustrate the use of Danish couplet melodies
in composing Faroese texts.
The second way in which Gríms ríma and Heljars kvæði are
different from the other ballads dealing with the Sniolv cycle
is that neither of them tells a new story, but instead retells a
story that is already part of the cycle. Gríms ríma is a quite
close retelling of the story told in Risin á Blálandi — (1) About
to sail off on an adventure, Grím meets Ásmund and defeats
him in a jousting match; (2) he sails to Bláland, slays a giant,
and wins a treasure; (3) he meets Sjúrð and yields to him in
a jousting match. Heljars kvæði is much more loosely modelled
on the last half of Hildardalsstríð when two adversaries gather
their forces and enter into battle. Heljars kvæði dwells more
on the summoning and arrival of the champions than does
Hildardalsstríð, but the battle scenes in both are largely the
same. In Hildardalsstríð Grím fights Virgar and then Geyti;
and Fiildibrand fights SjúrS, aims a blow at Gest, and then
fights with a dwarf. In Heljars kvæði there is no Geyti, and
Ásmund has taken over the role played by Hildibrand. And so
the battle goes as follows: Grím fights Virgar; and Ásmund