Hello.
I am a student of Linguistics and Icelandic Philology at the
University of Icelandic in Reykjavík. I am working on an article
about the Gestaþáttur section of Hávamál in the Poetic Edda. I have
located a section (verses 41-52) which deals with friendship inside
the broader context of being a guest and being a host (hence the
appelation Gestaþáttur, 'guest-section').
I have done a fairly involved examination of the alliteration used in
the poem, its metrical structure, its word-usage and other linguistic
analyses. What I am lacking is a basis for its grouping among other
IE traditions of gift-giving and friend-making.
Verse 52 runs thus in normalized modern spelling:
Mikið eitt
skal-a manni gefa;
oft kaupir sér í litlu lof;
með hálfum hleifi
og með höllu keri
fékk eg mér félaga.
Auden translated the stanza thusly:
Not great things alone must one give to another,
praise oft is earned for nought;
with half a loaf and a tilted bowl
I have found me many a friend.
I have found a reference in Anabasis about Cyrus giving halves of
geese and half-carafes of wine to guests in his lodgings, but not
much else in other IE traditions, at least not in recorded,
transmitted stories/poems/epics, etc. I am hoping that someone on
this list will recognize this theme and point me to another text that
I could use to support my view that this has to be a theme running
through IE society. I have found several things in Mauss and also in
Jamison, but nothing that matches exactly.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Chad Stone
Department of Literature and Linguistics
University of Iceland
Reykjavík
chad@...