Heil Gunnora,

What you say below seems to be to solve an
argument running between Haukur and Oskar on this
list regarding the pronuncation of the final -r
with no preceding vowel in Old Norse:

--- Gunnora Hallakarva <gunnora@...>
wrote:

> Old Norse and Old English poetry in general
> don't have a fixed number
> of syllables arranged in rigid "feet" or
> patterns like a lot of
> English poetry does -- no iambic pentameter.
> What is usually counted
> are stressed syllables, and there can be a
> variable number of
> unstressed syllables in a line.

Now I believe that the main reason Haukur claims
the final -r such as on the name "Ullr" did not
make its own syllable is that if it *did* make
its own syllable, then the Edda's would not
"scan".

As Haukur claims the Eddas *did* scan, then the
final -r must somehow have been pronounced
without making its own syllable. I, for one,
cannot manage this withouth saying a kind of
trilled "sh", which I understand is pre-13th
century Norse, not the Norse we are studying
here.

But if you are suggesting that the unstressed
syllables were not even counted by the original
poets (you seem to differentiate between early
(non-unstressed-scanning) eddaic poetry and
"skaldic" (fully scanning) poetry, which you seem
to indicate came later), then Haukur's main
reason to argue for a one-syllable pronuncation
of words such as "Ullr" falls flat - pronouncing
that final -r as its own *unstressed* syllable
would not have disturbed the scanning.

> Skaldic poetry
> was more formal in
> structure than Eddaic poetry, and there's where
> you get your more
> rigid syllabic construction.

- DS


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