Thanks LN for clearing that up.

 

Now that you have pointed it out, I find that Gordon has hidden away in his grammar the 'clue': viz Para 151 "in poetry the enclitic negatives -a, -at, -gi were used, as in vas-k-a 'I was not'; hef-k-at-ek 'I have not'"

 

Now, if the line had been something like saurs vargi vant, I wouldn’t have had any trouble and that seems to me to scan just as well J

 

Grace, I guess we´ll now be alert to these in the future.

 

Kveðja

Alan

 

-----Original Message-----
From: norse_course@yahoogroups.com [mailto:norse_course@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of llama_nom
Sent: Tuesday, 5 July 2005 9:26 PM
To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [norse_course] Re: saurs vara vant

 

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "AThompson" <athompso@...>

wrote:

 

> 

> Question 1 relates to the two lines: ‘saurs vara vant, er várum,

viðr, í GrímsbÅ" miðjum’ Firstly I have to question whether this text

from Gordon is accurate because in Gordon´s own glossary, the

phrase ’saurs eigi vant viðr’, cross referenced to the lines in

question, is glossed as ’there was no lack of mud.’ Somehow, ’vara’

has replaced ’eiga.’ I searched the web but could not find an on-

line text of Orkneyinga saga to see which version was correct. Can

anyone say what the correct text should be? And then provide an

explanation?

 

Sæll Alan,

 

I think VARA here consists of VAR "was" + the negative suffix

A "not", a poetic alternative to EIGI (cf. Völuspá 'vara sandr né

sær' "there was neither sand nor sea").  So SAURS VARA VANT "of-muck

there-wasn't a-shortage" = "eigi var vant saurs".  For the poem, the

metre--in as much as I understand these things--seems much better

with -A than than EIGI.

 

Llama Nom

 

 

 

 

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