--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "naddr_risi" <emironen@...> wrote:

> Other sources have:
> "undir Hávaða fjöllum" (Hafniae, 1785, p. 182)
> "undir Havaða fjöllum" (JS 160, fol, 243v ~ 1774)
> "undir Hávaðafjöllum" (Rafn, I, 489 - 1829)
> "undir Hárvaða fjöllum" (AM 582, 4to, 32v - 1690)
> and so on

Thanks. According to C Tolkien's introduction to the Turville-Petre
edition, none of these have independent value in establishing the
text--that is, they are all derived directly or indirectly from R
(Gl.kgl.sml. 2845, 4to, Royal Library of Copenhagen) and/or from U
(R:715, Royal Library of Uppsala) and/or AM 203 fol. It's a while
since I read Alaric Hall's paper on the subject, so I could be
mistaken, but although it proposes a slightly different stemma to that
of C Tolkien's introduction, I don't remember him suggesting
independent value for other 17th or 18th century paper manuscripts.

> Yes, it says "haruaþa". What is also of importance, this MS confirms
> reading "Taktu sverðit undan höfðafjölinni" (just before the visa).

höfða-fjöl, f. "head-board, board against which the steersman rests
his head or back" (Turville-Petre). fjöl, f. board, plank.
Apparently this dialogue takes place between men on a boat. One had
caught a fish and asks another to pass the knife. The second man
refuses and says, "Take the sword from under the head-board." Since
the fish is then beheaded with with no delay, and the men are only
said to row to land afterwards, I don't think the writer of this
particular version can have meant that the sword was taken from under
a nearby range of mountains. Besides which, the dative singular form
of the definite article is incompatible with the neuter noun 'fjall'.

Þar sá hann þrjá menn á fiskibát, ok því næst sá hann, at maðr dró
fisk ok kallar, at annarr skyldi fá honum agnsaxit at höfða fiskinn,
en sá kveðst eigi laust mega láta.

Hinn mælti: "Taktu sverðit undan höfðafjölinni ok fá mér," en sá tók
ok brá ok sneið höfuð af fiskinum, ok þá kvað hann vísu:

"Þess galt hún gedda
fyr Grafár ósi,
er Heiðrekr var veginn
und Harvaða fjöllum."

> So this "haruaþa" may be a very old misreading.

That's quite possible anyway. For all we know it could have gone
through any number of chance permutations in both oral and written
tradition, and in the process of being borrowed into Old Norse from a
more southerly Germanic language, in which case the connection with
the Carpathians might be pure chance; alternatively, there's nothing
in the form 'haruaþa' as such to suggest that it couldn't have
developed perfectly regularly from a Germanic form of *karpat-
transformed according to Grimm's Law.

> But anyway, this is not a facsimile, because this is a photocopy.

To me, a 'facsimile' just means a "copy", "duplication",
"reproduction" or "exact likeness", especially one produced by
mechanical or eletronic means (i.e. not limited to a particular method
or medium). Apparently for others too the term 'facsimile' can
include scanned pages displayed online:

http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/cgi-bin/browse.pl?id=201012