Poetry on Christian Subjects (review)

The edition of skáldskapr variorum is a major enterprise deserving the support of everyone who studies or simply enjoys Old Norse literature. Among the poems in this volume two are well-known, even famous: Einar Skúlason’s Geisli (‘Lightbeam,’ a magnificent early drápa about St. Olaf, conversion, and some of the events that followed the Christianization of Norway) and the ever-blooming Lilja (‘Lily,’ an anonymous poem “all poets wish they had composed”). While reserving the highest praise for the present achievement, we cannot but stop and admire the brilliance of those who laid the foundations of skaldic scholarship: Sveinbjörn Egilsson, Finnur Jónsson, E. A. Kock, and Rudolf Meißner. Though they occasionally offered less than fully convincing interpretations, in principle, they knew all. Today we need teams of specialists (who owe everything to them) for discussing and refining their solutions. Finnur Jónsson was the greatest miracle of assiduity, and perhaps some day a modern admirer will compose a drápa of a hundred and one stanzas in honor of that insatiable quaffer of Othin’s mead.

The volume opens with a preface, acknowledgments, lists of abbreviations and sigla, an explanation of technical terms (from the simplest like dróttkvætt and vísa to such special ones as sext(á)nmælt ‘sixteen times spoken,’ a skaldic figure in which a stanza consists of sixteen separate independent clauses), and an introduction by the editor, who offers a general view of the work done and of the poetry featured. The introduction is preceded by a list of contributors. Not counting Clunies Ross, there are fourteen of them. They edited 28 short and long poems (mainly long): Geisli, Jónsdrápa by Níkulás Bergsson, Harmsól, one more Jónsdrápa (by Gamli kanóki), Leiðarvísan, Plácitusdrápa, Jónvísur, Líknarbraut, Sólarljóð, Hugsvinnsmál, Heilags anda drápa (this is where Part 1 ends), Stanzas addressed to Fellow Ecclesiastics 1 & 2, Máríudrápa, Gýðingsvísur, Brúðkaupsvísur, Lilja, three poems about Mary (Máríuvísur I, II, III), Vitnisvísur af Máríu, Drápa af Máríugrát, Pétrsdrápa, Andréasdrápa, Allra postula minnisvísur, Heilagra manna drápa, Heilagra meyja drápa, Kátrínardrápa, and Lausavísa on Lawgiving.

In Clunies Ross’s preface, we read:

My greatest debt of gratitude is to my four fellow General Editors: Kari Ellen Gade, Edith Marold, Guðrún Nordal and Diana Whaley. They have been a wonderful support at all times in what has been a long-lasting and laborious enterprise. Through the process that we call ‘quality control,’ which requires all edited poems to be checked by the remaining four General Editors after the Volume Editor has worked with the Contributing Editors on each poem or set of stanzas, each of the General Editors has been able to contribute her special skills: Kari Gade in the fields of metrics, the normalization of texts, the treatment of foreign words, and almost everything else besides; Edith Marold particularly on the subject of kennings; Guðrún Nordal, as a native speaker of Icelandic, on acceptable Icelandic prose word order and related questions of usage; and Diana Whaley on all points grammatical [morphological?] and syntactic, as well as on the niceties of the English translation. I should like to give special thanks to Diana and Kari for their meticulous attention to all the finer points of skaldic poetics.

(p. viii)

And, of course, the work would not have been completed without multiple grants and highly professional technical help. Sveinbjörn Egilsson had neither, but we live at a different time.

The following scholars edited the poems (parentheses refer to the number of the poems for which each of them was responsible): Kari Ellen Gade...