Översikten över Háttatal I DG 11 4to - Dess funktion och ursprung

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the register over Háttatal, called Ö, which is to be found in the manuscript DG 11 4to, the so-called Uppsala-Edda. Ö consists of the first verse line of the first ,/ strophes (strophes 35 is missing) of Háttatal, accompanied by the name of the specific verse form. The aim of the article is twofold. The first purpose is to investigate why this register has been included in a manuscript of Snorra Edda, when it is directly followed by a complete Háttataltext (56 strophes), here called HtU. The second purpose is to investigate the textual background of Ö, that is to say, if it was copied from the same exemplar as HtU (as Finnur Jónsson 1931 claimed). It seems that the purpose of this register in DG 11 4to is to be a complement to HtU regarding the names of the verse forms: of the 33 names in the register, only 12 stand together with their respective strophe in HtU. One explanation for the fact that the register ends with strophe 36 is that the exemplar was fragmentary, and that it consisted of one page only. The textual origin of Ö is not the same as that of HtU. The most important difference between the two texts is Ö1s reading braut (of brjóta) in strophe 27 where HtU has skar ek. Ö shares its reading with Codex Wormianus, whereas the reading in HtU is also found in Codex Trajectinus and a 14th-century correction in Codex Regius. It seems, however, that the scribe in some cases has turned to the same exemplar as that of HtU, as these two texts share a number of readings where all other manuscripts diverge. One example is eldum (of eldr) in strophe 34, where all other manuscripts have oldum (of old). It appears that the register represented in Ö has been copied once or twice independently of a complete version of Háttatal before it was copied into DG 11, as there are quite a few readings that are only in this text. One example is the reading eisu in Ö where HtU has oldu, which is shared by all other manuscripts. This is in strophe 27 and the previous verse line in strophe 26 in Ö ends in eisu. It is thus easy to see how this error has occurred when a scribe is copying an Ö-text, as he/she only copied the last word of the wrong verse line. It is less likely that this confusion would take place in a complete text of Háttatal, as there is much more text between the two lines there.