,,Hinn fagri foldar son"

Þáttur úr handrita- og viðtökusögu Snorra-Eddu

Abstract

The four main manuscripts of Gylfaginning differ in their description of the family relations between the mythological beings Nótt, Jǫrð, Dagr and Dellingr. The oldest manuscript, U, offers a version where Jǫrð is the wife of Dellingr and the mother of Dagr while the other manuscripts, R, W and T, cast Nótt in the role of Dellingr’s wife and Dagr’s mother. The author argues that the version in U came about accidentally when the writer of U or its antecedent shortened a text similar to that in RWT. The results of this accident made their way into the Icelandic poetic tradition. The seventeenth-century Eddas of Magnús Ólafsson and P. H. Resen have information which agrees alternatively with the texts of RWT and that of U. Examples of poetry with kennings consistent with the version in U can be found both before and after Magnús Ólafsson’s work. These have previously puzzled editors but can be more adequately explained when the text of U is taken into account.