keyword: dating of poetry
dating of poetry
- An Eddic Fairy-tale of a Cursed Princess: An Edition of Vambarljóð
Issue: Leeds Medieval Studies, 3 (2023)
The Eddic fairy-tales are a group of poems of medieval origin which were collected from oral tradition in Iceland in the seventeenth century and later. These poems employ an Icelandic version of the Germanic alliterative metre and make use of Eddic formulas and style. They have fairy-tale subjects with evil stepmothers, elves, ogresses, curses and other supernatural elements. A striking trait of these poems is their emphasis on female characters and perspectives. The poem here edited is Vambarljóð, which tells of Signý, a resourceful princess cursed by her stepmother to appear as a cow’s stomach. The poem was collected three times from oral tradition. One version (V) survives as part of a late seventeenth-century collection of ballads and other popular poems. Two other versions are fragmentary: one of them (Þ) was written down for Árni Magnússon (1663–1730) and the other (J) by one of Árni’s successors. The most complete version, V, is also the one that has the most archaic appearance and probably best reflects the poem’s medieval origins. The three versions are edited separately here. Later poems and prose narratives of the same tale type are also briefly described.