Table Of ContentTHE FOURTH GRAMMATICAL TREATISE
THE FOURTH
GRAMMATICAL TREATISE
EDITED BY
MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS
AND
JONAS WELLENDORF
VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH
UNIVESITY COLLEGE LONDON
2014
© Margaret Clunies Ross and Jonas Wellendorf 2014
ISBN:
978 0 903521 90 1
Printed by Short Run Press Limited, Exeter
CONTENTS
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
GENERAL ABBREVIATIONS ix
INTRODUCTION xi
1. Date, provenance and nature of FoGT xi
2. FoGT within the traditions of grammar and rhetoric xiv
a. FoGT within the Icelandic tradition of grammatical
learning xiv
b. FoGT and the Latin tradition xix
3. The makeup of FoGT xxxvii
4. Knowledge of D and G in Iceland and Norway xl
5. The nature and origin of the poetic examples in FoGT xlv
a. Named poets and poems xlv
b. The anonymous stanzas xlix
c. Dominant themes of the anonymous stanzas and their
prose exegesis liii
6. The present edition: guiding principles lvii
a. Normalisation of the Icelandic text lvii
b. Reproduction of the text and the translation lix
c. Commentary lxii
7. Previous editions of FoGT lxii
TEXT AND TRANSLATION 1
COMMENTARY 50
DOCTRINALE (ll. 2560−2639): TEXT AND TRANSLATION 145
TECHNICAL TERMS USED IN FoGT 152
BIBLIOGRAPHY 157
INDEX 173
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The present edition is the result of a happy collaboration between two
scholars with particular interests in a common text, the so-called
Fourth Grammatical Treatise (FoGT ), the understanding of which
requires expertise in the medieval Latin grammatical and rhetorical
tradition that made it possible for an unknown fourteenth-century
Icelander to compose the work and, in addition, knowledge of the
vernacular tradition of skaldic poetry, with which he illustrated it.
Jonas Wellendorf has been responsible for placing FoGT in its Latin
context, editing and translating the prose text and providing commen-
tary on it, while Margaret Clunies Ross has edited, translated and
provided commentary on the poetic examples. The Introduction is the
work of both editors.
Up to now, FoGT has been a somewhat neglected late medieval
Icelandic text, especially by comparison with other vernacular trea-
tises on poetry, such as the Edda of Snorri Sturluson and The Third
Grammatical Treatise (TGT ) by Snorri’s nephew Óláfr hvítaskáld
‘White poet’ Þórðarson. The editors hope that demonstrating FoGT ’s
relationship to earlier Icelandic treatises, especially to TGT, and
clarifying its relationship to its sources, as well as setting out the
relationship between the prose text and the poetic examples, will make
its merits as a product of fourteenth-century Icelandic scholarship
easier to understand and appreciate.
Late in the process of preparing the edition, Jonas Wellendorf
received Cyril de Pins’s unpublished doctoral thesis ‘Hending ok
kenning: Les théories linguistiques dans l’Islande médiévale (XIIe–
XIVe s.): Lecture du Codex Wormianus’ (Université Paris 7-Diderot,
Dec 2013). No attempt has here been made to incorporate the findings
of this work, which includes a treatment of FoGT on pp. 546–609, but
it should be mentioned that the thesis, in discussing FoGT, draws on a
set of glosses on Doctrinale by a Petrus Croccus. These glosses occa-
sionally illuminate the prose text of FoGT in a different way from
those the present edition has drawn on.
Margaret Clunies Ross would like to place on record her gratitude to
the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Bergen, and to
Professor Else Mundal in particular, for providing her with facilities
and accommodation in August 2011, which allowed her to work with
Jonas Wellendorf there, and to Jonas for delaying taking up an
viii
appointment in the Department of Scandinavian at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Jonas Wellendorf would like to thank the Centre for Medieval
Studies at the University of Bergen for generous support of a con-
ference on vernacular grammatica in the summer of 2011 and the
Committee of Research at The University of California, Berkeley for a
research-enabling grant that allowed him to study Codex Wormianus
at the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection in Copenhagen. He would
also like to thank Frank Bezner (UC Berkeley), Haukur Þorgeirsson
(Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum) and Stefan Hagel
(Austrian Academy of Sciences).
We are grateful to Alison Finlay, Carl Phelpstead and Anthony
Faulkes for their careful attention to our manuscript. Any remaining
errors are our own responsibility.
Margaret Clunies Ross and Jonas Wellendorf
Sydney and Berkeley, November 2014
GENERAL ABBREVIATIONS
This list excludes common abbreviations, such as e.g., cf. and etc., as
well as those of the names of the Books of the Bible. Abbreviated
titles of frequently cited works (like SnE, TGT ) and information about
editions of these and other abbreviated bibliographical references (like
AÍ, SkP, SnE 1998) are listed alphabetically in the Bibliography at the
end of the edition. Abbreviated references to Old Norse poetry edited
in SkP are to SkP sigla, which abbreviate the name of the poet (or state
Anon, if anonymous), and name of poem, and give stanza and line
number followed by relevant volume number in superscript roman,
e.g. Arn Þorfdr 17,4II = Arnórr jarlaskáld Þórðarson, Þorfinnsdrápa,
stanza 17, line 4, Volume II. SkP sigla may be found on the skaldic
poetry editing project website at abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/db.php
4° quarto (refers to size of manuscript leaves)
acc. accusative
add. added (by editors)
adj. adjective
c. circa, about
CE Common Era
d. died
dat. dative
e-m einhverjum
e-s einhvers
e-t eithvert
e-u einhverju
f. folio (page)
fem. feminine
fl. floruit, flourished, period of someone’s active life
fol folio (refers to size of manuscript leaves)
gen. genitive
Gr. Greek
hap. leg. hapax legomenon (pl. legomena), unique word(s)
indic. indicative
l. line
Lat. Latin
lit. literally
ll. lines
x General abbreviations
loc. cit. loco citato, (in) the place cited
masc. masculine
ms. manuscript
mss manuscripts
n. note
neut. neuter
nn. notes
no. number
nom. nominative
nos numbers
pres. present
pret. preterite
ptc. participle
pp. pages
q. v. quod vide, which see
r recto
r. reigned
sg. singular
st. stanza
sth. something
sts stanzas
subj. subjunctive
s. v. sub verbo, under the word
v verso
x designates paper manuscripts (in shelf marks)
† textual material that is impossibly corrupt or cannot be
made sense of
[. . .] indicates damaged or illegible text
