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NIS þæt Seldguma: Beowulf 249

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Cecil Wood
Cecil Wood*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 14
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Extract

“Now there is a man,” says Hrothgar's coast watch as Beowulf appears. No one doubts that nisþæt seldguma means this, once the litotes is resolved, but the precise meaning of the half line is another matter. Seldguma has been compared to Old Norse húskarl and the phrase then read as “this is no mere retainer.” It has been translated as “stay-at-home, cottager,” and compared to Old English cotsetla.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 75 , Issue 5 , December 1960 , pp. 481 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1960

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References

1 This line and the bibliography to it are discussed on p. 138 of Fr. Klaeber, Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 3° (Boston, 1941).

2 Johan Fritzner, Ordbog over Det gamle norske Sprog, 3 vols. (Kristiania, 1886–91); Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, 2° (London, 1957).

3 Edda Snorra Sturlasonar (Hafniae, 1848), p. 222, the vari ants are manuscripts H and U.

4 Sigfús Blöndal, Islandsk-Dansk Ordbog (Reykjavík, 1920–24).

5 This and subsequent stanzas, unless otherwise noted, are quoted from Finnur Jónsson, Den Norsk-Islandske Skjalde-digtning, 4 vols. (K⊘benhavn, 1912–15).

6 Orkneyinga Saga, Sigurour Nordal Ed. (K⊘benhavn, 1913–16), p. 255. Vol. XL of Samfund til Udgivdse af Gammd Nordish Litteratur.

7 Finnur Jonsson, Lexicon Poeticum Antiques Lingua Septenlrionalis, 2° (K⊘benhavn, 1931).

8 Magnussona Saga in Heimskringla, iii, 261, Bjarni Aoalbjarnarson Ed., vols, xxvi-xxviii of Islenzk Fornrit (Reykjavik, 1941–49).

9 Rudolf Meissner, “Ermengarde, Vicegrafin von Narbonne und Jarl Rognvald,” in Arkiv for Nordisk Filologie, xli (1925), 149 ff.

10 Heimskringla, ii, 69.

11 See particularly Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (London, 1898), and n. 1 above.