Note Footnote 1: — PART II

The version given by Svabo is at variance with the Saga and has many internal discrepancies arising mainly from the fact that Hjalmar and Angantyr are here taken to be brothers, as in the Danish ballad. In the Antiquarisk Tídsskrift for 1849-1851 I published another version which I took down in Sandø in 1848, and in which I made some use of Svabo's version. My version corresponds exactly with the Harvarar Saga, but it is open to suspicion from the fact that it here forms the second part (tháttr) of Hjalmar's Kvæði, of which the first part (The Tháttr of Örvar-Oddr) is clearly of later origin; as is shown not only by the language, but also by the fact that the whole falls in with Suhm's story,—"The three friends, Hjalmar, Asbjörn and Örvarodd," etc. Many verses of Arngrim's Sons presuppose a first táttur to the ballad, for example that in which the sick Asbjörn complains that he cannot follow his companion to the fight on Samsø1. That the language in the second part is purer and older than in the first part is easily explained from the fact that the people of Sandø have utilised the older Faroese version which was taken down by Svabo. They only needed to transpose the verses and to make a very few changes to get the whole readjusted according to the Saga or Suhm's story. The verses which the Sandø version has in common with Svabo's could therefore be used for purposes of comparison. There are thus weighty reasons for giving preference to Svabo's version, in spite of all its imperfections.