Note 52 — Chapter I

“Meira var thar jafndaegri enn á Graenlandi edr Íslandi, sól hafdi thar eyktarstad ok dagmálastad um skamdegi.”

“Dag-mál, n. (vide dagr), prop. ‘day-meal,’ one of the divisions of the day, usually about eight or nine o’clock, A.M.; the Latin hora tertia is rendered by ‘er vér köllum dagmál,’ which we call d., Hom. [Homiliu-bók], 142; enn er ekki lidit af dagmálum, Hom. (St.) 10. Acts 11, 15; in Glúm. [Viga-Glúms Saga], 342, we are told that the young Glúm was very lazy, and lay in bed till day-meal every morning, cp. also 343; Hrafn. [Hrafnkéls Saga] 28 and O. H. L. [Olafs Saga Helga Legendaria] 18—áeinum morni milli rismála ok dagmála—where distinction is made between rismal (rising time) and dagmál, so as to make a separate dagsmark (q. v.) of each of them; and again, a distinction is made between ‘midday’ and dagmal, Ísl. [Islenzkar], 11, 334. The dagmal is thus midway between ‘rising’ and ‘midday,’ which accords well with the present use. The word is synonymous with dagver darmál, breakfast-time, and denotes the hour when the ancient Icelanders used to take their chief meal, opposed to náttmál, night-meal or supper-time, Fms. [Fornmanna Sögur], viii, 330; even the MSS. use dagmál and dagverdarmál indiscriminately; cp. also Sturl. [Sturlunga Saga] 111, 4 C; Rb. [Rimbegla], 452 says that at full moon the ebb takes place ‘at dagmá-lum.’ To put the dagmál at 7:30 A.M., as Pál Vidalin does, seems neither to accord with the present use nor the passage in Glúm or the eccl. hora tertia, which was the nearest hour answering to the Icel. calculation of the day. In Fb. [Flateyjar bók] 1,539, it is said that the sun set at ‘eykd’ (i. e. half-past three o’clock), but rose at ‘dagmál,’ which puts the dagmal at 8:30 A.M. Compds. dagmála-stadr, m. the place of d. in the horizon, Fb. [Flateyjar bók].”

“Eykt, eykd, f. three or half-past three o’clock, P.M.; many commentaries have been written upon this word, as by Pál Vidalin Skyr, Finn Johnson in H. E. [Historia Ecclesiastica Islandiæ] 1. 153 sqq. note 6, and in Horologium, etc. The time of eykd is clearly defined in K. Th. K. [Kristinnrettr Thorláks ok Ketils], 92 as the time when the sun has past two parts of the ‘utsudr’ (q. v.) and has one part left, that is to say, half-past three o’clock, P.M.: it thus nearly coincides with the eccl. Lat. nona (three o’clock, P.M.); and both eykt and nona are therefore used indiscriminately in some passages. Sunset at the time of ‘eykd’ is opposed to sunrise at the time of ‘dagmal,’ q. v. In Norway ‘ykt’ means a luncheon taken about half-past three o’clock. But the passage in Edda—that autumn ends and winter begins at sunset at the time of eykt—confounded the commentators who believed it to refer to the conventional Icel. winter, which (in the old style) begins with the middle of October, and lasts six months. In the latitude of Reykholt—the residence of Snorri—the sun at this time sets about half-past four. Upon this statement the commentators have based their reasoning both in regard to dagmál and eykt, placing the eykt at half-past four, P.M., and dagmal at half-past seven, A.M., although this contradicts the definition of these terms in the law. The passage in Edda probably came from a foreign source, and refers not to the Icel. winter but to the astronomical winter, viz., the winter solstice or the shortest day; for sunset at half-past three is suited not to Icel., but to the latitude of Scotland and the southern parts of Scandinavia. The word is also curious from its bearing upon the discovery of America by the ancients, vide Fb. [Flateyjar-bók] l. c. This sense (half-past three) is now obsolete in Icel., but eykt is in freq. use in the sense of trihorium, a time of three hours; whereas in the oldest sagas no passage has been found bearing this sense,—the Bs. [Biskupa Sögur] 1, 385, 446, and Hem. [Hemings-thattr] l. c., are of the 13th and 14th centuries. In Norway ykt is freq. used metaph. of all the four meal times in the day, morning-ykt, midday-ykt, afternoon-ykt (or ykt proper), and even-ykt. In old MSS., Grág., K. Th. K. Hem. Heid. S. [Grágás, Kristinnrettr, Thorláks ok Ketils, Hemings-thattr, Heidarviga Saga], this word is always spelt eykd or eykth, shewing the root to be ‘auk’ with the fem. inflex. added; it probably first meant the eke-meal, answering to Engl. lunch, and thence came to mean the time of day at which this meal was taken. The eccl. law dilates upon the word, as the Sabbath was to begin at ‘hora nona’; hence the phrase, eykt helgr dagr....

“Eyktar-stadr. m. the place of the sun at half-past three, P.M.; meira var, thar jafndaegri enn á Graenlandi edr Íslandi, sól hafdi thar eyktar-stad ok dagmála-stad um skamdegi, Fb. [Flateyjar bók] 1, 539,—this passage refers to the discovery of America; but in A. A. [Antiquitates Americanæ], l. c., it is wrongly explained as denoting the shortest day nine hours long, instead of seven; it follows that the latitude fixed by the editors of A. A. [Antiquitates Americanæ] is too far to the south.”

“Dagr, m. ... a day, ... 5. the day is in Icel. divided according to the position of the sun above the horizon; these fixed traditional marks are called dags-mörk, day-marks, and are substitutes for the hours of modern times, viz. ris-mál or midr-morgun, dag-mál, há-degi, mid-degi or mid-mundi, nón, midr-aptan, nátt-mál.”

“Stadr, m., gen. stadar, dat. stad, and older stadi, pl. stadir: ... a ‘stead,’ place, abode.”—An Icelandic-English dictionary based on the MS. collections of the late Richard Cleasby, enlarged and completed by Gudbrand Vigfusson, M. A. Oxford, 1874.