Diana Whaley wrote:
> Thanks for this, John - an intriguing name. I don't know what the
> current thinking is (and I'd be glad to know who the someone is), but
> the Skarthi claim does look rather implausible, and one wonders
> whether there might be a skarth (gap, notch in the landscape) in
> there, rather than a hare-lip. Or more than one gap, since Skartha-
> looks like a genitive plural (cf. Escardeburg c. 1160, Scardeburc
> 1158).
> The main mss of Kormaks saga are Möthruvallabok (AM 132 fol,), c.
> 1330-70, and fragments in AM 162 F fol. (c. 1350-1400), though the
> saga is thought to have been put together in the early 13th century,
> maybe c. 1220, and at least some of the poetry will be genuinely 10th
> century.
Many thanks for this. Yes, I'm quite happy to accept that the poems are 10th
century (although a little worried that they precede the invention of love
by the troubadours...) but it seems quite apparent that the saga was
constructed to 'explain' the poems. Now, when troubadour poems are filled
out by the later vidas and razos, no-one takes the biographical details and
'explanations' of the poems seriously - they are patently fictitious and
created without special knowledge. Similarly, I can't see how Kormáks saga
can be taken even as evidence of an early form for "Scarborough" - let alone
be taken as evidence of its founding c.965!
John Briggs
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