king and redeem himself with the poem Hǫfuðlausn, which praises the merits of King Ólafr rather than the beauty of his wife. In Icelandic law The composing of mansöngvar for or about women is explicitly prohibited by the medieval Icelandic law-code Grágás, 'in the younger additions to Konungsbók (GKS 1157 fol) and Staðarhólsbók (AM 334 fol), where it is inserted into a passage bearing the title 'vm scaldscap' ('on poetry'), an exhaustive treatment of the different kinds of poetry and the various punishments for them'. But there is no clear explanation of what a mansöngr is. In the Konungsbók version, §238, the text reads Ef maðr yrkir mansöng vm cono oc varðar scog gang. Kona a söc ef hon er xx. eða ellre. ef hon vill eigi søkia láta. oc a lavg raðande hennar sökena. If a man composes mansǫngr about a woman he suffers full outlawry. The woman has to bring the case if she is twenty or older. If she will not have it prosecuted, then her legal administrator has to bring the case. In rímur In Icelandic rímur, mansöngur is the term used for the (optional) opening section of each ríma poem within the larger epic. The mansöngur typically shares a metre with the ríma it prefaces but is lyric poetry rather than narrative and the poet often speaks in the first person, addressing the audience directly. The mansöngur is often addressed to a woman but known as mansöngr even when it isn't. The mansöngur may or may not relate to the main narrative of the rímur: some poets use the mansöngur to comment on the events of the story as they unfold or explore specific narrative themes, but others treat the mansöngur as a 'break from the action'. The earliest rímur lack mansöngvar. In later rímur, the author (usually male) would compose poetry about a woman he had fallen in love with (but who generally is not depicted as reciprocating his feelings). Accordingly, mansöngvar are often sorrowful. Later, they started to feature other topics, such as love for one's ancestral estate or complaints at how few people appreciate poetry. One example of the content of a mansöngur is afforded by Craigie's summary of stanzas 1-17 of the third ríma of Skotlands rímur by Einar Guðmundsson, a 17th-century poet. It includes many of the classical features of the mansöngur in rímur: a fair woman is addressed, while