Note to ÞKolb Eirdr 16^I

[4] grund af skeiðum ‘onto land from the ships’: The mss read grund af skeiðum in their first citation of the stanza, and upp frá skeiðum ‘up from the ships’ in their second. Neither reading is straightforward. (a) This edn follows Bjarni Guðnason (ÍF 35) in reading grund af skeiðum. Grund ‘land’ is understood as the acc. object of gengu upp ‘went up’ (l. 1), the site of movement (cf. Note to st. 13, 5-6, interpretation (a), and references there; see also E. Olsen 1934, 262-3), although ganga upp ‘go ashore’ is normally followed by a prepositional phrase. (b) Upp frá skeiðum ‘up from the ships’ is preferred by Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) and Kock (Skald). This, however, gives somewhat awkward syntax with its repetition of upp ‘up’, and it assumes convoluted word order in construing á landi (l. 3) with gengu upp, hence gengu upp á landi upp frá skeiðum ‘advanced into the land, up from the ships’ (E. Olsen 1934, 262, notes the difficulty, but see NN §2771 for a defence). (c) A further possibility is to adopt grund from the first citation and frá (skeiðum) from the second, hence gengu grund upp frá skeiðum ‘went across the ground up from the ships’. As in interpretation (a), grund is understood as an acc. of place, now following gengu ‘went’ (l. 1) rather than gengu upp .

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. ÍF 35 = Danakonunga sǫgur. Ed. Bjarni Guðnason. 1982.
6. Olsen, Magnus. 1934. ‘Þundarbenda’. MM, 92-7.