Anon Krm 1VIII/4 — morði ‘slaying’
Hjuggu vér með hjörvi.
Hitt var ei fyr löngu,
er á Gautlandi gengum
at grafvitnis morði.
Þá fengu vér Þóru;
þaðan hétu mik fyrðar,
þá er ek lyngölun lagðak,
Loðbrók, at því vígi.
Stakk ek á storðar lykkju
stáli bjartra mála.
Hjuggu vér með hjörvi. Hitt var ei fyr löngu, er gengum at morði grafvitnis á Gautlandi. Þá fengu vér Þóru; fyrðar hétu mik Loðbrók þaðan, þá er ek lagðak lyngölun at því vígi. Ek stakk stáli bjartra mála á lykkju storðar.
We hewed with the sword. It was not long ago when we set about the slaying of the digging-wolf [SNAKE] in Götaland. That was when we married Þóra; people have called me Loðbrók (‘Hairy-breeches’) from the time when I stabbed the heather-fish [SNAKE] to death in that fight. I thrust the blade with bright ornaments at the loop of the earth [SNAKE].
notes
[4] morði ‘the slaying’: Kock (NN §2817) takes morð ‘slaying, battle’ here as synonymous with víg ‘fight, (hostile) encounter’ in l. 8, making the point that the phrase at því vígi ‘in that fight’ refers back to the serpent-slaying of l. 4. He further takes grafvitnis as a descriptive (or a def.?) gen. (cf. NS §§127, 123) rather than simply (as in the translation above, cf. CPB II, 341) an objective gen. (cf. NS §125), understanding it as ‘the fight (to the death) with the serpent, the serpent-fight’, comparing it with OE wyrmes wīġ ‘the fight with the dragon, the dragon-fight’, in Beowulf ll. 2316 and 2348.