HSt Frag 5III/4 — branda ‘the bows’
Ek hef óðar lokri,
ǫlstafna, þér skafna,
væn mǫrk, — skala verki
vandr — stefknarrar branda.
Ek hef skafna þér branda stefknarrar lokri óðar, væn mǫrk ǫlstafna; verki skala vandr.
I have smoothed the bows of the refrain-ship [DRÁPA > UPPHAF] for you with the plane of poetry [TONGUE], beautiful forest of ale-prows [DRINKING HORNS > WOMAN]; the poem should not be difficult.
readings
[4] branda: ‘[…]randa’ U
notes
[4] branda ‘the bows’: Taken here as acc. pl. of brandr m. In skaldic poetry brandr is often used in the pl. (LP: 3. brandr) and as pars pro toto for ‘ship’ (Jesch 2001a, 147-8). Accordingly, in such cases it must have referred to some part of a ship, but it is not clear exactly which part (ibid.). According to Falk (1912, 44-5) brandr was a strip of wood running along the side of a ship’s prow, and Clunies Ross (2005a, 38 n. 16) assumes that brandar refer to a pair of these wooden strips and hence to the prow as a whole in the present stanza. — [4] branda stefknarrar ‘the bows of the refrain-ship [DRÁPA > UPPHAF]’: A drápa is a longer poem with one or more refrains (stef). Upphaf ‘beginning’ is usually the technical term for the first part of a drápa, its introductory section before the first stef ‘refrain’ (see Section 4.5 in the General Introduction in SkP I).
kennings
- branda stefknarrar — the bows of the refrain-ship [UPPHAF]
grammar
case: acc.
number: pl.