Sefi gjörðiz saurlífr;
sárum … hugarfár,
lýtanna logi heitr
lerkað fekk þann klerk,
hverja nótt að hann fór
Hrundar á gulls fund
villr yfir vassfall;
váða giekk um hans ráð.
Sefi gjörðiz saurlífr; hugarfár … sárum heitr logi lýtanna fekk lerkað þann klerk, að hann fór hverja nótt á fund Hrundar gulls, villr, yfir vassfall; váða giekk um hans ráð.
His mind became lecherous; the mind-danger … with bitterness(es) [lit. hurts] the hot flame of sins tormented that cleric, so that he went every night to meet a Hrund <valkyrie> of gold [WOMAN], crazed, across a river; danger threatened his condition.
[8] váða (m. dat. sg.) ‘danger’: The construction is impersonal, lit. ‘it threatened his condition with danger’ (see Sperber; NN §2873). Skald emends to váði (m. nom. sg.) ‘danger’ and treats the noun as the subject of giekk lit. ‘went’. Wrightson takes an implicit hann ‘he’ as the subject and váða as an unattested adv. ‘dangerously’ (‘he trod dangerously with his situation’). This interpretation is ungrammatical, because the possessive hans ‘his’ is not refl. (we would expect sitt lit. ‘his own’).