Note to GunnLeif Merl I 95VIII
[6] kjaldýrs ‘of the keel-beast [SHIP]’: Obscure but probably a kenning for ‘ship’. The determinant kal- is difficult to explain as it stands. A first element kal- in compounds occurs in kalreip ‘rope on a ship that prevents the sail from flapping’, but is unlikely to be relevant, since it depends on the (Modern Icelandic) idiom segl kelur ‘the sail loses the wind’, lit. ‘the sail cools’ (LP: kalreip), thus a ‘rope [to prevent] “cooling”’. Instead ms. kal- appears to represent a miswriting for (or conceivably a reduced form of) kjal-, combinative form of kjǫlr ‘keel’. Thus ‘of the keel-beast [SHIP]’. The late kenning meiðar kjaldúks ‘trees of the keel-cloth’ (EGils Guðkv 20/3-4IV) may represent an imitation of Gunnlaugr.