Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2009, ‘Ívarr Ingimundarson, Sigurðarbálkr 42’ in Kari Ellen Gade (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 525-6.
Varð á vatni víkingr tekinn,
sás manna vas mestr fullhugi.
Víkingr, sás vas mestr fullhugi manna, varð tekinn á vatni.
‘The viking, who was the most high-mettled of men, was captured in the water.’
After having jumped overboard, Sigurðr swam underwater and hid beneath a shield floating on the sea. There were many shields floating around, and his enemies did not know where he was. Finally they captured one of Sigurðr’s men who was also in the water and forced him to tell them under which shield Sigurðr was hiding.
Saxo (2005, II, 29, 3, pp. 314-15) also gives a vivid description of Sigurðr’s attempt to foil his enemies. According to him, Sigurðr jumped into the ocean and pulled off his clothes while under water. He tried to stay under as long as possible to make his enemies believe that he had drowned, but he finally had to come up for air. Exhausted from the cold, he was clinging to the rudder of a ship when he was discovered and captured.
Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.
Use the buttons at the top of the page to navigate between stanzas in a poem.
The text and translation are given here, with buttons to toggle whether the text is shown in the verse order or prose word order. Clicking on indiviudal words gives dictionary links, variant readings, kennings and notes, where relevant.
This is the text of the edition in a similar format to how the edition appears in the printed volumes.
This view is also used for chapters and other text segments. Not all the headings shown are relevant to such sections.