ShÞ Frag 1III
Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2017, ‘Skáldhelgi Þórðarson, Fragment 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 351.
Megut ‘cannot’
(not checked:)
mega (verb): may, might
jarna ‘of iron-weapons’
(not checked:)
járn (noun n.; °-s; -): iron, weapon
kennings
Fet jarna‘The steps of iron-weapons ’
= WOUNDS
The steps of iron-weapons → WOUNDS
fet ‘The steps’
(not checked:)
fet (noun n.; °-s; -): paw, step
kennings
Fet jarna‘The steps of iron-weapons ’
= WOUNDS
The steps of iron-weapons → WOUNDS
fyrnask ‘be forgotten’
(not checked:)
fyrna (verb): forget
friðarskepjandi ‘peacemaker’
(not checked:)
friðarskepjandi (noun m.): [peacemaker]
miðjum ‘the middle’
(not checked:)
miðja (noun f.; °-u): the middle
Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses
The couplet is cited as an illustration of heiti (kennings) for ‘wounds’.
The couplet is too fragmentary to allow for an interpretation. The first line, which contains the kenning for ‘wounds’ (fet jarna lit. ‘steps of irons’), is fairly certain, but l. 2 cannot be construed to make sense as it stands. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B) gives friðar skepjandi … miðjum, which is translated as fredstifteren … ‘the peacemaker …’. Kock (NN §1124A) takes miðjum as dat. pl. of mið ‘fishing ground’ (rather than as dat. pl. of the adj. miðr ‘middle’) and translates friðar skepjandi miðjum as a form of address: o, du fiskevattnens skydd! ‘oh, protector of fishing grounds!’. In view of the incompleteness of the fragment, that interpretation is not persuasive. Further, mið ‘fishing ground’ does not appear to be a n. ja-stem (cf. Fritzner: mið 3, which lists the dat. pl. forms miðum and miðunum). Based on the syntax of the two lines, they seem to form ll. 3-4 of a couplet (with l. 3 as an intercalary independent clause), and the missing two lines must have provided the syntactically necessary elements to make sense of the words in l. 4.
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