Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.) 2017, ‘Ǫrvar-Odds saga 88 (Ǫrvar-Oddr, Ævidrápa 18)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 901.
Slógum tjöldum, en sumir fóru
björnu at veiða, þeir er boga kunnu.
Réðum í eyju upp at kynda
bál brenniligt; stóð björn fyrir.
Slógum tjöldum, en sumir fóru at veiða björnu, þeir er kunnu boga. Réðum at kynda brenniligt bál upp í eyju; björn stóð fyrir.
‘We pitched tents, and some went to hunt bears, those who could handle bows. We lit a blazing bonfire up on the island; a bear stood in front of it. ’
This stanza and the following sts 89-90 have a tenuous relationship to a passage in the prose text (Ǫrv 1888, 40-5) which tells how Oddr shoots a large bear in a forest (skógarbjǫrn einn mikinn), flays it, and puts a spike through its mouth, then places it on a cliff facing towards the mainland. This action disturbs the giants living in the area and they mass against Oddr and his men, who they regard as children because of their small size. Oddr fends off an attack by a giantess by standing behind the bear, having placed glowing embers in its mouth, and then shoots at the woman with his arrows, Gusisnautar. The prose narrative employs motifs which may show some knowledge of Saami and Finnic rituals connected with the bear and bear hunts (cf. DuBois 1999, 48; Tolley 2009, I, 559-63).
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.
Slógum tjöldum,
en sumir fóru
björnu at veiða,
þeir er boga kunnu.
Réðum í eyju
upp at kynda
bál brenniligt;
ok stóð björn fyrir.
Slogum tiolldum enn sumir foru biornu at veida þeir er boga | kunnu · ʀedvm j eyiu vpp at kynda bal brenniligt · ok stod biorn firi ·
(HA)
Slógum tjöldum,
en sumir fóru
björnu at veiða,
þeir er boga kunnu.
†rridum† í eyju
upp at kynda
bál brenniligt;
stóð björn fyrir.
Slógum tjöldum,
en sumir fóru
björnu at veiða,
þeir við boga kunnum.
Réðum í eyju
upp at kynda
bál brenniligt;
stóð björn fyrir.
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