Kari Ellen Gade (ed.) 2009, ‘Anonymous Poems, Nóregs konungatal 2’ 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, p. 763.
Róa skal fyrst
fjarri reyði,
* koma þó niðr
nær, áðr lúki.
Þar hefk hugt
hróðri þessum
orðum þeim
eptir at mynda.
Skal fyrst róa fjarri reyði, * koma þó niðr nær, áðr lúki. Þar hefk hugt at mynda eptir þeim orðum þessum hróðri.
One must first row far from the whale, yet come down close before it is finished. Now I have thought to imitate those words with this praise.
Mss: Flat(144va)
Readings: [3] * koma: ok koma Flat
Editions: Skj AI, 579, Skj BI, 575, Skald I, 278, NN §2119 Anm.; Flat 1860-8, II, 520.
Notes: [1-4]: ‘One must first row far from the whale, yet come down close before it is finished’, i.e. if one wants to catch a whale, one must approach it from afar. This saying, with which the poet draws an analogy between hunting a whale and composing a long genealogical poem, refers to his intention to begin Jón’s panegyric by tracing his ancestry back to Haraldr hárfagri. His praise of the family of the Oddaverjar (people from the farmstead Oddi, southern Iceland), i.e. his homing in on the whale, begins at st. 67. — [2] reyði ‘the whale’: For reyðr ‘whale’, see Note to Steinn Óldr 11/7. — [3] * koma (inf.) ‘come’: The conj. ok ‘and’ (so Flat) makes the l. hypermetrical and has been deleted in accordance with most earlier eds. — [6] þessum hróðri (m. dat. sg.) ‘with this praise’: Taken as a dat. instr. here. Finnur Jónsson (LP: mynda) treats it tentatively as a dat. object of mynda ‘imitate’ (l. 8) (Skj B: efter de ord har jeg tænkt at indrette dette digt ‘according to those words I have planned to fashion this poem’), but mynda does not take a dat. object (see Fritzner: mynda). — [7-8] eptir þeim orðum ‘those words’: Lit. ‘after those words’. I.e. the saying contained in ll. 1-4.
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.