Anon Óldr 28I/5 — ranna* ‘halls’
Veit, þess’s víða bœtti
várt eðli, stað bjartan,
heilagr Kristr, ok hæsta
hlíf þjóðkonungs lífi,
þvít skýranna* skreytir
skíðs Ôleifi fríðri
vǫgnu láðs und víðu
verðr aldrigi tjaldi.
Heilagr Kristr, veit bjartan stað ok hæsta hlíf lífi þjóðkonungs, þess’s bœtti víða eðli várt, þvít verðr aldrigi skreytir skíðs láðs vǫgnu fríðri Ôleifi und víðu tjaldi skýranna*.
Holy Christ, give an illustrious place and the highest protection to the life of this mighty king, who reformed our nature far and wide, because there will never be an adorner of the ski of the land of the orca [SEA > SHIP > SEAFARER] finer than Óláfr under the wide awning of cloud-halls [SKY].
readings
[5] skýranna*: ‘skyr(ru)nar’(?) Bb
notes
[5] skýranna* ‘of cloud-halls’: (a) The ms. has a superscript mark above ‘r’ which is unclear, but probably signifies <rv>, hence ‘skyrrvnar’. Skj B’s emendation to skýranna (n. gen. pl.) ‘of cloud-halls’ is adopted here. It gives a sky-kenning of a well-attested type (Meissner 105-6), though overdetermined, since skýrann ‘cloud-hall’ alone is a sky-kenning (as in Arn Þorfdr 5/8II), making tjald n. ‘tent, awning’ redundant. Tjald could therefore be treated as a metaphorical gen. element rather than part of the kenning. Alternatively, skýrǫnn could possibly be taken as a kenning for ‘air’ which combines with tjald to form the sky-kenning, but it is not comparable with the attested air-kennings (Meissner 108). (b) The alternative emendations proposed by Gullberg (1875) and by Kock (Skald; NN §2118) lack parallels and are unconvincing. (c) A further alternative is minimal emendation to skírrunnar (m. nom. pl.) ‘shield-trees’. The adj. skírr ‘bright’ appears as a shield-heiti (i.e. ‘bright one’) in Þul Skjaldar 2/8III and in HólmgB Lv 14/5V (Korm 50) skírviðr ‘shield-tree’, but there are no other apostrophes in the poem, and this solution would leave another of the helmingr’s kennings incomplete.
kennings
- víðu tjaldi skýranna*. — the wide awning of cloud-halls. [SKY]