Skúli Lv 1III/4 — serks ‘shirt’
Glens beðja veðr gyðju
goðblíð í vé síðan
(ljós kemr gótt) með geislum
(gránserks ofan Mána).
Síðan veðr goðblíð beðja Glens með geislum í vé gyðju; gótt ljós gránserks Mána kemr ofan.
Then the divinely gentle bedmate of Glenr <mythical being> [= Sól (sól ‘sun’)] strides with her beams into the goddess’s sanctuary; the good light of the grey-shirt of Máni (‘Moon’) [SKY] comes down.
readings
[4] ‑serks: ‑setrs Tˣ, 744ˣ, ‑setr W, ‘[…]trs’ U, ‘set[…]’ B
notes
[4] gránserks ‘of the grey-shirt’: The only other skaldic attestation of this cpd is in the mailshirt-kenning gránserkr Hamðis ‘grey shirt of Hamðir’ (Anon Krm 17/10VIII). Earlier eds take gránserkr as an adj., gránserkr Máni ‘grey-shirted Máni’, which LP: gránserkr explains as ifört grå særk … om månens gråblege udseende ‘dressed in a grey shirt … of the pale grey appearance of the moon’. The noun serkr ‘shirt’ is not otherwise attested as an adj. (neither as a simplex nor as a second element in compounds; the relevant adj. is gráserkjaðr ‘grey-shirted’, cf. Grott 13/8), and in Gamlkan Has 18/2VII élserkr ‘storm-shirt’ is a kenning for ‘sky’. All mss other than R have gránsetr m. ‘grey-seat, ‑home’ (or gránsetrs gen. ‘of the grey-seat’), which can be construed as another kenning for ‘sky’ (gránsetrs Mána ‘of the grey-seat of Máni’). Possibly the unusual solar imagery of the helmingr led to scribal replacement of the unexpected serkr m. ‘shirt’ with a word common in sky-kennings (setr sólar ‘seat of the sun’, etc.) as well as in words like sólsetr, dagsetr ‘sunset’.
kennings
- gránserks Mána — of the grey-shirt of Máni (‘Moon’) [SKY]
grammar
case: gen.