Eldr nam at æsaz en jörð at skjálfa
ok hár logi við himni gnæfa.
Fár treystiz þar fylkis rekka
eld at ríða né yfir stíga.
Eldr nam at æsaz en jörð at skjálfa ok hár logi gnæfa við himni. Fár rekka fylkis treystiz þar at ríða eld né stíga yfir.
Fire raged and earth shook and the tall flame rose up to the sky. Few of the warriors of the prince there dared to ride through the fire nor step across it.
[1] nam: man 1824b
[1] nam at æsaz ‘raged’: The ms. has man at æsaz, with man from muna, an auxiliary and modal verb used to express the future tense. This does not make sense in context, and all previous eds have assumed the copyist transposed the two consonants of nam, 3rd pers. sg. pret. of nema ‘begin’, frequently used, as here, as a pleonastic auxiliary with the inf. of another verb to indicate pret. tense. Nam is also to be understood as a pleonastic auxiliary with skjálfa (l. 2) and gnæfa (l. 4).