Cite as: Kate Heslop (ed.) 2012, ‘Anonymous Poems, Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar 28’ in Diana Whaley (ed.), Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 1059.

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].

Mss: Bb(113rb)

Readings: [3] hæsta: ‘hesti’ Bb    [4] ‑konungs: ‑konungr Bb    [5] skýranna*: ‘skyr(ru)nar’(?) Bb;    skreytir: ‘skrytir’ Bb

Editions: Skj: [Anonyme digte og vers XII], [1]. Óláfs drápa Tryggvasonar 28: AI, 578, BI, 574, Skald I, 278, NN §2118; Munch and Unger 1847, 123, 142, Gullberg 1875, 20, 41-2.

Notes: [All]: Prayers for the soul of the dedicatee are common in the closing verses of Christian encomia (Fidjestøl 1982, 186-90; Edwards 1982-3, 38-40; Fidjestøl 1993b, 105). — [3] hæsta ‘the highest’: Ms. ‘hesti’ appears to be the weak m. nom. sg. form of the sup. adj. hæstr ‘highest’ (the dat. sg. of hestr m. ‘horse’ can be discounted). As such there is no noun in the helmingr that it can modify, so emendation is necessary. The syntactic parallelism with stað bjartan ‘illustrious place’ suggests it should be taken with hlíf f. acc. sg. ‘protection’. — [4] þjóðkonungs ‘of … mighty king’: A minor emendation of ms. þjóðkonungr (nom. sg.) so as to agree with þess (gen. sg.) ‘of this’. — [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 5/8^II), 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 2/8^III and in HólmgB Lv 14/5^V (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.