Note to Anon (Ragn) 6^VIII (Ragn 36)

[2] of öndvegi ‘in our seats’: The reading of, retained by the eds of Skald, CPB, Ragn 1891 and Ragn 1985, read as af ‘from’ (?) by Rafn (FSN) and emended to í ‘in’ by all other eds, means strictly ‘over, above’ in a physical sense, with locational meaning if followed by the dat. (giving here the meaning ‘(each) on (his) seat’, ‘each in his place’, with öndvegi understood as dat. sg.) or directional if followed by the acc. (giving here the meaning ‘across the seat(s), from one seat to another’, with öndvegi understood as acc. sg. or pl.). The prose text indicates that both speakers are sitting on the same side of the table as their hosts: the first to arrive is directed to the higher or northern bench (á enn ędra bekk), where he takes up the space of two men, and the second is directed to sit further in (innar) on that same bench, where he evidently takes up the space of three men, since five men have to make way for the two of them together (cf. Ragn 1906-8, 170-1); and it is in the centre of the northern bench that the high seat, occupied by the host, was traditionally located (CVC: önd-vegi and önd-ugi). The prose is however inconsistent in its account of where on the bench the speakers are seated in relation to one another. The second speaker (of sts 33, 35, 37), is first said to have been placed innar ‘further in’, i.e. nearer the host than the first speaker (Ragn 1906-8, 171), but is described later as sitting útar ‘further out’ (Ragn 1906-8, 172). This inconsistency has implications for the translation of st. 37/8, below. 

References

1. Bibliography
2. FSN = Rafn, Carl Christian, ed. 1829-30. Fornaldar sögur nordrlanda. 3 vols. Copenhagen: Popp.
3. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
5. CPB = Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and F. York Powell, eds. 1883. Corpus poeticum boreale: The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the Earliest Times to the Thirteenth Century. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Rpt. 1965, New York: Russell & Russell.
6. Ragn 1906-8 = Olsen 1906-8, 111-222.
7. Ragn 1985 = Örnólfur Thorsson 1985, 101-53.
8. Ragn 1891 = 2nd edn (pp. 175-224) of Ragn as ed. in Valdimar Ásmundarson 1885-9, I.