Note to Anon Krm 29VIII
[All]: This stanza resembles st. 23 in consisting of only eight lines, but differs from it, as well as from all other stanzas in Krm, in not beginning with a refrain in the first line. While in the case of st. 23 it is conceivable that two lines were lost in the course of the poem’s transmission, this is less likely to be the case here. There is a certain dramatic appropriateness in the absence of the refrain from this, the final stanza of the poem. Up to this point the speaker has been mainly concerned with events of the past, something reinforced by the pret. tense of the refrain Hjuggu vér með hjörvi ‘We hewed with the sword’, and also by the fact that in the penultimate stanza, st. 28, he looks back for the last time on his career in claiming to have taken part in fifty-one battles. Now, however, in the final stanza, his mind is on the future: on the drinking of ale after death in Valhǫll, to which the dísir are inviting him.