[All]: The helmingr poses some difficulties of interpretation and has been the subject of a number of conjectural emendations. The first problem is that the scribe of W has left a gap in l. 2 between ór and sútir, making it difficult to understand how sútir fits into the syntax of ll. 1-3. Presumably the scribe was unsure of the line himself and intended to check what the word should be, but forgot to do so. SnE 1848-87 followed Árni Magnússon in 761aˣ(93v) in reversing the ms. order of the words ‘svtir’ and ‘bęvm’ to give two regular lines. út ór bæjum sútir | þvíat hyrr á havvi … Both Sveinbjörn Egilsson (SnE 1848-87, III, 153) and Árni Magnússon (the latter apparently rather than explicitly) understood the ms.’s ‘havvi’ (l. 3) as a form of the noun hǫfuð (Sveinbjörn citing a Norwegian form håve) and regarded sútir (l. 2), i.e. svítir, as another form of sveitir ‘groups, bands [of men]’. If ‘svtir’ is not regarded as a form of sveitir, it must be construed, as Finnur Jónsson (Skj B), Kock (Skald), Björn Magnússon Ólsen (FoGT 1884, 240), Longo (FoGT 2004, 87) and this edn have done, as the nom. or acc. pl. of the f. noun sút ‘sorrow, grief, sickness’.