[7-8] oft verðr örgum vant eins á tög ‘the wicked one often lacks one from ten’: Guðbrandur Vigfússon (CPB II, 610) explains this as a proverb: ‘… nineteen is a favourite number in popular tales; a dangerous river has just taken ‘nineteen’ victims, and is waiting for the last; Mount Hecla has had ‘nineteen’ eruptions, and the like’. The ‘wicked one’ most likely refers to Satan here although örgum (nom. argr ‘wicked, cowardly’) could also be dat. pl. Amory (1973, 4) paraphrases this as ‘with cowards there is always one missing out of every ten men’.