Beatrice La Farge (ed.) 2017, ‘Ketils saga hœngs 26 (Ketill hœngr, Lausavísur 16)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 578.
Örum trúi ek mínum en þú afrendi þinni;
fleinn mun þér mæta, nema þú fyrir hrøkkvir.
Ek trúi örum mínum, en þú afrendi þinni; fleinn mun mæta þér, nema þú hrøkkvir fyrir.
‘I trust in my arrows, and you in your strength; a shaft will meet you, unless you give way before it.’
Ketill replies in prose to Forað’s threat by saying that such hostility is to be expected of her. She tries to capture him in her grasp, but Ketill utters this defiant stanza, asserting that he trusts in the efficacy of his weapons. The stanza is introduced by the words: Ketill kvað þá vísu ‘Then Ketill spoke a stanza’.
Ketill depicts the conflict between himself and Forað as a contest between his weapons and her physical strength. In a similar stanza at the close of the hostile exchange between Ketill’s son Grímr loðinkinna ‘Hairy-cheek’ and the giantesses Feima and Kleima (GrL 5), this contrast is expressed pregnantly as one between broddr ‘weapon-point’ and krumma ‘claw’; in both cases the hero’s weapons are the arrows known as Gusisnautar ‘Gusir’s gifts’ (see Note to l. 1).
Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.
Örum trúi ek mínum
en þú afli þínu;
fleinn mun þér mæta,
nema þú fyrir †hraukir†.
Örum trúi ek mínum
en þú afrendi þinni;
fleinn mun þér nú mæta,
nema þú fyrir hrøkkvir.
Aurum tru eg mýnum , enn þu affle þýnu , fle | iru mun þier mæta , nema þu fýrr hróckuer , |
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