Ólsv Kristdr 2III/2 — lœgis ‘of the sea’
Tungl gaft, tryggvinr engla,
talið dœgr megin lœgis,
— fekk hlýrnir stað stjǫrnum —
sterkr, ok aldir merkja.
Sterkr tryggvinr engla, gaft tungl merkja talið dœgr, megin lœgis ok aldir; hlýrnir fekk stjǫrnum stað.
Powerful faithful friend of angels [= God], you gave celestial bodies to mark the number of days and nights, the power of the sea and the ages; the sky found a place for the stars.
notes
[2] megin lœgis ‘the power of the sea’: Both mss have ‘meger’, i.e. megir m. nom. pl. ‘sons’, which makes no sense syntactically. The reading was undoubtedly introduced by the compiler of this section of LaufE (or its exemplar), based on the assumption that megir lœgis ‘sons of the sea’ was a kenning for ‘men’ (cf. Context to st. 1 above). The emendation is in keeping with earlier eds. Megin ‘power’ also occurs in Vsp 5/9-10 (NK 2): máni þat né vissi, | hvat hann megins átti ‘the moon did not know what power it had’. It is not immediately clear what the creation of celestial bodies had to do with the power of the sea, but it probably refers to high and low tide, phenomena caused by the gravitational forces of the heavenly bodies and the earth’s rotation (see Clunies Ross and Gade 2012, 202).