Ólsv Kristdr 2III/4 — merkja ‘to mark’
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
[4] merkja ‘to mark’: Merkja is taken here (with SnE 1848-87 and Skj B) as a verb (‘mark’). Kock (NN §1333) treats this as a noun ‘of the stars’, gen. pl., qualifying aldir (aldir merkja ‘the ages of the stars’). According to that interpretation, the first clause would be construed as gaft tungl, talið dœgr, megin lœgis, aldir merkja ‘you gave celestial bodies, the number of days and nights, the power of the sea, the ages of the stars’. Aside from the fact that it is difficult to see what ‘(you gave) the ages of the stars’ would mean, it is out of keeping with Old Norse cosmology, which was very much preoccupied with computation (see Note to [All] above, as well as Clunies Ross and Gade 2012).