Brýnd vôru dǫrr;
boga fylgði hǫrr;
sparn rastar knǫrr
rádýris vǫrr.
Dǫrr vôru brýnd; hǫrr fylgði boga; knǫrr rastar sparn vǫrr rádýris.
Spears were whetted; the bowstring went with the bow; the ship of the league [HORSE] pounded the wake of the roe-deer [LAND].
[4] vǫrr rádýris ‘the wake of the roe-deer [LAND]’: Vǫrr m. is ‘oar-stroke, wake’, hence ‘sea’ (LP: 2. vǫrr). Here it forms a land-kenning belonging to a rare but recognised pattern (see Meissner 87) in which the base-word refers to sea and the determinant to a land-animal, inverting the more common conceit of the sea as the land of sea-creatures. As a further complication, the determinant rá, taken as normalised rô f., could be the word for ‘sailyard’ and hence rôdýri ‘sailyard-animal’ could be a kenning for ‘ship’. Thus the underlying image is comparable with knǫrr rastar ‘ship of the league [HORSE]’ (l. 3), and the two kennings form a harmonised metaphorical scheme, but both with a slight twist back in a maritime direction. For a similar kenning, see Eil Þdr 6/4 ver gaupu ‘sea of the lynx [MOUNTAINS]’.
case: acc.