Sigv Austv 1I/3 — þolða ‘endured’
Hugstóra biðk heyra
hressfœrs jǫfurs, þessar
— þolðak vás — hvé vísur,
verðung, of fǫr gerðak.
Sendr vask upp af ǫndrum
austr (svafk fátt í hausti)
til Svíþjóðar (síðan)
svanvangs í fǫr langa.
Biðk hugstóra verðung hressfœrs jǫfurs heyra, hvé gerðak þessar vísur of fǫr; þolðak vás. Vask sendr upp af ǫndrum svanvangs í langa fǫr austr til Svíþjóðar; svafk fátt síðan í hausti.
I ask the mighty-hearted retinue of the energetic ruler [Óláfr] to hear how I composed these verses about a journey; I endured hardship. I was sent up from the skis of the swan-plain [SEA > SHIPS] on a long journey east to Sweden; I slept little after that in the autumn.
readings
[3] þolðak (‘þolða ec’): þolða Bb
notes
[3] þolðak vás ‘I endured hardship’: The word vás may, as frequently, have the more specific sense of ‘wetness, bad weather’ (cf. st. 9/3 and Note). The present construal is preferable from a syntactic point of view, and is favoured in several eds (from Ternström 1871 to Hkr 1991), though it seems to produce the sense that what Sigvatr proposes to relate is how he composed the verses, rather than the hardships of the journey, as might have been expected. This is presumably the reason that Skj B takes hvé þolðak vás ‘how I endured hardship’ as the clausal object of heyra ‘hear’. However, this produces a ‘syntactic monster’ (so Kock, NN §624), with two sentence elements, including the verb þolðak ‘I endured’, preceding the conj. hvé ‘how’.