Eigi sátuð, jöfra hneitir
ættumgóðr, at rofnar sættir
— stirðan bjoggu hirðmenn harðir
herskips streng — í kyrðum lengi.
Mætum helt fyrir Elfi útan
— auðit léztu flotnum dauða —
— nauða vissu nýjar súðir —
Norðmanna gramr fýriborðum.
Eigi sátuð lengi í kyrðum, ættumgóðr hneitir jöfra, at rofnar sættir; harðir hirðmenn bjoggu stirðan streng herskips. Gramr Norðmanna helt mætum fýriborðum fyrir útan Elfi; léztu flotnum auðit dauða; nýjar súðir vissu nauða.
You did not sit long in quiet, high-born striker of princes [RULER], with the truces broken; the tough retainers readied the hard anchor rope of the warship. The ruler of the Norwegians [= Hákon] directed the splendid fir-planks off the Götaälv; you decreed death for the men; the new plankings experienced hardship.
[8] fýriborðum: so E, 304ˣ, borðum þannig F, fyri skeiðar borðum 81a, þar fyri borðum Flat
[8] fýriborðum ‘fir-planks’: The reading fyri in E, 81a, 304ˣ and Flat is abbreviated so it could be expanded as fyrir ‘before, off’, which would be hard to fit into the prose w. o., but fýriborð ‘fir-planks’ is certainly a likely reading, as Konráð Gíslason (1895-7, I, 71-2) pointed out, and it has been adopted by both Finnur Jónsson and Kock (Skj B; Skald). The variant in F, þannig borðum ‘thus the planks’, gives the following reading of ll. 5, 8: Gramr Norðmanna helt þannig mætum borðum fyrir útan Elfi ‘The ruler of the Norwegians directed thus the splendid planks off the Götaälv’. That reading produces an extra internal rhyme on two stressed syllables: Norð- : borð- and manna : þannig, and the other ms. witnesses show that it is secondary (lectio facilior). The scribe of 81a adds skeiðar ‘warship’s’ but this makes the l. hypermetrical.