Arn Magndr 18II/7 — ert ‘with a spirited’
Enn rauð frôn á Fjóni
— fold sótti gramr dróttar —
— ráns galt herr frá hônum —
hringserks lituðr merki.
Minnisk ǫld, hverr annan
jafnþarfr blôum hrafni
— ert gat hilmir hjarta —
herskyldir tøg fylldi.
Enn rauð lituðr hringserks frôn merki á Fjóni; gramr dróttar sótti fold; herr galt ráns frá hônum. Ǫld minnisk, hverr herskyldir fylldi annan tøg jafnþarfr blôum hrafni; hilmir gat ert hjarta.
Further, the painter of the mail-shirt [WARRIOR] reddened bright banners on Fyn; the retinue’s lord attacked the land; the people paid [dearly] for their robbery of him. Let men recall which troop-commander [RULER] has lived out his second decade equally generous to the dark raven; the sovereign was endowed with a spirited heart.
readings
[7] ert: ǫrt F, E, J2ˣ, H, Hr, Flat, snart FskBˣ
notes
[7] ert ‘spirited’: (a) The spelling ert occurs again in the text of Arn Hardr 15/5 in mss Mork, H and Hr (with the variant ‘aurtt’, normalised ǫrt, in Flat), but not in any of the very numerous citations listed under ǫrr in LP. The prose lexicons, too, completely lack any record of an adj. err, although the similar forms ern and errinn are known, both meaning ‘brisk, bold’. Err could perhaps be an independent form which, like them, has a different etymology to ǫrr (see AEW on these words), but which has escaped the lexicographers’ notice because it has been ‘normalised’ to ǫrr. (b) The variant ‘avrt’ is n. sg. nom./acc. of the familiar adj. ǫrr ‘ready, bold, generous’, and the collocation with ‘heart’ is matched in Þorm Lv 23a/1V = Lv 23b/1I Ǫrt vas leifs hjarta ‘Bold was Óláfr’s heart’. Ert could simply be a graphic variant of this since <e/ø> and <ø/ǫ> are common doublets, and noun err occurs as a variant of ørr ‘scar’ (Fritzner IV: err).