Arn Þorfdr 19II/8 — of ‘about’
Ek em, síz ýtar hnekkðu
jarla sætt, es vættik,
— jǫfn fengusk hræ hrǫfnum —
hegju trauðr at segja.
Sleit fyr eyjar útan
allvaldr blôu tjaldi;
hafði hreggsvǫl dúfa
hrími fezk of líma.
Ek em trauðr at segja hegju, síz ýtar hnekkðu sætt jarla, es vættik; jǫfn hræ fengusk hrǫfnum. Allvaldr sleit blôu tjaldi fyr útan eyjar; hreggsvǫl dúfa hafði fezk hrími of líma.
I am loath to speak of events, since men thwarted the truce between the jarls, as I anticipated; from both sides alike flesh was found for ravens. The mighty ruler wore to shreds the dark awnings out beyond the islands; the snow-cold billow had fastened itself in frost about the mast.
notes
[8] of líma ‘about the mast’: (a) Lími ‘rod, twig, broom’ here probably has the sense ‘mast’ (so also Finnbogi Guðmundsson, ÍF 34), just as vǫndr can mean ‘twig, rod’ and ‘mast’ and indeed is used by Arnórr in this sense in Hryn 4/5; cf. also laukr ‘leek, upright plant, mast’. The resulting image of sea-spray frosting the mast is entirely credible and finds approximate parallels in OE poetry (Whaley 1998, 306). (b) Björn Magnússon Ólsen (1909a, 300-1) suggested that lími shares with vǫndr another meaning: the stripe or coloured decoration on a sail, or here on the ship’s awnings. He reads líma blu tjaldi ‘the decoration of the dark awnings’ together as object to ‘the wave had thickly encrusted with frost’. But this assumes tjaldi to be a poss. dat., which is otherwise very unusual when the possessor is an inanimate object. (The parallels cited by Björn, in NS §100 anm. 3, are not close.)