En þar upp
af altári
Kristi þæg
kerti brenna.
Svá hefr Ôleifr,
áðr andaðisk,
synðalauss
sôlu borgit.
En þar brenna kerti, þæg Kristi, upp af altári. Svá hefr synðalauss Ôleifr borgit sôlu, áðr andaðisk.
And there candles burn, acceptable to Christ, up from the altar. So has the sinless Óláfr saved his soul before he died.
[8] sôlu ‘his soul’: A loanword from OE (Fischer 1909, 25; AEW: sál). The verb bjarga takes the dat. in the sense ‘to save, help’ (Fritzner, CVC: bjarga); the dat. pl. reading sôlum in certain mss must mean that Óláfr has saved other people’s souls, rather than his own. As Magerøy (1948, 28) notes, the phrase bjarga slu also occurs in Hfr Lv 28/3, 4V (Hallfr 34) (along with the verb andask), referring to the skald’s own death.