Þloft Glækv 8I/4 — gangi ‘access’
Þar kømr herr,
es heilagr es
konungr sjalfr,
krýpr at gangi.
En beiðendr
blindir sœkja
þjóðir máls,
en þaðan heilir.
Herr kømr þar, es heilagr konungr sjalfr es, krýpr at gangi. En þjóðir, beiðendr máls, blindir, sœkja, en þaðan heilir.
A host comes there, where the holy king himself is, [and] bows down for access. And people, petitioners for speech [and] the blind, make their way [there], and [go] from there whole.
readings
[4] gangi: ‘gangni’ 39, gagni 325VI, 321ˣ, 61, 325VII, Flat, Tóm
notes
[4] gangi ‘access’: Although gangi is the minority form, it is found in the two most authoritative mss, Kˣ and Holm2; most mss read gagni ‘gain, benefit’ (and indeed Skj B, Skald and ÍF 27 all print gagni). Gangi supplies less obvious sense than gagni when preceded by krýpr at ‘bows down for/to’. However, it can be construed, as here, as dat. sg. of gang n. ‘way, access’ (Fritzner: gang) or of gangr m. ‘motion, course’, perhaps referring to the suppliants’ approach to the shrine. Magerøy (1948, 29), preferring gangr ‘motion’, assumes at has a purposive sense here (cf. ONP: at I.D.17), in a miraculous paradox: the people bow down in order to be able to walk, making the healing of the lame a parallel to the healing of the blind and dumb in the second helmingr. The purposive sense of at is retained in this edn, but gang ‘way, access’ preferred as the object.