‘Ríða vit skulum,’ kvað in ríkja Skǫgul,
‘grœna heima goða,
Óðni at segja, at nú mun allvaldr koma
á hann sjalfan at séa.’
‘Vit skulum ríða,’ kvað in ríkja Skǫgul, ‘grœna heima goða, at segja Óðni, at nú mun allvaldr koma at séa á hann sjalfan.’
‘We two shall ride,’ said the mighty Skǫgul, ‘through the green abodes of the gods, to say to Óðinn that now a supreme ruler will come to look on him in person.’
[3] grœna heima ‘through the green abodes’: Plural because the gods are said, in Grí (passim) and Gylf (SnE 2005, 19), to inhabit many abodes within Ásgarðr (Krause 1990, 99). The ms. evidence, though it is hardly conclusive, favours the acc. here. Very many eds read gen. pl. grœnna heima with F, with the same meaning (e.g. Munch and Unger 1847, 116, Skj B and Skald; see also Noreen 1921, 56). But the acc. may be used with normally intransitive verbs of motion to express the ideas ‘to’ and ‘through’ (Nygaard in NS §§95-6, though Nygaard himself cites this passage in evidence of the gen. construction, §141).