SigHálf Lv 1VIII (Hrólf 1)/3 — lundar ‘trees <men>’
Öll er orðin ætt Skjöldunga
lofðungs lundar at limum einum.
Bræðr sá ek mína á berum sitja
en Sævils rekka á söðluðum.
Öll ætt Skjöldunga, lundar lofðungs, er orðin at limum einum. Bræðr mína sá ek sitja á berum en rekka Sævils á söðluðum.
All the family of the Skjǫldungar, the princely trees <men>, have become branches only. My brothers I saw riding bareback, but Sævill’s men on saddled [horses].
notes
[3] lundar ‘trees <men>’: Marked as corrupt in CPB II, 361, but taken in the translation there as a nom. pl. (‘branches’, with limum einum translated as ‘mere shrub twigs’). It is understood in a similar way in NN §116, where Kock rejects Lundar, the reading in Skj B (Skjoldungernes, Lunds-kongens, hele slægt ‘the Skjǫldungs’, the Lund-king’s, whole family’), on grounds of the parallelism of lundar lofðungs and ætt Skjǫldunga, and the suitability of connecting an ambiguous lundar ‘trees, men’ with limum ‘branches’; Kock defends lundar as a kenning base-word without a determinant. This view is adopted here, and lundar is taken as nom. pl., in preference to taking it as a gen. sg., ‘all the family of the princely tree of the Skjǫldungar’. In either case the general meaning, that the (male) Skjǫldungar have been reduced to two mere boys, strictly viewed, is at odds with the prose of the saga, in which, as in other Scandinavian sources but not in the Old English tradition, Fróði too is a Skjǫldungr, the brother of Hálfdan. — [3] lundar lofðungs ‘the princely trees <men>’: Lit. ‘the prince’s trees’.