SnSt Ht 67III/4 — sex ‘six’
Ortak ǫld at minnum,
þás alframast vissak,
of siklinga snjalla
með sex tøgum hátta.
Sízt hafa veg né vellum,
es virðan mik létu,
á aldinn mar orpit
— þats oss frami — jǫfrar.
Ortak at minnum ǫld með sex tøgum hátta of snjalla siklinga, þás vissak alframast. Sízt hafa jǫfrar orpit veg né vellum á aldinn mar, es létu mik virðan; þats oss frami.
I have composed, as memorials for men, with sixty verse-forms about the wise rulers, whom I knew to be by far the most outstanding. Least of all have the princes thrown either esteem or gold into the ancient sea when they let me be honoured; that is for us [me] a glory.
notes
[4] með sex tøgum hátta ‘with sixty verse-forms’: This is the sixty-seventh stanza of Ht, but Snorri clearly did not regard sts 1-8 as individual verse-forms since these are illustrating rhetorical and metrical features that are licensed in regular dróttkvætt (SnE 2007, 29): Nú eru saman settir í tveim kvæðum sex tigir hátta ok um fram þær átta greinir er fyrst er skipat <í> dróttkvæðum hætti með málsgreinum þeim er fylgja hættinum, ok eru þessir hættir allir vel fallnir til at yrkja kvæði eptir ef vill ‘Now sixty verse-forms have been composed in two poems, and, in addition, those eight variants into which the dróttkvætt metre was arranged at the beginning according to the distinction of language which characterises the verse-forms, and all these verse-forms are suitable for poetic composition if one wishes to do that’. See also SnE 2007, 67.