Þjsk Lv 5I/6 — ǫldu ‘of the wave’
Hrollir hugr minn illa;
hefr drengr skaða fengit
sér * á sléttri eyri,
svarri, báts ok knarrar.
Enn, þeims upp réð brenna
ǫldu fíl fyr skaldi,
hverr veit, nema kol knarrar
kǫld fýsi mik gjalda?
Hugr minn hrollir illa; drengr hefr fengit sér * skaða báts ok knarrar á sléttri eyri, svarri. Enn hverr veit, nema kǫld kol knarrar fýsi mik gjalda þeims réð brenna upp fíl ǫldu fyr skaldi?
My mind shivers badly; the man has [I have] suffered damage to boat and ship on the level gravel-spit, lady. But who knows but that the cold coals of the ship might urge me to repay the one who had the elephant of the wave [SHIP] burned up [as an act] against the skald [me]?
notes
[6] fíl ǫldu ‘the elephant of the wave [SHIP]’: The word fíll ‘elephant’ is believed to be of ultimately Turkish or Persian origin (AEW: fíll). Elephants occur elsewhere in the skaldic corpus only in C13th poetry (LP: fíll), and this kenning may also be late (ÍF 9, xcviii). Ship-kennings with exotic animals as base-words are rare. The only other certain example is léon bôru ‘lion of the billow’, which is also from a stanza unique to ÞorlJ, but attributed to King Sveinn tjúguskegg (Svtjúg Lv 1/8; Arn Hryn 2/1II has an uncertain example). This could suggest that the two stanzas were composed by the same person, who was thus probably not Þorleifr (see also Almqvist 1965-74, I, 193, 198).
kennings
- fíl ǫldu — the elephant of the wave [SHIP]