Stefjum verðr at stæla brag,
— stuttligt hefk á kvæði lag —
ella mun þat þykkja þula
þannig nær, sem ek henda mula.
Ekki var þat forðum farald;
Finnan gat þó œrðan Harald;
hánum þótti sólbjǫrt sú;
slíks dœmi verðr mǫrgum nú.
Verðr at stæla brag stefjum – hefk stuttligt lag á kvæði –, ella mun þat þykkja þula, þannig nær, sem ek henda mula. Ekki var þat farald forðum; Finnan gat þó Harald œrðan; hánum þótti sú sólbjǫrt; mǫrgum verðr nú dœmi slíks.
Poetry has to be fitted with refrains – I have an abrupt verse-form in this poem – else it will seem a rigamarole, almost as if I were grabbing at crumbs. It wasn’t a malady in the old days; still, the Saami girl drove Haraldr out of his mind; to him she seemed bright as the sun; instances of such happen to many now.
[5] farald ‘a malady’: Only here in poetry (AEW: farald). The rhyme farald : Harald might not have struck that king as comic. The word farald (n.) is a cognate of OE færeld ‘journey, course, passage’, and must originally have meant ‘that which travels around’ (cf. ON landfarasótt ‘plague, typhus’, lit. ‘illness that spreads throughout the land’). See also Heggstad et al. 2008: farald 1-2. For lovesickness as a decease, see Wack (1990).