Anon Krm 13VIII/4 — fyrir ‘off’
Hjuggu vér með hjörvi.
Heldum Lakkar tjöldum
hátt at Hildar leiki
fyrir Hjaðningavági.
Sjá knáttu þá seggir,
er sundruðum skjöldu
at hræsíldar hjaldri,
hjálm slitnaðan gotna.
Varat, sem bjarta brúði
í bing hjá sér leggja.
Hjuggu vér með hjörvi. Heldum tjöldum Lakkar hátt at leiki Hildar fyrir Hjaðningavági. Seggir knáttu þá sjá hjálm gotna slitnaðan, er sundruðum skjöldu at hjaldri hræsíldar. Varat, sem leggja bjarta brúði í bing hjá sér.
We hewed with the sword. We held high the canopies of Hlǫkk <valkyrie> [SHIELDS] in the game of Hildr <valkyrie> [BATTLE] off Hjaðningavágr. Men could then see [many a] helmet of warriors broken when we sundered shields in the conflict of the corpse-herring [SPEAR]. It was not like placing a fair maiden in a bed beside one.
readings
[4] fyrir: ‘(fyrir)’(?) 147
notes
[4] fyrir Hjaðningavági ‘off Hjaðningavágr’: According to LP: Hjaðningavágr, the location of this place, lit. ‘the bay of Heðinn’s followers’, is uncertain, men rimeligvis tænkt i vesten ‘but probably thought of as in the west’, which presumably means somewhere west of mainland Scandinavia, i.e. somewhere in the British Isles. The location in the present instance is almost certainly somewhere in the Orkneys, since according to one version of the legend of the Hjaðningavíg ‘the battle of Heðinn’s followers’, as related in Skm (SnE 1998, I, 72) (cf. st. 4, first Note to l. 2 and st. 10, Note to l. 7), it is to the Orkneys, and specifically to the island of Hoy (ON Háey), that Hǫgni pursues Heðinn, the abductor of his daughter Hildr, and where the everlasting fight between Hǫgni and Heðinn, instigated by Hildr, takes place. The frequency in Krm, always in a battle-context, of the noun hildr (sts 10/2, 13/3, 14/7, 21/4, 26/4), whether understood as a pers. n. or as a common noun meaning ‘battle’, the oblique reference to Hildr in the kenning kván Heðins ‘woman of Heðinn’ in st. 4/2, and the occurrence of the name Hǫgni in the armour-kenning in st. 10/7, all suggest that the legend of the Hjaðningavíg was known to the poet of Krm, and that it is indeed a location in the Orkneys that is envisaged here. Less likely is the apparent suggestion in CPB (CPB II, 342) of the Baltic island of Heðinsey (Hiddensee), another possible location of the everlasting battle, mentioned e.g. in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum (Saxo 2015, I, v. 9. 1, pp. 330-3), cf. Vǫls ch. 9 (Vǫls 1965, 15-16).