ǪrvOdd Lv 18VIII (Ǫrv 51)/3 — við ‘with’
Sjólfr, vartu eigi Sámseyju í,
þar er við Hjörvarð höggum skiptum.
Tveir váru vit, en þeir tólf saman;
sigr hafða ek; saztu kyrr meðan.
Sjólfr, vartu eigi í Sámseyju, þar er skiptum höggum við Hjörvarð. Váru vit tveir, en þeir tólf saman; ek hafða sigr; saztu kyrr meðan.
Sjólfr, you were not on Samsø, where we exchanged blows with Hjǫrvarðr. We were two, but they [were] twelve together; I had the victory; you stayed quiet in the meanwhile.
readings
[3] við: vit 344a, 343a, 471, 173ˣ
notes
[3] við Hjörvarð ‘with Hjǫrvarðr’: The reading of 7, taking við as a prep. ‘against, with’ plus acc. (though in this sense the dat. is more common) rather than as the dual 2nd pers. pron. vit ‘we two’ of the majority of mss plus the nom. sg. Hjörvarðr, the reading only of 471 and 173ˣ. Skj B and Skald adopt vit Hjǫrvarðr in the sense ‘Hjǫrvarðr and I [exchanged blows]’, while Ǫrv 1888 and 1892 have the same reading as the present edn. The prose text of Ǫrv does not support the notion of a duel between Oddr and Hjǫrvarðr, the second of the berserk brothers after the eldest, Angantýr, but it is possible that an earlier version of the legend had Hjǫrvarðr rather than Angantýr as the original rival with Hjálmarr for the hand of the daughter of the Swedish king.