Sigv Erlfl 10I/5 — sóknir ‘onslaughts’
Erlingi varð engi
annarr lendra manna,
ǫrr sás átti fleiri
orrostur stoð þorrinn.
Þrek bar seggr við sóknir
sinn, þvít fyrst gekk innan,
mildr, í marga hildi,
mest, en ór á lesti.
Varð engi lendra manna annarr Erlingi, sás ǫrr, þorrinn stoð, átti fleiri orrostur. Mildr seggr bar mest þrek sinn við sóknir, þvít gekk fyrst innan í marga hildi, en ór á lesti.
There was no-one among district chieftains other than Erlingr, who, bold, deprived of support, held more battles. The generous man deployed his stamina to the utmost in onslaughts, because he went first into many a fight, and out as the last.
readings
[5] við sóknir: so Holm2, R686ˣ, J1ˣ, J2ˣ, 325VI, 73aˣ, 78aˣ, 75c, Bb(130va), 61(70rb), 53, 54, 325VIII 2 g, Bb(104rb), til sóknar Kˣ, at sinni 325V
notes
[5-6] bar ... þrek sinn við sóknir ‘deployed his stamina ... in onslaughts’: Við sóknir ‘in onslaughts’ is preferred here, as the reading of the overwhelming majority of mss; the verb bar is here understood in the sense of ‘possess a quality’ (LP: bera 9; Fritzner: bera 10), hence ‘deploy’. The reading of the main ms., til sóknar ‘into the onslaught’, makes sense if we understand bera to mean ‘carry’, so that Erlingr ‘carried his stamina to battle’ (similarly Hkr 1991).