Þjóð Yt 5I/6 — af ‘away from’
Hitt vas fyrr,
at fold ruðu
sverðberendr
sínum dróttni.
Ok landherr
af lífsvǫnum
dreyrug vôpn
Dómalda bar,
þás árgjǫrn
Jóta dolgi
Svía kind
of sóa skyldi.
Hitt vas fyrr, at sverðberendr ruðu fold dróttni sínum. Ok landherr bar dreyrug vôpn af lífsvǫnum Dómalda, þás árgjǫrn kind Svía skyldi of sóa dolgi Jóta.
It happened earlier that the sword-bearers [WARRIORS] reddened the ground with [the blood of] their leader. And the army of the land bore bloody weapons away from the lifeless Dómaldi when the race of the Swedes, eager for good harvests, had to sacrifice the enemy of the Jótar [= Dómaldi].
readings
[6] af: so J2ˣ, R685ˣ, á Kˣ, 521ˣ, F, 761aˣ, om. papp18ˣ
notes
[6, 8] af lífsvǫnum Dómalda ‘away from the lifeless Dómaldi’: (a) The reading af ‘from, of’ (J2ˣ, R685ˣ) is adopted in this edn, as in most eds. (b) Á ‘on, upon, to, towards’ (Kˣ, F, 761aˣ) would imply that the king was already dead when the warriors raised their weapons against him. Konráð Gíslason (1881, 217-18) assumes the idiomatic expression bera vápn á e-n ‘raise arms against sby’ and counters the objection that the weapons were already dreyrug ‘bloody’ (l. 7) by asserting that this is a descriptive epithet based on the associative link between blood and weapons (and a similar epithet occurs in st. 11/6).