ǪrvOdd Ævdr 9VIII (Ǫrv 79)/8 — Tyrfi ‘Ter’
Váru hoskir á herskipum
frændr mínir tveir at forráði.
Vildu hásetar hoskir eignaz
tak, þat er áttu Tyrfifinnar.
Mínir tveir frændr váru hoskir at forráði á herskipum. Hoskir hásetar vildu eignaz tak, þat er Tyrfifinnar áttu.
My two kinsmen were wise in their captaincy on the warships. The wise oarsmen wanted to get their hands on the possessions that the Ter-Saami owned.
readings
[8] Tyrfi‑: so 471, 173ˣ, ‘tyfvi’ 343a
notes
[8] Tyrfifinnar ‘the Ter-Saami’: Name for a group of Saami hunter-gatherers living in the Kola peninsula. The word is nowhere else recorded in Old Norse, but it occurs in Old English as Terfinnas, the name for a group of inhabitants of this region, according to the witness of the trader Ohthere (ON Óttarr), who distinguished the Terfinnas from the Beormas because the former lived by hunting, fishing and bird-catching, whereas the Beormas had extensive settlements (Lund 1984, 19; Ross 1981, 24-8). The first element tyrfi- is probably derived by folk etymology from the noun torf ‘turf’, but is likely to come from the old Saami name for the Kola Peninsula, Ter or Tre (but see AEW: Tyrfifinnar for different possible etymologies).