Eskál Vell 6I/7 — jǫfra ‘of rulers’
Ok oddneytir úti
eiðvandr flota breiðan
glaðr í Gǫndlar veðrum
— gramr svafði bil — hafði.
Ok rauðmána reynir
rógsegl Heðins bóga
upp hóf jǫfra kappi
etjulund at setja.
Ok eiðvandr oddneytir, glaðr í veðrum Gǫndlar, hafði breiðan flota úti; gramr svafði bil. Ok reynir rauðmána bóga Heðins hóf upp rógsegl kappi jǫfra at setja etjulund.
And the oath-true arrow-user [WARRIOR], glad in the winds of Gǫndul <valkyrie> [BATTLES], had a great fleet out at sea; the ruler ended delay. And the tester of the red moon of the arm of Heðinn <legendary hero> [SHIELD > WARRIOR] raised the strife-sail [SHIELD] with the vigour of rulers to calm the spirit of aggression.
notes
[7] kappi jǫfra ‘with the vigour of rulers’: (a) This edn, with almost all others, takes the dat. kappi ‘with vigour’ with the verb hóf upp ‘raised’. Kappi is interpreted as an instr. dat. or dat. of manner, of which there are prose examples involving abstract nouns (NS §110), though these normally occur in specific circumstances which are not precisely matched here. The jǫfra (gen. pl.) ‘rulers’ are unidentified but could be Hákon’s supporters, or jǫfra could be an adjectival gen., ‘lordly’, as jarla seems to be in Arn Mdr 5/1II orðgnótt jarla ‘lordly wealth of words’. (b) Jǫfra could be taken with etjulund, but this entails separating jǫfra and kappi, which are consecutive and form a natural phrasal unit. (c) In order to avoid such separation, Kock (NN §1826) takes kappi as a variation of etjulund ‘inclination for strife’, both being dat. objects of setja in the sense ‘to settle, calm, allay’. However, the suggestion is unconvincing because apposition like this is rare in skaldic style (tellingly Kock only produces WGmc parallels). Moreover, Kock claims setja máli as a parallel, but that means ‘to settle a dispute’ (Fritzner: setja 4), whereas here setja would mean ‘to calm an emotion’ (Fritzner: setja 5), and would be construed with the acc.