Tveir, hykk, at ber bæri
beitnôrungar — heitnu
stund esa lífs á landi
lǫng — meðal sín á stǫngu.
Þat kníðu ber báðir
— bergr oss trúa — á krossi
— svá hefr aldin goð goldit —
Gýðingr ok heiðingi.
Hykk, at tveir beitnôrungar bæri ber meðal sín á stǫngu; stund esa lǫng á heitnu landi lífs. Báðir, Gýðingr ok heiðingi, kníðu þat ber á krossi; trúa bergr oss; svá hefr goð goldit aldin.
I believe that two ship-nourishers [SEAFARERS] carried the grape between them on a pole; time is not long in the promised land of life. Both, the Jew and the heathen, oppressed that grape on the cross; faith saves us; thus God has repaid the fruit.
[6] trúa ‘faith’: The prep. that follows the noun, á ‘on’, is given in W, but not in A, and it looks as though the phrase trúa á krossi was reanalysed in A as trúa krossi. The line is highly unusual metrically, with elision across a sentence boundary in a Type D-line (cf. Kuhn 1983, 70-2). The A version avoids that, but it is difficult to make sense of syntactically unless krossi is taken as an instr. dat. (kníði krossi ‘oppressed with the cross’) or alternatively as a dat. of place, which is very rare (see NS §117).