Sat ek á segli, sá ek dauða menn
blóðshol* bera í börk viðar.
Heiðrekr konungr, hyggðu at gátu.
Ek sat á segli, ek sá dauða menn bera blóðshol* í börk viðar. Heiðrekr konungr, hyggðu at gátu.
I sat on a sail, I saw dead men carry a blood vessel into the bark of a tree. King Heiðrekr, think about the riddle.
[2] dauða menn ‘dead men’: The homonym valr means both ‘the slain’ (‘dead men’) and ‘falcon’. Anon Gát 1/4III, a riddle referring to several different types of birds, uses eggdauða menn ‘men killed by the sword’ (lit. ‘sword-edge-dead men’) for valr, giving a more exact synonym for ‘slain’. AM 738 4toˣ, which has a copy of Heiðr’s riddles stemming indirectly from 2845 and is without independent value (Heiðr 1924, xv), reads ‘eggdauda’ for dauða (86r); this is less good metrically in the present context (cf. Heiðr 1873, 261 n. 3).