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skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Gestumbl Heiðr 35VIII (Heiðr 82)/2 — dauða ‘dead’

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.

notes

[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).

grammar

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