Anon (Ragn) 5VIII (Ragn 35)/5 — við ‘with’
Alls engi sá ek yðvarn,
þar er upp lokinn fundum
Heilavá*g fyrir hvítum
hesti máva rastar.
Ok við lási lúðra
fyrir landi vér undum
hallar ríkri möllu
hrafns fyrir rauðum stafni.
Ek sá alls engi yðvarn, þar er fundum Heilavá*g upp lokinn fyrir hvítum hesti rastar máva. Ok við lási lúðra undum vér fyrir landi ríkri möllu hallar hrafns fyrir rauðum stafni.
I saw none of you at all where we found Heilavágr opened up before the white horse of the path of seagulls [SEA > SHIP]. And with our ships at anchor we took pleasure, offshore, in the mighty enclosure of the hall of the raven [CRAG > SEA] before the red prow.
notes
[5] við lási lúðra ‘with our ships at anchor’: Lit. ‘at the locking-up of floating vessels’. The basic meaning of lúðr m. appears to be ‘hollowed-out tree-trunk’, from which it develops varied meanings (so Kock NN §1468; Christiansen 1952, 102, 105-6), e.g. ‘wooden stand for a millstone; cylinder-shaped wind instrument; hollowed-out wooden container; cradle’ (Fritzner: lúðr). The first three of Fritzner’s meanings but not the fourth are accepted by Holtsmark (1946). An important and contentious occurrence of the word lúðr is in Vafþr 35/6 (NK 51), where it is said that the giant Bergelmir var á lúðr um lagiðr ‘was placed on a lúðr’. Snorri’s interpretation (in SnE 2005, 11, cf. 121) of the word, seemingly as an ark on which Bergelmir escaped drowning, is questioned by Holtsmark, following Fritzner, and she assumes the meaning ‘wind-instrument’ in the present context, proposing the emendation of lási m. dat. sg. to láti, dat. sg. of læti n. pl. ‘noise’, thus giving: við láti lúðra ‘to the sound of trumpets’. However, others have envisaged nautical associations in the Vafþr context. Christiansen (1952, 105) suggests, if not ‘boat’, then a bench within a boat on which the giant was laid. Olsen (1964, 16-17 and 17 n.) accepts the meaning ‘millstone stand’ in Vafþr, but suggests that the meaning there is that Bergelmir was placed on such a stand which was then placed on a ship and abandoned to the waves; he compares Baldr’s funeral ship (SnE 2005, 46) and Scyld Scefing’s abandonment to the waves as a child in Beowulf, ll. 6-7, 45-6. See further Lorenz (1984, 152-56). Discussing in relation to Scyld Scefing the word lúðr as used in Vafþr and by Snorri, Fulk (1989, 316, 318) grants it the meaning ‘floating vessel’. Taking into account the synecdochic tendency of much skaldic diction (not least where ships are concerned, see Lie 1952, 46-50; cf. Þul Skipa 1-10III and the first Note to 36/6, below), the present ed., with Kock (NN §1468), favours the meaning ‘ship’ for lúðr here.