ÚlfrU Húsdr 6III/8 — svá ‘Thus’
Fullǫflugr lét fellir
fjall-Gauts hnefa skjalla
— ramt mein vas þat — reyni
reyrar leggs við eyra.
Víðgymnir laust Vimrar
vaðs af frônum naðri
hlusta grunn við hrǫnnum.
Hlaut innan svá minnum.
Fullǫflugr fellir fjall-Gauts lét hnefa skjalla við eyra reyni leggs reyrar; þat vas ramt mein. Víðgymnir vaðs Vimrar laust grunn hlusta af frônum naðri við hrǫnnum. Hlaut svá innan minnum.
The most powerful killer of the mountain-Gautr <man of the Gautar> [GIANT > = Þórr] let his fist slam against the ear of the tester of the bone of the reed [STONE > GIANT]; that was a mighty injury. The Víðgymnir <giant> of the ford of Vimur <river> [= Þórr] struck the ground of the ears [HEAD] off the gleaming serpent near the waves. Thus [the hall] received [decoration] inside with memorable pictures.
notes
[8] hlaut svá innan minnum ‘thus [the hall] received [decoration] inside with memorable pictures’: This clause, which reappears in st. 10/4, is the poem’s refrain (stef). It refers to the images that inspired the poem, but as it stands, it is problematic for several reasons. The subject is missing, and minnum (dat. pl.) cannot be the object of hlaut, because hljóta is construed with the acc. (see the examples in Fritzner: hljóta). Faulkes (SnE 1998, II, 313) translates the phrase as ‘come to be decorated (with)’, and notes that it is ‘probably only half the refrain, which would then have been a klofastef ‘split refrain’; the rest of the sentence, including the object, would have appeared in the last line of another (lost) stanza’. If so, the sentence can be completed as follows: ‘Thus [the hall] received [decoration] inside with memorable pictures’. Faulkes’ suggestion is plausible, and it is supported by a similar construction in Edáð BanddrI, where the finite verb occurs in position 1 of the first line but the corresponding subject is suspended until the next stef-line (cf. Note to Edáð Banddr 9/1, 2I and NN §1853A).