Anon Líkn 36VII/3 — ljóss ‘radiant one’
Heims lézt verð ok virða
vegit gimsteinum fegra,
himna ljóss, í hvössum,
háleitr, friðar skálum.
Vág erat víst né frægri
(vétt sýnir þú rétta)
ófs til ýta gæfu
(alsetrs vera) betri.
Háleitr, ljóss himna, lézt vegit verð heims ok virða, fegra gimsteinum, í hvössum skálum friðar. Erat víst betri né frægri vág til ýta ófs gæfu; þú sýnir rétta vétt alsetrs vera.
High, radiant one of the heavens [CROSS], you weighed the price of the world and men, fairer than gems, in sharp scales of peace. Surely there is not a better or more famous balance for men’s bounteous good fortune; you show the just weight of the common seat of men [WORLD].
notes
[4, 3] háleitr ljóss himna ‘high, radiant one of the heavens [CROSS]’: Ljóss ‘radiant’ is here construed as a substantival adj., which with háleitr ‘high’ qualifies the 2nd pers. subject, deriving m. gender from implied kross ‘Cross’. LP (1860), construing a sun-kenning, renders the phrase alte in solem suspiciens ‘gazing [from -leitr] high toward the sun’. Skj B and Skald emend to n. háleitt ljós and combine the phrase with friðar ‘of peace’ (l. 4). Skj B (cf. LP: háleitr) then takes this to refer to God, but NN §1394 to the Cross as ‘peace-light of heaven’. (Using Skj B’s emended text, Guðrún Nordal 2001, 293 cites himna ljós ‘light of the heavens’ as the only time ljós occurs as a base-word in a kenning for Christ in C12th-C13th.)
kennings
- Háleitr, ljóss himna, — High, radiant one of the heavens, [CROSS]
grammar
case: nom.