Fylkir lét in fljótu
flaust, es leið at hausti;
skaut í haf, þars heitir
Hrafnseyrr, konungr stafni.
Trôðu borðveg breiðan;
brimsgangr skipa langra
óðr fell sær of súðir.
Sik beztan gram miklu.
Fylkir lét in fljótu flaust, es leið at hausti; konungr skaut stafni í haf, þars heitir Hrafnseyrr. Trôðu breiðan borðveg; brimsgangr, óðr sær, fell of súðir langra skipa. …Sik beztan gram miklu….
The lord set the swift ships in motion when it drew close to autumn; the king pushed the prow out to sea at the place called Ravenseer. [The ships] trod on the broad gunwale-road [SEA]; the rough sea, the raging ocean, poured over the sides of the long ships. …Himself [to be] the very best ruler….
[1] lét ‘set in motion’: For láta (lét 3rd pers. sg. pret. indic.) in the meaning ‘set (a ship) in motion’, see Fritzner: ‘láta 5. Skj B connects lét with í haf ‘out to sea’ (l. 3) ‘set out to sea’, but the resulting w. o. (a tripartite l.) is not attested otherwise (see NN §806, 880). To avoid treating láta as a full verb, Kock (NN §888; Skald) emends in fljótu (n. acc. pl.) ‘the swift’ to enn fljóta (adv. + inf.) ‘again float’ and reads fylkir lét enn flaust fljóta ‘the lord again let the ships float’. Aside from the emendations, it is unlikely that the adv. enn ‘yet’, which falls in a dip, would be stressed less strongly than the auxiliary lét ‘let’ in the preceding lift.