With shields did the light-sister of Ella
[queen of England?] deprive nations of lands.
A horrible waterfall of missiles flew from
the elm-trees [bows] in the field of shields
[battle] when the fierce grandmother of
William [Elizabeth] gave battle - very
red blood burst out on the ground.

Yup, that's the idea. According to Zoega, 'lind' can also
be "spear" in poetry. I'm more familiar with the idea of it being
a "shield", but I guess that doesn't really affect the meaning
here. "Light-sister" I was aiming for the idea "fair kinswoman",
using 'nipt' rather loosely. Egill calls Aðalsteinn the kinsman of
Játmundr, who I mention too. I took Ella as an archetypal king of
England, that any queen of England might be assumed to be related
too. Incidentally, I don´t think you could trace a literal family
connection between Elizabeth and Ella, but you could with Edmund,
and so theoretically Queen Elizabeth´s family tree can be traced
back to Odin.

>
> Some grammatical points. The accusative of
> 'gunnr/guðr' is 'gunni', it's a feminine noun.
> The preterite of 'hlaupa' is 'hljóp'. If you
> want to go for language so early that the vowels
> in 'almr', 'ulfr', etc. hadn't lengthened then
> you probably should apply the u-umlaut to them;
> hence 'ölmum' rather than '*almum'.

Ack, yes, it actually occured to me today that it should
be 'hljóp'. Must have been the lure of the rhyme that led me
astray. And 'gunni', true: I didn't think of that, but I should
have. U-umlaut: good point. I'd better do this. There's a rhyme
later on that depends on them being short. Do you know when the
lengthening occured?

"Sitja veiðivitjar
vals á borgar halsum"

This is from Ragnarsonar þáttr, in Hauksbók (near the beginning of
the 14th c.). According to the introduction in Finnur & Eiríkur
Jónsson's 1892-96 edition, the verses probably aren't much older.

>
> Some metrical points. The first line, as you are
> now aware, has 'ofstuðlun'. Some of the rhyme may
> be problematic - a consonant cluster sometimes
> requires an identical consonant cluster to rhyme
> with. The exact conditions are still a subject of
> research. In any case 'fors - versti' and 'harðla
> - jarðar' don't sound right to me.

I shall have to look into this more closely. 'n' and 'r' seemed to
be acceptable additions to a consonant cluster in these examples
from Þórmóðr in Fóstbroeðrasaga:

djúp ok Danskra vápna

skínn á skildi mínnum

vígreifr með Áleifi

I wondered if this applied to all continuants, including 'l'. And
here´s one from the same source which you might not consider rhyme
at all:

rekin bitu stál - á Stikla-

Or would all of these be considered (acceptably) defective rhymes.
Incidentally, how exactly do the rhyme rules work when it comes
to "resolution" of short syllables, as in 'rekin' here?

>
> Then those men used the black butterflies
> of the flood of veins [blood] [arrows] on
> the spotted battle-flower of Þróttr [???]
> {and} hearts. The tree of the seed of Fýrisvellir
> [gold] [woman], the female giver of gold [queen]
> killed men with sharp edges and gave them to Death.
>
> Okay, I'm stumped :) Is that a kenning for a wound?

Well, this is *possibly* the least conventional pair of kennings I
attempted. "Black butterflies of blood" are meant to be ravens. I
figured if any bird can stand for raven, why not other flying things!

'Beita' + dative was supposed to be "grazed" or "set to graze",
Zoega's definition (1), although it could also be (3) "set the black
butterflies of blood on them" (in the sense of setting dogs on
someone, to chase or attack them).

Yes, spotted battle flowers was meant to be wounds. Unconventional
I'm afraid, but I wanted something to go with butterflies, to avoid
being 'nykrat' "monsterized"!

Þróttr = Óðinn, as well as being a noun meaning "courage, resolve,
hardiness". Here's the English key I made for this one:

Those men set the black butterflies of the flood of veins to graze
on Odin's mottled battle-blooms [wounds], on hearts (of the slain).
The pine tree of the seed of Fyrisvellir Plains [tree of gold =
woman], the honeycomb's willow [willow of gold = woman], felled men
in conflict with sharp blades and gave them to Hell.


"Female giver of gold" -- interesting, it's not what I intended (I
had a very convoluted word-order here), but it makes sense and gives
the same idea.

> As for the grammar the accusative plural of 'seggr',
> which I think is the idea here, is 'seggi'.

Ah, right. Well, that's good: it stops it getting confused with the
genitive plural. I have some more changes to make in that case.
Like 'bekkr' then? That makes sense. Historically I think this is
a short ja-stem like niðr: *sagjaz > *saggjaz > *seggr, but easy to
see why it would jump ship in favour of the i-declension... In
fact, I see now Gordon & Taylor says the only short ja-stems were:
niðr, herr & beðr.

LN