That's just great LN - the different colours certainly clarify the translation with at the same time giving us a clue as to the way  their poets made different word order - altogether  from ordinary speech - one could start to look differently at the poetry now - with this in mind

Kveðja

Patricia

 

The first time I posted this, the rich-text editor at the Yahoo Groups website decided to delete word-spaces at random; it obviously felt that Old Norse poetry wasn't a big enough challenge on its own...  So I'm going to try again, and hopefully it'll come out clearer this time - with any luck...

As each half of this strophe is based on a proverbial idiom, we're lucky to have Richard Harris's website to consult [ http://www.usask.ca/english/icelanders/proverbs_BNS.html].  Here you can find the notes from the Íslensk fornrit edition (in Modern Icelandic), as well as an English translation from The Complete Sagas of the Icelanders, and notes in German from Finnur Jónsson's Altnordische Saga-Bibliotek edition.

Actually the idiom in question, which refers to the use of a fly as bait in fishing, is one we've already met:

Rannveig mælti, móðir Gunnars: "Þat er mælt, at skamma stund verðr hönd höggvi fegin, enda mun hér svá; en þó mun Gunnarr leysa þik af þessu máli. En ef Hallgerðr kemr annarri flugu í munn þér þá verðr þat þinn bani."

It's expressed more directly in the second helmingr (half strophe), and dressed up in kennings in the first.

Tekka ek, sunds, þótt sendi
sann-reynir boð, tanna
hvarfs við hleypi-skarfi,
Hárbarðs véa fjarðar.

Unravelled word order: Ek tek-k-a við hleypi-skarfi hvarfs tanna, þótt sann-reynir sunds véa Hárbarðs sendi boð.

"I will not fall for the bait, even though a real poet sends orders."

More literally: "I will not take the swift cormorant of the entrance-hole of teeth, though the true-trier of swimming of Odin's abodes sends orders."


NOTES:

tekka ek = tek-k-a ek – take-I-not I, with the personal pronoun repeated on either side of the negative suffix -a-.

taka við e-u – to accept, receive.

tekka ek við e-u - I will not accept.

hvarf, n. circle, entrance.
tönn, f. tooth.
hvarftanna - entrance-hole of teeth = mouth.

hleypi-skarfr, m. jumping (swift-moving) cormorant [ http://www.septentrionalia.net/lex/index2.php?book=e&page=262&ext=png].  And see CV for other compounds where `hleypi-' means swift.

hleypi-skarfr hvarfs tanna – swift cormorant of entrance-hole of teeth = bird of mouth = fly (used as bait).  See the second half of the stanza.  

Hárbarðr – Odin (as in the Eddic poem Hárbarðsljóð).
vé, n. sanctuary, temple, abode.
vé Hárbarðs – abodes of Odin =Valhall.

fjörðr véa Hárbarðs – firth of sanctuaries/abodes of Odin = poetry.  (Alludes to the myth of how Odin stole the mead of poetry.  According to the conventions of skaldic verse, poetry can be referred to as any liquid associated with Odin.)

sund– swimming; sound (narrow stretch of water).

sann-reynir sunds fjarðar véa Hárbarðs – true-trier of swimming in the firth of Odin's abodes = a (real) poet, a (good) poet.

boð – message, command

Erat rá-fáka rœkis,
röng eru mál á gangi,
sé ek við mínu meini,
mínligt flugu at gína.

"Wrong talk is abroad / Unjust words are being voiced.  It isn't seemly for me to swallow the seafarer's (i.e. man's) bait."

More literally: "[...] It isn't seemly for me to gape at the fly of the groom of sailyard-steeds."

er – is.

-at – negative suffix = -a.

gangr, m. `eru á gangi' "are on the move", i.e. being spoken.

gína – yawn, gape, open one's mouthwide.
at gína flugu – open one's mouth wide to swallow a fly.

mein, n. – harm, injury, loss.

mínligr – `vera mínligt' "to be becoming/seemly/appropriatefor me".

rá – yard (the horizontal beam on a square-rigged sailing ship from which the sail hangs).

fákr, m. – steed, a poetical word (heiti) for horse.

rá-fákr – (sail)yard-steed = ship.

rœkir, m. – one who tends, attends to, takes care of.  An agent noun derived from theverb `rœkja'.

rœkir rá-fáka – groom of sailyard-steeds = seafarer = man. It isn't necessarily significant that he's called a seafarer. Seafaring and fighting, according to skaldic convention, are archetypal male pursuits, thus any man can be characterised as a seafarer or a warrior, regardless of the context.  On such decorative use of kennings, Anthony Faulkes comments that "a ruler will be a distributor of gold even when he is fighting a battle and gold will be called the fire of the sea even whenit is in the form of a man's arm-ring on his arm. If the man wearing a gold ring is fighting a battle on land the mention of the sea will have no relevance to his situation at all and does not contribute to the picture of the battle being described" (Faulkes 1997: "Poetic Inspiration in Old Norse and Old English Poetry". Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies delivered at University College London 28 November 1997. Viking Society for Northern Research., pp. 8-9).

röng mál – wrong talk, unjust words.

sjá við e-u – to shun, guard oneself against, beware of, take care to avoid.