At 2:23:04 PM on Friday, April 1, 2011, startrekdataandworf
wrote:

> Seeing a poem in an Old Norse saga typically discourages
> me.

A perfectly normal reaction!

> Fell inn forsnjalli
> fyrst inn víglysti
> ýgr í Austrvegi
> allr á helpalla,
> dauðr um dalreyðar
> dáðkunnr miskunnar,
> beit at brandmóti
> brynstingr víkingum.

> Slain the very brave
> First the most defenseless
> Fierce in Eastway
> All unto death's step
> Dead was the valley-red
> Deed-known of mercy
> Sliced in sword-meeting
> Mail-sting from vikings.

<Falla á helpalla>, literally 'to fall on Hel's benches', is
'to die'. <Víglystr> = <vígfúss> 'eager for battle'.
<Dalreyðr> is literally 'valley-whale', 'valley-trout', or
'valley-char', a kenning for 'snake'; <miskunn dalreyðar> is
therefore 'snake's mercy/grace', which according to the
Lexicon Poeticum is a kenning for 'summer'. <Brandmóti>
'sword-meeting' is of course 'battle', and <brynstingr> is
another kenning for 'sword'.

A fairly literal translation might go something like this:

Fell the very brave
Foremost the battle-eager
Fierce in [the] Eastway
All on Hel's benches,
Dead deed-known during
Dale-char's mercy,
Bit in sword-meeting
Byrnie-sting of vikings.

I'm not particularly confident when it comes to poetry, but
as I read it, the first four lines describe Sörli as very
brave, eager for battle, fierce, and foremost (probably in
battle) and say that he died on an expedition to the east.
The next two describe him as dying, renowned for his deeds,
in summer. The last two seem to say that he was killed in
battle by a sword.

> Now that I've gotten the actual translation out of the
> way, does anybody know of some resources for translating
> such poems? I can find next to nothing online.

Some knowledge of kennings is indispensable. Two sources
that I've found helpful, the first in English, the second in
Danish:

<http://notendur.hi.is/eybjorn/ugm/kennings/kennings.html>
<http://www.septentrionalia.net/lex/index2.php?book=e&page=-15&ext=png>

Even that's not enough when the syntax has been mangled to
fit the requirements of the verse form. (This one isn't at
all bad in that respect.) In that case I have great
difficulty, though I can sometimes work it out if the editor
has provided enough punctuation and brackets to indicate
what parts go together, or has provided a footnote
enumerating the kennings or giving the normal prose order of
the verse.

Brian