> When I saw the poem in this translation I was reminded of
> a quote of something to the effect that a scientist takes
> the unfamiliar and makes it clear and the poet does the
> reverse. Unfortunately, I could not find who said it nor
> the exact wording.

And the skalds seem to have raised the reverse process to an
art form — literally!

> Eftir það tók Björn vopn sín og gekk í brott og ætlar
> heim.

> After that, Bjorn took his weapon and went away and
> intended (to go) home.

> After that Bjorn picked up his weapon and went away and
> intended (to go) home.

After that Björn took his weapon and went away and intended
[to go] home.

> En er hann kom upp um Digramúla hljópu upp fyrir honum
> fimm menn.

> When he arrived up around Digramula, five men jumped up
> against him.

> But when he came up around Digramul five men leaped up
> before him.

But when he came up over Digrimúli, five men leaped up in
front of him.

The nominative of the place-name is <Digrimúli>; both
elements are inflected, so the oblique cases are
<Digramúla>.

> Þar var Þóroddur, húskarlar hans tveir og synir Þóris
> viðleggs.

> Thoroddr was there, his two house-servants and son Thoris
> "with-legs."

> There were Thorodd, his two house servants and sons of
> Thorir woodenleg.

Þórodd was there, his two house servants, and [the] sons of
Þórir viðleggr ['wooden-leg'].

> Þeir veittu Birni atgöngu en hann varðist vel og
> drengilega.

> They helped attack Birni, but he defended himself well
> and nobly.

> They gave Bjorn an attack but he defended himself well
> and manfully.

They attacked Björn, but he defended himself well and
bravely.

> Gengu þeir fastast að Þórissynir.
> They determinedly attacked Thorison.
> Those Thorir’s sons went at him hardest.

Þórir’s sons attacked hardest.

Rob: <synir> is nominative (plural), so <Þórissynir> can’t
be the direct object of the verb.

> Þeir veittu honum áverka en hann varð banamaður beggja
> þeirra.

> They helped wound him and he became at once their slayer.

> They gave him a wound but he became the death-dealer to
> both of them.

They gave him a wound, but he became [the] slayer of both of
them.

In principle <áverka> can be from either of the synonymous
nouns neuter <áverk> and weak masculine <áverki>, but if it
represents the former, it must be gen. plur. In this
sentence a gen. plur. is impossible, so it must be from
<áverki>, and it must be acc. sing. If the neuter noun were
used, we’d have no way to tell whether it was one wound or
more: both acc. sing. and acc. plur. are <áverk>.

> Eftir það leitaði Þóroddur undan með húskarla sína og var
> sár lítt en þeir ekki.

> After that, Thoroddr went back with his house servants and
> was little wounded, but they (were) not. (CV leita -
> leita undan, to go back, fly)

> After that Thorodd tried for (him) with his house
> servants and was lightly wounded but they (were) not.

After that Þórodd escaped with his house servants and was a
little wounded, and they not [at all].

> Björn gekk leið sína þar til er hann kom heim og gekk til
> stofu og bað húsfreyja griðkonu að vinna honum beina.

> Bjorn went in his direction to the there when he came hom
> and went to (the) sitting room and asked (the) housewife's
> house maid to show him hospitality. (I didn't find "ganga
> leið," but I found Z. leggja 7 – leggja leið sína, to
> take a direction) (Z. vinna 3 - v. e-m beinleika, beina,
> to show hospitality to one)

> Bjorn went on his way until he came home and went to the
> room and the house-wife asked the servant woman to make
> him comfortable.

Björn went on his way until he came home and went to the
living room and asked the housewife’s maidservant to give
him a hand.

> Og er hún kom í stofu með ljós þá sá hún að Björn var
> blóðugur mjög.

> And when she came in the living room with a light, then
> she saw that Bjorn was very bloodied.

> And when she came into the room with a light, then
> she saw that Bjorn was very bloody.

And when she came into the living room with a light, she saw
that Björn was very bloody.

> Gekk hún þá fram og sagði Ásbrandi föður hans að Björn
> var blóðugur heim kominn.

> She then went out of the house and told his father
> Asbrandr that Bjorn had come home bloodied.

> She went forward then and told Asbrand, his father, that
> Bjorn had come home bloody.

She then went out and told Ásbrand, his father, that Björn
had come home bloody.

> Gekk Ásbrandur í stofu og spurði hann hví Björn var
> blóðugur "eða hafið þið Þóroddur fundist?"

> Asbrandr went in the living room and he found out how
> Bjorn was bloody "Did Thorroddr meet you?"

> Asbrand went into the room he and asked Bjorn why (he)
> was bloody “or have you met Thorodd?”

Ásbrand went into [the] living room, and he asked why Björn
was bloody: ‘Did you and Þórodd meet each other?’

The subject of <hafið fundist> is <þið Þórroddur> 'you two,
[you and] Þórodd', and <finnask> has a reciprocal sense
here. As is so often the case, <eða> just serves to tie the
question to the rest of the sentence and has very little
semantic content.

> Björn svarar og segir að svo var.
> Bjorn answers and says that was so.
> Bjorn answers and says it was so.

Björn answers and says that [it] was so.

> Ásbrandur spurði hversu farið hefðu viðskipti þeirra.
> Asbrandr asked how their hostilities had gone.
> Asbrand asked how it had gone with their dealings.

Ásbrand asked how their fight had gone.

You can tell from the plural ending on <hefðu> that
<viðskipti> is the nom. plur. rather than the nom. sing., so
the sense is 'hostile intercourse' rather than simply
'dealings'.

> Björn kvað:
> Bjorn said:
> Bjorn said:

Björn said:

> Munat hyrlesti hraustum
> Removed the strong deepest place
> It will not (be) a hearty? brightening? at last?

> hríðar mér að stríða,
> of a snowstorm to me to fight,
> at once, to harm me,

> heldr hef eg vígi valdið
> rather have I slain the power
> rather have I chosen slaying

> Viðleggs sona tveggja,
> Wood-leg's two sons,
> Woodenleg’s two sons

> sem vígbalkar válki
> as war-groups toss to and fro
> as slaying -?? (went?) tossed to and fro

> valdr geymi-Bil falda
> the cause of keep-Bil folds
> guilty watchful ?? fold

> eða dalsveigi deigum
> or bottom-strength dough
> or cowardly dale-headdress? (fold)

> Draupnis skatt að kaupa.
> Draupnis to buy tribute.
> to exchange Draupnis? tax.

Munat hyrlesti hraustum
hríðar mér at stríða,
heldr hefk vígi valdet
Viðleggs sona tveggja,
sem vígbalkar válki
valdr geymi-Bil falda,
eða dalsveigi deigum
Draupnis skatt at kaupa.

I can’t quite keep everything on the right line:

To fight [the] valiant wrecker of the fire
of battle, me, will not be —
rather have I caused [the] death
of Viðlegg’s two sons —
as if [the] war-balk’s wielder
tumbled a guardian-Bil of women’s hoods,
or as for [the] cowardly bow-bender
to buy Draupnir’s tribute.

I can make the best sense of this by taking the infinitive
<at stríða> 'to harm; to fight' as the subject, with <munat>
as the finite verb with an understood <verða>, 'will not
be'. <Stríða> takes a dative object, at least in the sense
'to harm', and <hyrlesti hraustum> is (in reversed order)
the dative of <hraustr hyrlestir> 'valiant fire-wrecker'.
The noun is a compound of <hyrr> 'fire' (poet.) and the
agent noun <lestir> from <lesta> 'to break (up), to wreck'.
This is further modified by <hríðar>, the genitive of <hríð>
'a storm; an attack', which in this context I take to be
something like 'storm of battle' or simply 'battle'. On the
face of it, then, we have something like 'battle’s
fire-wrecker'. Remembering that 'fire' is a common kenning
for 'sword' (compare English <brand> 'sword', a usage going
back to Old English), we can make sense of this as 'battle’s
sword-wrecker' and hence 'warrior'.

However, there seems to be general agreement that the
compounding of <hyrr> and <lestir> is misleading, and that
the actual kenning is <lestir hyrjar hríðar> 'wrecker of
fire of battle', <hyrr hríðar> 'fire of battle' being a
kenning for 'sword'. The sense of the compound kenning is
still 'warrior', but the pieces are a bit more satisfactory.

Of course <mér> is also a dative, and I’m interpreting it as
being in apposition to the other dative phrase, clarifying
that the valiant warrior is in fact the speaker, Björn.

To fight [the] valiant wrecker of [the] fire of battle,
me, will not [be] ...

The next two lines break the stream of thought and are
really a parenthetical remark, but they’re relatively
straightforward in themselves:

heldr hefi ek valdet vígi tveggja sona Viðleggs
rather have I caused [the] death of Viðlegg’s two sons

(This is <valda> Z3.)

The main sentence then continues with <sem> 'like, as, as
if': ‘... will not be like/as (if) ...’. <Vígbalkar> is the
gen. sing. of <vígbalkr>. The second element now has a long
vowel and can be found in both Zoëga and CV as <bálkr> 'a
ba(u)lk, a beam of wood; a partition'; the compound is
'battle-balk', a kenning for 'shield'. It modifies <valdr>
'wielder, keeper, ruler' to make the kenning 'battle-balk’s
wielder' = 'shield’s wielder' = (of course!) 'warrior'.

<Válki> is 3rd sing. pres. subj. of <válka> 'to toss to and
fro; drag with oneself; roll'. Zoëga has this unglossed
citation, to which I’ve added a gloss:

eigi hœfir svá gömlum karli at válka svá væna mey
[it] does not befit so old a man to tumble so fine a maid

As we’ll see, this sense seems to fit the present context
rather well. <Falda> is the gen. plur. of <faldr> 'a kind
of woman’s hood'. The female figure Bil appears several
times in the Prose Edda and is at one point said to be
reckoned amongst the Æsir; for more see

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hj%C3%BAki_and_Bil>.

The qualifier <geymi-> is from <geyma> 'to heed, mind,
watch', making her something like 'guardian-Bil', here the
'guardian-Bil of women’s hoods'; it’s yet another kenning
for 'woman'. Ignoring the parenthetical insertion in lines
three and four, and remembering that <sem> when followed by
a subjunctive can be 'as if', we can put the pieces together
as:

To fight [the] valiant wrecker of [the] fire of battle,
me, will not [be] as if [the] war-balk’s wielder tumbled
a guardian-Bil of women’s hoods, or ...

<Deigum> is the masc. dat. sing. of <deigr> 'timid,
cowardly', modifying <dalsveigi>, dat. sing. of
<dalsveigir>. The second element of this compound isn’t
hard to pin down: it’s an agent noun from <sveigja> 'to bow,
to bend'. The first element is <dalr> 'a bow' (poet.),
which can be found in CV; the comments there to the contrary
notwithstanding, it’s probably in origin the same word as
<dalr> 'a valley'. At any rate, <dalsveigir> is
'bow-bender'. <Draupnis> is the gen. of <Draupnir>, the
name of Óðin’s ring that produced eight more rings from
itself every ninth night; <Draupnis skatt> 'Draupnir’s
tribute' is gold. <Skatt> is the acc. sing. of <skattr>, so
<Draupnis skatt> must be the object of the verb <kaupa>.

In a construction <sem A eða B> you’d expect A and B to be
parallel in construction, and you’d expect <sem> to have the
same sense in <sem A> and <sem B>, but that doesn’t seem to
be the case here: we seem to have something closer to 'as if
A' and 'as, like B', with different verbal constructions in
A and B to boot. I *think* that in <dalsveigi deigum> the
dative is a dative of respect: 'as regards [the] cowardly
bow-bender, for the cowardly bow-bender', the person in
question being Þórodd. This identification is confirmed by
the use of <skatt> and <kaupa>, a pretty clear reference to
Þórodd’s rather mocking byname <skattkaupandi>. Finally,
then, I make it something like this:

To fight [the] valiant wrecker of [the] fire of battle,
me, will not [be] — rather have I caused [the] death of
Viðlegg’s two sons — as if [the] war-balk’s wielder
tumbled a guardian-Bil of women’s hoods, or as for [the]
cowardly bow-bender to buy Draupnir’s tribute.

To fight the valiant warrior, me, will not be as if the
warrior [= Þórodd] tumbled a woman, or, for the cowardly
bow-bender like buying gold: *I* have caused the death of
Viðlegg’s two sons.

Much of this comes from Heather O’Donoghue, _Skaldic Verse
and the Poetics of Saga Narrative_, Chapter 2 of which is
‘The Community and the Individual in _Eyrbyggja Saga_’; her
reading of the vísa gave me the idea of making the
infinitive <at stríða> the subject of the main sentence, and
from there I ended up with essentially her interpretation.


I find these vísur rather fascinating, but I shan’t complain
about the fact that there isn’t another until Chapter 38!

> Síðan batt Ásbrandur sár hans og varð hann græddur að
> heilu.

> Then Asbrandr bound his wounds and he became healed
> (back) to health.

> Then Asbrand bound his wound and he became cured to
> health.

Then Ásbrand bound his wound, and he became fully healed.

See <heill> Z1: <grœða e-n at heilu> 'to heal one fully'.

> Þóroddur sótti Snorra goða að eftirmáli um víg Þórissona
> og lét Snorri búa mál til Þórsnessþings en synir Þorláks
> á Eyri veittu Breiðvíkingum að málum þessum.

> Thoroddr sought chieftain Snorri for an action on behalf
> of Thorison's slaying, and Snorri caused to prepare a
> lawsuit at the Thorness assembly, but Thorlak's sons at
> Eyr offered Breidvikingum for these case.

> Thorodd sought Chieftain Snorri for an action on behalf of
> Thorir’s sons’ slaying and Snorri had a case prepared for
> the Thorsness Thing but Thorlak’s sons at Eyr gave the
> Breidvikings (support) in this case.

Þórodd sought out Snorri goði for an action [against Björn]
for [the] slaying of Þórir’s sons, and Snorri had a case
prepared for [the] Þórsnes þing, but [the] sons of Þorlák of
Eyr supported [the] Breiðvíkings in this case.

See <veita> Z2 for 'supported'.

> Og urðu þær málalyktir að Ásbrandur gekk til handsala
> fyrir Björn son sinn og hélt upp fébótum fyrir vígin en
> Björn var sekur ger utan um þrjá vetur og fór hann í
> brott samsumars.

> And they became a conclusion that Asbrandr went to confirm
> by shaking hands with his son Bjorn and held up an offer
> of money for the slaying, and Bjorn was convicted to go
> abroad for three years, and he went away in summer.

> And the conclusion of the case happened that Asbrand went
> to shake hands for Bjorn, his son, and supported the
> offering of money for the slaying, but Bjorn was made an
> outlaw abroad for three winters and he went away the same
> summer.

And the end of the case was this, that Ásbrand went bail for
Björn, his son, and discharged [the] weregild for the
killing, but Björn was sentenced to three years’ exile
abroad, and he went abroad the same summer.

See <handsal> Z2: <bjóða handsól fyrir e-n> 'to offer bail
for one'.

Brian