Gripla - 01.01.2003, Blaðsíða 60

58
GRIPLA
6. Hymiskviða 35/3—4
Hymir makes his last challenge: ‘Can you two get the cauldron out of here?’
‘Þat er til kostar
ef koma mættið
út ór óro
glkiól hofi.’
Týr leitaði
tysvar hrœra;
stóð at hváro
hverr kyrr fyrir.
‘It is yet to be tested
if you could take
the ale-ship
out of our hall.’
Týr tried
twice to move it:
each time the cauldron kept
still despite that. (34/1-8)
Faðir Móða
fekk á þremi
ok í gegnom steig
gólf niðr í sal.
Hóf sér á hpfuð upp
hver Sifiar verr,
en á hælom
hringar skullo.
Móði’s sire
seized it by the rim
and kicked it all the way down
across the floor in the hall.
He heaved the cauldron up
— husband of Sif — on to his head,
and against his heels
the chain-hoops clanked. (35/1-8)
Þórr deftly rolls it out of the hall and bears it away on his head.
The precise nature of his action in 35/3—4 is, however, much debated (cf.
von See, 345-7). I suggest that, instead of interpreting steig as intransitive, we
may find the rarer transitive use more fitting. Two instances of stíga, ‘to per-
form an action with the foot, e.g. kick, trample’, with an accusative object, are
noted by Vigfússon and by Fritzner s.v.: stíga 2:
(1) In Knýtlinga saga 269: A wealthy farmer from Plógssýsla in Jutland
named Plógr, avenges his father, who was unjustly killed by the Danish king.
When this king is at a Jutland assembly, Plógr walks up to him, saying he
wishes to speak to him; he carries a tall spear, its point encased in a cylindrical
piece of wood; he keeps the point tumed down:
Ok er hann nálgaðisk þangat, steig hann keflit af spjótsoddinum. Síðan
lagði hann spjótinu í gegnum konunginn ok veitti honum banasár.