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Helgakvitha Hundingsbana II

(V)

This Gothmund the son of Granmar spoke:

22.[1] "What hero great  is guiding the ships?A golden flag  on the stem he flies;I find not peace  in the van of your faring,And round the fighters  is battle-light red."
  Sinfjotli spake:23.[2] "Here may Hothbrodd  Helgi find,The hater of flight,  in the midst of the fleet;The home of all  thy race he has,And over the realm  of the fishes he rules."
  1. ↑ With this stanza begins the dispute between Gothmund and Sinjotli which, together with Helgi's rebuke to his half-brother, appears at much greater length in Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I, 33-48. It is introduced here manifestly in the wrong place. The version here given is almost certainly the older of the two, but the resemblance is so striking, and in some cases (notably in Helgi's rebuke) the stanzas are so nearly identical, that it seems probable that the composer of the first Helgi Hundingsbane lay borrowed directly from the poem of which the present dialogue is a fragment. Flag: the banner ("gunnfani," cf. "gonfalon") here serves as the signal for war instead of the red shield mentioned in Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I, 34. Battle-light: perhaps the "northern lights."
  2. ↑ Lines 3-4 are obscure, and in the manuscript show signs of error. Helgi had not at this time, so far as we know, conquered any of Hothbrodd's land. The realm of the fishes, in line 4, presumably means the sea, but the word here translated "fishes" is obscure, and many editors treat it as a proper name, "the realm of the Fjorsungs," but without further suggestion as to who or what the Fjorsungs are.

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