swan's road

Calque of Old English swanrād, from swan (“swan”) + rād (“road”).

the swan's road

1. (kenning, literary, rare) The ocean; the open sea.

   Synonyms: whale-road, whale's road, whale's way

   • 1838 July, [Henry Wadsworth Longfellow], “Art[icle] IV.—1. A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, […]. By the Rev. J[oseph] Bosworth. […] 2. King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of Boëthius, “De Consolatione Philosophiæ”; […] By J. S. Cardale. […]”, in The North American Review, volume XLVII, number C, Boston, Mass.: Otis, Broaders, & Co., […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 104, column 2:

     Quoth he, the war-king,
     Over the swan's road,
     Seek he would
     The mighty monarch
     Since he wanted men.

     [original: Cwæð, hē gūðcyning
     Ofer swanrāde
     Sēcean wolde,
     Mǣrne þēoden,
     Þā him wæs manna þearf.]

     Translating Beowulf.

   • 1866, C[harles] Kingsley, “How Hereward Succoured a Princess of Cornwall”, in Hereward the Wake, “Last of the English.” […], volume I, London; Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 124:

     Ship with me boldly,
     Follow me gaily,
     Over the swan's road[.]

   • 1999, Seamus Heaney, transl., Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, published 2000, →ISBN, page 15, lines 199–201:

     He announced his plan:
     to sail the swan's road and search out that king,
     the famous prince who needed defenders.

     Translating the same lines as the 1838 quotation.