THE POESY OF SKALDS
191
Battle is called Storm of Odin, as is recorded above; so sang Víga-Glúmr:
- I cleared my way aforetime
- Like earls to lands; the word went
- Of this among the Storm-Staves,
- The men of Vidrir's Sword-Wand.
Here battle is called Storm of Vidrir, and the sword is the Wand of Battle; men are Staves of the Sword. Here, then, both battle and weapons are used to make metaphors for man. It is called 'inlaying,' when one writes thus.
"The shield is the Land of Weapons, and weapons are Hail or Rain of that land, if one employs figures of later coinage.
L. "How should the ship be periphrased? Call it Horse or Deer or Snowshoe of the Sea-King, or of Ship's Rigging, or of Storm. Steed of the Billow, as Hornklofi sang:
- The Counsel-Stern Destroyer
- Of the pale Steed of the Billow
- When full young let the ships' prows
- Press on the sea at flood-tide.
Geitir's Steed, as Erringar-Steinn sang:
- But though to the skald all people
- This strife from the south are telling,
- We shall yet load Geitir's Sea-Steed
- With stone; we voyage gladly.
