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Atlamol

If I seldom was kindly,  full cruel wast thou;
Ye brothers fought young,  quarrels brought you to battle,
And half went to hell  of the sons of thy house,
And all was destroyed  that should e'er have done good.

92.[1] "My two brothers and I  were bold in our thoughts,
From the land we went forth,  with Sigurth we fared;
Full swiftly we sailed,  each one steering his ship,
So our fate sought we e'er  till we came to the East.

93.[2] "First the king did we slay,  and the land we seized,

    The manuscript does not indicate the speaker. It marks both lines 4 and 5 as beginning a new stanza, but line 5 is presumably an interpolation. The text of the second half of line 2 is obscure, and many emendations have been suggested. Ye brothers: cf. note on stanza 90. Half: i. e., two of Atli's brothers were killed, the other two dying in the battle with Gunnar and Hogni; cf. stanza 51.

  1. ↑ From the land: this maritime expedition of Guthrun and her two brothers, Gunnar and Hogni (the poet seems to know nothing of her half-brother, Gotthorm), with Sigurth seems to have been a pure invention of the poet's, inserted for the benefit of his Greenland hearers. Nothing further is reported concerning it.
  2. ↑ The forest: i. e., men who were outlawed in the conquered land were restored to their rights—another purely Norse touch.

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