(Originally posted on 30 Nov 2019. Slight edits made.)
You see the words on the picture? I didn’t pull them out of thin air. This song was written by Christine Hals, a Norwegian-Swedish film composer. In fact, the movie also consulted Old Norse expert Dr. Jackson Crawford for accuracy.
| Lyrics: Verðug dróttning stór. Hjarta af gulli skína. Kronum þik med vánum, ást ok trú. Fagra, grýttur land, heimr Árnadalr. Fylgið dróttningu ljóssins. | Translation (by author): Worthy, great queen. (May your) heart of gold shine. We crown thee with hopes, love, and trust. Fair, stony land, home Arendelle. Follow you all (the) queen of the light. |
I have some problems with these lyrics though.
skína – this is the infinitive form, or the 3rd person plural form, of the verb skína, both of which I’m not sure should be used here, since it is the only verb in this line, and the grammatical subject is singular. I would suggest skíni.
kronum – as far as I can tell, krona isn’t a verb. krýna (according to the Modern Icelandic Dictionary of Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum) or krúna (according to Wiktionary) can be though. So I’d suggest krýnum.
med – I think it’s meant to be með (the “th” in “the”, not a “d”)
fagra, grýttur – these are of different grammatical genders from one another, and they are both different from land in gender. fagra is a feminine form, grýttur is a masculine form, and land is neuter. I’d suggest fagrt, grýtt land.
dróttningu ljóssins – this just means “queen of the light”, not “the queen of the light”. I don’t know if Old Norse requires an article, so I might go with dróttningunni, but I really don’t know.
So my suggested version would be:
Verðug dróttning stór.
Hjarta af gulli skíni.
Krýnum þik með vánum, ást ok trú.
Fagrt, grýtt land, heimr Arnadalr.
Fylgið dróttningu ljóssins.
Don’t take my word for it though. This is all according to Old Icelandic, but Elsa and others would have been acculturated in Norwegian probably, which I know next to nothing about.
Queendom of the Crocus 
I know it’s a bit late to discuss about this, but I’ll leave this comment here because it is really nice to see someone who pointed out the grammar errors and suspiciousness of the lyrics, like me, who is literally rare on the internet.
My suggested version of the second line would be
“Hjarta af gulli í skinum”. I used the noun ‘skin’ in stead of the verb skína, and I think THIS is the actual lyric sung in the released soundtrack. The vowel of the last note of the second line sounds like ‘u’ to me like in skin’u’m.
and about Fagra grýttur land, I was very disappointed about the quality of the lyrics! because the -ur ending like in grýttur is a very late feature of ON, and other words such as heimr and Arnadalr is showing -r instead of -ur. If it was grýttr, it would be slightly better than this but still wrong. Your suggestion, ‘fagrt grýtt land’ totally makes sense to me, but because I think ‘fagra’ could be seen as the weak-neuter declension of the adjective fagur, not feminine, my suggestion would be ‘fagra grýtta land’.
Moreover, in the soundtrack, fagra is heard clearly, but the next part goes nothing like ‘grýttur land’.. I really wonder what the original lyrics would be like!
About kronum þik part, I totally agree with you about the verb, but I am also suspicious about of the last word of that line. That part of the soundtrack sounded like if the initial consonant cluster included the ‘s-‘ and the vowel is something other than ‘ú’.. It sounds like ‘stríð’, ‘strý’, ‘skript’, etc. to me, but i couldn’t find anything that would be appropriate regarding the meaning.
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Hi Jaein, thank you for your comment!
I was not exactly trying to recreate what was sung in the soundtrack; rather I was trying to explain my suspicions about the lyrics that have gone public. Hence my ‘suggestion’ would be (hopefully) grammatically more accurate but singing it would definitely sound different (and maybe not so nice).
Your observations on the vowels are very interesting. I only wonder, though, if the vocalists employed certain vocal tricks to produce a nice sound – maybe that causes a potential /a/ sound in ‘skína’ to sound like an /o/ or even an /u/. Or it could simply have been that the vocalists were pronouncing the vowels in their own way, without consulting the ‘real’ or reconstructed Old Norse/Old Norwegian pronunciations.
I went to listen to the song again after reading your comment though, and you’re right – there is a consonant cluster beginning with /s/ in the kronum þik part. Nice catch! I am also beginning to wonder what the real lyrics were, and what happened in the recording booth…
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