GunnLeif Merl I 70VIII/2 — Valbreta ‘of French Britons’
‘Yppir fjǫllum fljótt Valbreta;
munu Brútus þau bera kórónu.
Grœnask ǫflgar eikr Kornbreta;
fagnar slíku fús Kambría.
‘Yppir fljótt fjǫllum Valbreta; þau munu bera kórónu Brútus. Ǫflgar eikr Kornbreta grœnask; fús Kambría fagnar slíku.
‘The mountains of French Britons will be swiftly raised up; they will bear the crown of Brutus. The mighty oaks of the Cornish Britons will grow green; eager Cambria rejoices at that.
readings
[2] Valbreta: valbreka Hb
notes
[2] Valbreta ‘of French Britons’: Meaning ‘Bretons, Armoricans’, in apparent contrast to Kornbreta (gen. pl.) ‘Cornish Britons’ in l. 6. Emended by Scheving (as reported in Bret 1848-9) from ms. valbreka (not refreshed). Confusion between letters c and t is not uncommon and this emendation gives excellent agreement with Geoffrey’s text, since the phrase fjǫllum Valbreta corresponds neatly to Armorici montes. For the formation, compare Kornbretar ‘Cornish Bretons’ (cf. II 16/2), paraphrasing Geoffrey’s Cornubiae. Both may have been nonce-terms devised by Gunnlaugr, but Val- ‘French’ was a long-established element in the cpd Valland ‘France’, properly ‘Normandy and the lower Seine region’ (Foote 1975, 69) but extendable to other regions (cf. Sigv Víkv 6I, Note to l. 5). Bret 1848-9 and Skj B (the latter followed by Skald and Merl 2012) retain the ms. reading and explain it as part of a kenning fljót valbreka ‘river of the corpse-wave [BLOOD]’. In Bret 1848-9, ll. 1-2 are translated Fjelden hæver Valflodens Ström ‘the stream of the corpse-flood raises the mountains’ (cf. Skj B and LP: fljót). But this does not sit well with Finnur’s construal of yppir as impersonal (cf. LP: yppa) and altogether the sense is both inferior in itself and discrepant from the Latin, which has nothing to say about rivers raising mountains. For discussion of evident errors in Hb see Introduction.