Note to GunnLeif Merl II 36VIII
[9] hernumin ‘taken in battle’: Ms. hernumin (refreshed) ‘taken in battle’ raises the difficulty that ‘the children of the eagle and the wolf’ are otherwise presented in the stanza as benefiting from the battle (by drinking blood), not actively fighting in it or suffering as a result of it, activities that would hardly constitute an expected element in the ‘beasts-of-battle’ type scene widely used in skaldic poetry. In the absence of a Latin analogue at this point a secure emendation has not so far been suggested. Scheving proposed hræmunin, explained as ‘eager for corpses’ (reported but not adopted in Bret 1848-9). Skj B emends to hræfíkin ‘corpse-greedy’, which is suitable in terms of both metre and sense. Kock suggests hrapa á hræ numin, translated as störta sig över de gripna liken ‘collapse over the captured bodies’ (NN §2163E; Skald; followed by Merl 2012), but this fails for metrical reasons.
References
- Bibliography
- Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
- Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
- Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
- Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.