Cookies on our website

We use cookies on this website, mainly to provide a secure browsing experience but also to collect statistics on how the website is used. You can find out more about the cookies we set, the information we store and how we use it on the cookies page.

Continue

skaldic

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

Menu Search

Note to GunnLeif Merl II 59VIII

[3-4] má marka ... hvergi moldar ‘it will not be possible anywhere on earth to distinguish’: An impersonal construction, lit. ‘one can distinguish nowhere of earth’. The sense, in the context of ll. 5-8 and II 60/1-4, appears to be that the stars (and with them the sun and the moon, II 58/5-8), following perturbed courses, can no longer be identified or distinguished one from another, even if they are still visible. With that, human systems of time-keeping and navigation would collapse, an idea hinted at in II 57/6 tíðmǫrk himins ‘time-markers of heaven’. Cf. the admonition to the would-be merchant in Kgs (Holm-Olsen 1983, 130): Nemðu uandliga birting lopz oc gang himintvngla ‘Note carefully the illumination of the sky and the movement of the heavenly bodies’. Skj B translates marka af as tage mærke af ‘take notice of, recognise’, cf. Bret 1848-9 and Merl 2012.

References

  1. Bibliography
  2. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
  3. Holm-Olsen, Ludvig, ed. 1983. Konungs skuggsiá. 2nd rev. edn. Norrøne tekster 1. Oslo: Norsk historisk kjeldeskrift-institutt.
  4. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
  5. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.

Close

Log in

This service is only available to members of the relevant projects, and to purchasers of the skaldic volumes published by Brepols.
This service uses cookies. By logging in you agree to the use of cookies on your browser.

Close