GunnLeif Merl II 17^VIII

‘En sæti hans         sunddýr fagna;
hans mun stóll vesa         yfir stoðum tvennum.
Þó hefr gumnum         grandat mǫrgum
hvítrar ullar         hvers kyns litir.

‘En {sunddýr} fagna sæti hans; stóll hans mun vesa yfir tvennum stoðum. Þó hefr litir hvers kyns hvítrar ullar grandat mǫrgum gumnum.

‘But his seats gladden {sound-animals} [SHIPS]; his throne will rest on two columns. Yet dyes of every kind for white wool have harmed many men.

Mss: Hb(49v) (Bret)

Readings: [1, 2] En sæti hans sunddýr fagna: ‘En sætaz svndi fagna’ Hb

Editions: Skj AII, 13, Skj BII, 13-14, Skald II, 8; Bret 1848-9, II, 20 (Bret st. 17); Hb 1892-6, 273; Merl 2012, 83-4.

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 116 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 153.169-72; cf. Wright 1988, 108, prophecies 35 and 36): ‘“candor lanarum nocuit atque tincturae ipsarum diuersitas; uae periurae genti, quia urbs inclita propter eam ruet. Gaudebunt naues augmentatione tanta, et unum ex duobus fiet”’ ‘“The whiteness of wool and the many colours it has been dyed have done you harm; woe to the treacherous people on whose account a famous city will fall.” The ships will rejoice at this great increment and two will become one’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 152). Winchester was by Geoffrey’s time the base for a flourishing wool industry (see Leach 1900b, 134-5; Page 1912b, 36-44). For the privileges of cloth makers and their growing unpopularity see Poole (1955, 84-6). Geoffrey seems to single out the commune of the city for suspicion of potential disloyalty, against either the king or the bishop, whose vassals they would have been. Gunnlaugr focuses on the dyeing of wool, to which special privileges attached. The sentences beginning respectively candor and gaudebunt are reversed in the text of Merl as extant, and several other sentences are omitted. — [1-2]: Emended by Scheving (followed by Bret 1848-9) from ms. ‘En sætaz svndi fagna’ (refreshed). The three-fold emendation here is necessary to create sense in an incoherent passage and fits well with DGB, which describes ships, i.e. their passengers, rejoicing in the augmentation of the see of St Davids through the addition of Winchester. The conjectured reading sæti ‘seats’ (i.e. ‘sees’), construed as pl. because of the pl. verb fagna ‘rejoice’, conforms admirably to this logic. Gunnlaugr uses sund ‘sea’ as a kenning determinant twice elsewhere (II 1/2, II 31/2, the latter in the ship-kenning sundraukn ‘the beasts of burden of the sea’); for the postulated second element dýr ‘animal’, cf. kjaldýr ‘keel beast’ (I 95/6). Skj B (followed by Skald and Merl 2012) emends to sætré ‘timbers of the sea [SHIPS]’, while retaining sundi, interpreted as ‘voyage’, and explains the whole clause as ‘the timbers of the sea [SHIPS] rejoice in the voyage’. But that fits poorly with DGB. — [3] hans ‘his’: Omitted in Skald. — [4] tvennum stoðum ‘two columns’: Presumably another reference to the combined revenues of the bishoprics of Winchester and St Davids. Stóll (sg.) ‘throne’ apparently clashes with pl. sæti ‘seats’, but the logic is presumably that, to paraphrase DGB, the two sees have become one. — [8] litir ‘dyes’: Emended in Merl 2012 to litr ‘dye’, so as to create concord with the sg. verb hefr (lit. ‘has’). But this is unnecessary, since often the sg. of the verb is used when a pl. subject is placed later in the clause (NS §66b Anm. 3); moreover, the emendation would introduce a trisyllabic line at a point in the poem where such lines do not otherwise occur.

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. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
4. NS = Nygaard, Marius. 1906. Norrøn syntax. Kristiania (Oslo): Aschehoug. Rpt. 1966.
5. Hb 1892-6 = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1892-6. Hauksbók udgiven efter de Arnamagnæanske håndskrifter no. 371, 544 og 675, 4° samt forskellige papirshåndskrifter. Copenhagen: Det kongelige nordiske oldskrift-selskab.
6. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
7. Reeve, Michael D., and Neil Wright. 2007. Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain. An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum [Historia regum Britanniae]. Woodbridge: Boydell.
8. Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
9. Poole, Austin Lane. 1955. From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 1087-1216. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
10. Page, William. 1912b. ‘Winchester: Fairs and Trades’. In Page 1912a, 36-44. <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42048> [accessed 4 September 2013]
11. Leach, Arthur F., ed. 1900b. ‘The Law of the Fullers & Weavers of Winchester, 1209’. In Leach 1900a, 134-5. Rpt. in Cave and Coulson 1936, 242-3.
12. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
13. Internal references
14. 2017, ‘ Unattributed, Breta saga’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 38. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=125> (accessed 19 April 2024)