GunnLeif Merl II 25^VIII

‘Flykkjask foglar;         fara þeir í sæði;
eyða þeir ǫkrum         ok aldini.
Sultr verðr ok sótt         — sék mart fyrir —
manndauðr mikill;         mein gengr of þjóð.

‘Foglar flykkjask; þeir fara í sæði; þeir eyða ǫkrum ok aldini. Sultr verðr, ok sótt, manndauðr mikill; sék mart fyrir; mein gengr of þjóð.

‘The birds will flock together; they will go into the crops; they will devastate the fields and fruit. Famine will develop, also sickness, great mortality of men; I see many things to come; harm will afflict the people.

Mss: Hb(49v) (Bret)

Editions: Skj AII, 15, Skj BII, 15, Skald II, 9, FF §63; Bret 1848-9, II, 24 (Bret st. 25); Hb 1892-6, 274; Merl 2012, 90.

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 116 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 153.183-5; cf. Wright 1988, 109, prophecies 39 and 40): In culturas mortalium irruent et omnia grana messium deuorabunt. Sequetur fames populum atque dira mortalitas famem ‘They will fall upon men’s crops and eat all the grains of corn. The people will be afflicted by hunger and after that by a deadly plague’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 152). For grana ‘grains’ a variant reading is genera ‘kinds’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 153, Wright 1988, 109) and the expansion of the Latin seen in Merl could be interpreted as an attempt to incorporate the sense of both readings by mentioning the different types of produce. Ms. D of the First Variant Version has genera in the main text and grana noted in the margin as a variant (Wright 1988, 109), and Gunnlaugr’s source ms. may have been similar in this respect. — [2, 3] þeir ‘they’: Omitted in Skald in both lines. — [5]: This edn follows Kock (FF §63) in its analysis of the components of the subject; Skj B, apparently followed by Merl 2012, takes manndauðr as the subject of gengr, with mein in apposition, but that, as Kock notes, is less consonant with poetic style. — [8] þjóð ‘the people’: Merl 2012 would retain the refresher’s reading þjóðir, but, as noted in Hb 1892-6, the contraction sign for -ir arises from misinterpretation of the loop in preceding -ð-.

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. 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.
5. FF = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1922. Fornjermansk forskning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 18:1. Lund: Gleerup.
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. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
10. Internal references
11. 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 23 April 2024)