GunnLeif Merl II 36^VIII

‘Sék vé vaða,         verðr †mitt† skaða;
syngr sára klungr         snyrtidrengjum.
En á leið fara         lægjǫrn ara
jóð ok ylgjar         enn til sylgjar;
hrapa hernumin         hvártveggja bǫrn.

‘Sék vé vaða, †mitt† verðr skaða; {klungr sára} syngr snyrtidrengjum. En lægjǫrn jóð ara ok ylgjar fara enn á leið til sylgjar; bǫrn hvártveggja hrapa hernumin.

‘I see the standards advance, … will harm; {the thorn of wounds} [SWORD] sings to brave men. And the treacherous children of the eagle and the she-wolf go on their way to the drinking once more; the offspring of both will tumble down, taken in battle.

Mss: Hb(50r) (Bret)

Readings: [10] hvártveggja: hvártveggi Hb

Editions: Skj AII, 17, Skj BII, 17, Skald II, 11, NN §2163D, E; Bret 1848-9, II, 28-9 (Bret st. 36); Hb 1892-6, 275; Merl 2012, 100-1.

Notes: [All]: See II 31 Note to [All]. Note the end-rhymes (ll. 1-2, 5-8) in this stanza, possibly imitated from such poems as Egill Hfl^V(Eg). As elsewhere in his battle descriptions, Gunnlaugr reaches for special stylistic devices associated with traditional skaldic poetry. — [2] †mitt†: Scheving conjectured flýtt ‘speedily, hastily’ from ms. ‘mitt’ (refreshed) and this suggestion was adopted in Bret 1848-9 and Skj B. Hb 1892-6 notes, however, that flýtt cannot have been the original reading of Hb. Kock (NN §2163D; Skald) suggests, without reference to the ms., mœtt (spelt mætt in Skald), apparently in the sense ‘met’, and also notes an OE mittan ‘meet’. Merl 2012 follows in reading mætt, translated as angetroffen ‘encountered’. But this proposal leaves the syntax problematic: the nom. forms mættr and skaði would be expected. — [3] klungr sára ‘the thorn of wounds [SWORD]’: Treated in Merl 2012 as an emendation but it is in fact the unrefreshed reading in Hb, first recognised by Bret 1848-9 and adopted by subsequent eds. — [6] lægjǫrn ‘treacherous’: De Vries (1964-7, II, 75 n. 179) compares Vsp 35/3. — [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

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. Vries, Jan de. 1964-7. Altnordische Literaturgeschichte. 2 vols. 2nd edn. Grundriss der germanischen Philologie 15-16. Berlin: de Gruyter.
6. 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.
7. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
8. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
9. Internal references
10. 2022, ‘ Anonymous, Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 162-389. <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=14> (accessed 11 May 2024)
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 11 May 2024)
12. Margaret Clunies Ross (forthcoming), ‘ Egill Skallagrímsson, Hǫfuðlausn’ in Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade and Tarrin Wills (eds), Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 5. Turnhout: Brepols, p. . <https://skaldic.org/m.php?p=text&i=1164> (accessed 11 May 2024)
13. Not published: do not cite ()