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

GunnLeif Merl II 43VIII

Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Breta saga 43 (Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá II 43)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 172.

Gunnlaugr LeifssonMerlínusspá II
424344

text and translation

‘Es fundr lagiðr         ok friðr samiðr;
koma mildingar         málstefnu til.
En á fundi þeim         flærðir reynask;
banar hertoga         brezkr landreki.

‘Fundr es lagiðr ok friðr samiðr; mildingar koma til málstefnu. En flærðir reynask á þeim fundi; brezkr landreki banar hertoga.
 
‘‘A meeting will be set and a safe-conduct concluded; the leaders will come to the council. But at that meeting treacheries will come to pass; the British ruler will slay the war-leader.

notes and context

Cf. DGB 116 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 155.202; cf. Wright 1988, 110, prophecy 44): et ipsum totum deuorabit ‘and will eat him whole’ (cf. Reeve and Wright 2007, 154). Here the usurping fox, disguised as the wolf, consumes the boar-king: Geoffrey’s animal symbolism is rationalised in Merl. Gunnlaugr also elaborates on the establishment of the truce, both here and in the preceding stanza.

sources

Text is based on reconstruction from the base text and variant apparatus and may contain alternative spellings and other normalisations not visible in the manuscript text. Transcriptions may not have been checked and should not be cited.

editions and texts

Skj: Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínússpá I 43, 45/1-4: AII, 18, BII, 19, Skald II, 12; Bret 1848-9, II, 31 (Bret st. 43); Hb 1892-6, 275; Merl 2012, 107.

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

Stanza/chapter/text segment

Use the buttons at the top of the page to navigate between stanzas in a poem.

Information tab

Interactive tab

The text and translation are given here, with buttons to toggle whether the text is shown in the verse order or prose word order. Clicking on indiviudal words gives dictionary links, variant readings, kennings and notes, where relevant.

Full text tab

This is the text of the edition in a similar format to how the edition appears in the printed volumes.

Chapter/text segment

This view is also used for chapters and other text segments. Not all the headings shown are relevant to such sections.