GunnLeif Merl II 5^VIII

‘Vella í víðri         Vintónía
— þats borgar nafn —         brunnar þrennir.
Þeir munu láði         lœkjum skipta
þrír óglíkir         í þrjá staði.

‘Þrennir brunnar vella í víðri Vintónía; þats nafn borgar. Þeir þrír óglíkir munu skipta láði lœkjum í þrjá staði.

‘Triple springs will well up in broad Winchester; that is the name of the city. Those three, [each] unlike [the others], will divide the land with their streams into three parts.

Mss: Hb(49r) (Bret)

Readings: [1] Vella: ‘Sar er’ apparently corrected from ‘Varu’ Hb

Editions: Skj AII, 11, Skj BII, 11, Skald II, 7; Bret 1848-9, II, 15-16 (Bret st. 5); Hb 1892-6, 272; Merl 2012, 70-1.

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 116 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 151.147-8; cf. Wright 1988, 107, prophecy 31): Tres fontes in urbe Guintonia erumpent, quorum riuuli insulam in tres portiones secabunt ‘Three springs will well up in the city of Winchester, and their streams will cut the island in three’ (cf. Reeve and Wright 2007, 150). — [1] vella ‘will well up’: In Hb the text is refreshed as ‘Sar er’ but the traces of initial majuscule <V> are visible; Finnur Jónsson (Hb 1892-6, 272) interprets these indications as Váru. This reading seems unlikely to originate with Gunnlaugr, however, since pres. (for future), not pret., is called for by the remainder of the stanza; in transmission the pret. could have encroached from the preceding stanza. Additionally, váru would denote a steady state rather than a development that divides the lands within which the city is built into three, as required by the remainder of the stanza. In the present edn emendation to vella ‘well up’ is proposed to solve these difficulties and as the obvious vernacular rendition of Geoffrey’s erumpent; cf. its use in I 89/8. Bret 1848-9, followed by Skj B and Skald, emends to vaxa ‘grow, increase’, but this verb is not attested in relation to springs. Merl 2012 proposes Þar eru ‘There are’ but this, besides being vague and unidiomatic in itself, does not fit with the idea of a sudden break-out required by DGB. — [2] Vintónía ‘Winchester’: Winchester was a major royal and ecclesiastical centre under the Normans, continuing its prominent role in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

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. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
6. 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.
7. Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
8. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
9. Internal references
10. 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 24 April 2024)