GunnLeif Merl II 59^VIII

‘Ok þar á hlýrni         heiðar stjǫrnur
má marka því         moldar hvergi.
Sumar fara ǫfgar,         sumar annan veg
af inni gǫmlu         gǫngu sinni.

‘Ok því má marka heiðar stjǫrnur þar á hlýrni hvergi moldar. Sumar fara ǫfgar, sumar annan veg af inni gǫmlu gǫngu sinni.

‘And for that cause it will not be possible anywhere on earth to distinguish the bright stars there in heaven. Some will go backwards, some on a different path away from their ancient course.

Mss: Hb(50v) (Bret)

Editions: Skj AII, 20, Skj BII, 22, Skald II, 14; Bret 1848-9, II, 36 (Bret st. 59); Hb 1892-6, 276; Merl 2012, 120.

Notes: [All]: Briefly summarised from DGB 117, prophecy 73. — [2] heiðar stjǫrnur ‘the bright stars’: De Vries (1964-7, II, 75 n. 179) compares Vsp 57/4. — [3-4] má marka ... hvergi moldar ‘it will not be possible anywhere on earth to distinguish’: An impersonal construction, lit. ‘one can distinguish nowhere of earth’. The sense, in the context of ll. 5-8 and II 60/1-4, appears to be that the stars (and with them the sun and the moon, II 58/5-8), following perturbed courses, can no longer be identified or distinguished one from another, even if they are still visible. With that, human systems of time-keeping and navigation would collapse, an idea hinted at in II 57/6 tíðmǫrk himins ‘time-markers of heaven’. Cf. the admonition to the would-be merchant in Kgs (Holm-Olsen 1983, 130): Nemðu uandliga birting lopz oc gang himintvngla ‘Note carefully the illumination of the sky and the movement of the heavenly bodies’. Skj B translates marka af as tage mærke af ‘take notice of, recognise’, cf. Bret 1848-9 and Merl 2012. — [4] hvergi moldar ‘anywhere on earth’: Lit. ‘nowhere of earth’: A well attested usage, for the syntax of which see Fritzner: hvergi adv. 3; CVC, LP: hvergi. The line is so construed in Skj B. In Bret 1848-9, by contrast, hvergi moldar appears to be interpreted as ‘nowhere in the firmament’, but that is unlikely in view of the standard senses of mold ‘earth’. Merl 2012 takes a radically different approach, construing hvergi as equivalent to hverrgi ‘no one’, taken as subject of má ‘can’, but a phrase hver[r]gi moldar, translated as keiner auf der Erde ‘no one on Earth’, is not otherwise attested.

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. LP = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller.
5. CVC = Cleasby, Richard, Gudbrand Vigfusson [Guðbrandur Vigfússon] and W. A. Craigie. 1957. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon.
6. Vries, Jan de. 1964-7. Altnordische Literaturgeschichte. 2 vols. 2nd edn. Grundriss der germanischen Philologie 15-16. Berlin: de Gruyter.
7. Fritzner = Fritzner, Johan. 1883-96. Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 3 vols. Kristiania (Oslo): Den norske forlagsforening. 4th edn. Rpt. 1973. Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget.
8. Holm-Olsen, Ludvig, ed. 1983. Konungs skuggsiá. 2nd rev. edn. Norrøne tekster 1. Oslo: Norsk historisk kjeldeskrift-institutt.
9. 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.
10. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
11. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
12. Internal references
13. 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 26 May 2024)
14. Not published: do not cite ()