GunnLeif Merl I 46^VIII

Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Breta saga 114 (Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá I 46)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 82.

Interactive view: tap on words in the text for notes and glosses

Cf. DGB 113 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147.72-3; cf. Wright 1988, 103, prophecy 9): Vigebit tandem paulisper, sed decimatio Neustriae nocebit. Populus namque in ligno et ferreis tunicis superueniet, qui uindictam de nequitia ipsius sumet ‘Then it will prosper for a short time, but the decimation visited on it by Normandy will injure it. A people will come in wood and tunics of iron to take vengeance on its wickedness’ (cf. Reeve and Wright 2007, 146). This and the ensuing prophecies resume the theme of the Norman Conquest. Between the coronation of Edward the Confessor, the first member of the native Anglo-Saxon royal dynasty to rule since Æthelred II, in 1043 (Stenton 1971, 423) and the Norman Conquest in 1066 only twenty-three years elapsed, hence Geoffrey’s paulisper. Gunnlaugr postpones mention of the alleged decimation perpetrated by Normandy upon the Saxons until st. I 48 and in general plays down the Norman identification. He may have preferred to focus on the Breton component of the invasion force, which is also covered by the vague phrase sunnan of ægi ‘from the south across the sea’: cf. I 47/3. He conveys the idea of ‘wood’, Geoffrey’s rather cryptic reference to the Norman longships, by using the more explicit phrase of ægi ‘across the sea’ (l. 6).