GunnLeif Merl I 7^VIII

Russell Poole (ed.) 2017, ‘Breta saga 75 (Gunnlaugr Leifsson, Merlínusspá I 7)’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 52.

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

See Note to st. 6. In part Gunnlaugr’s source appears to be DGB 106 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 137.503-6): Conuenientes itaque lapidarii coeperunt eam fundare. Sed quicquid una die operabantur, absorbebat tellus illud in altera, ita ut nescirent quorsum opus suum euanesceret ‘They met and began to lay foundations. But whatever they accomplished one day would be swallowed up by the ground the next day, so that they had no idea where it had gone’ (cf. Reeve and Wright 2007, 136). In view of in altera [die] ‘the next day’, it seems likely that sts 7 and 8 may additionally draw on material now extant in the First Variant Version: cf. DGB 108 (cf. Wright 1988, 100): Volens enim turrim edificare, non possunt fundamenta eius in loco isto consistere quin quod in die construitur in nocte a terra deuoretur ‘Attempting to build a tower, they could not lay its foundation in that place since whatever was built during the day was engulfed by the earth during the night’. It is clearer in this version, as also in Gunnlaugr’s stanza, that the disappearance of the foundations happens during the night, not on the following day. — [3]: A conventional expression that may evoke oral delivery. Cf. Merl I 22/2-3.