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.
Kómu til smíðar spakir vǫlundar
— þats ýtum sagt — uppi í fjalli.
En, þats drengir á degi gerðu,
sá þess engan stað annan morgin.
Spakir vǫlundar kómu til smíðar uppi í fjalli; þats sagt ýtum. En, þats drengir gerðu á degi, sá þess engan stað annan morgin.
Skilful builders came to the work up on the mountain; that is told to men. But what the men achieved by day, nowhere was it to be seen the next morning.
Mss: Hb(51r) (Bret)
Editions: Skj AII, 23, Skj BII, 25, Skald II, 16; Bret 1848-9, II, 40-1 (Bret st. 75); Hb 1892-6, 277; Merl 2012, 133.
Notes: [All]: 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. — [2] vǫlundar ‘builders’: The name of the archetypal legendary smith Vǫlundr is occasionally used of craftsmen and skilled artisans in general (LP: Vǫlundr). — [3]: A conventional expression that may evoke oral delivery. Cf. Merl I 22/2-3. — [7] sá þess engan stað ‘nowhere was it to be seen’: Lit. ‘of this [one] saw nowhere’, an impersonal construction with gen. of the object.
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