GunnLeif Merl I 79^VIII

‘Kømr árgalli         enn inn mikli
ok meinliga         manndauðr of her;
eyðask borgir         við bragna tjón.
Es nauðr mikil         nýtra manna;
flýr margr á brott         maðr ór landi.

‘Enn kømr inn mikli árgalli ok manndauðr meinliga of her; borgir eyðask við tjón bragna. Es mikil nauðr nýtra manna; margr maðr flýr á brott ór landi.

‘Once more there will come a great failure of the harvest and mortality [with it], hurtfully over the people; cities will be devastated with the loss of men. There will be great adversity for valiant men; many a man will flee away from the land.

Mss: Hb(52v) (Bret)

Readings: [7] nauðr: auðn Hb

Editions: Skj AII, 33, Skj BII, 40, Skald II, 25; Bret 1848-9, II, 66-7 (Bret st. 147); Hb 1892-6, 282; Merl 2012, 190-1.

Notes: [All]:  Cf. DGB 115 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 151.127-8; cf. Wright 1988, 106, prophecy 25): Redibit iterum fames, redibit mortalitas; et desolationem urbium dolebunt ciues ‘Hunger will return, plague will return, and the natives will lament the desolation of their cities’ (cf. Reeve and Wright 2007, 150). — [7] nauðr ‘adversity’: Emended, so as to supply alliteration, from ms. auðn (not refreshed) to nauð by Scheving (reported in and followed by Bret 1848-9, from which it is subsequently accepted by Skj B and Skald); nauð, however, is a later form for nauðr (LP: nauðr), which is adopted in this edn. Merl 2012 retains the reading of the ms., auðn ‘wilderness, desert, devastation’, which fits well for sense within a context of failures of harvest (cf. the cognate eyddar ‘devastated’ in I 80/9), but auðn is used elsewhere in relation to land, not people, and does not provide an alliterating line, as alliteration cannot fall on mikil in l. 7. — [8] nýtra manna ‘for valiant men’: Lit. ‘of valiant men’; subjective gen., following Skj B: nød blandt dygtige mænd ‘adversity among valiant men’. Interpreted in Bret 1848-9 as Nödklager af Borgerne ‘cries of calamity from the citizens’.

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. 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.
6. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
7. 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.
8. Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
9. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
10. Internal references
11. 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)