GunnLeif Merl I 91^VIII

‘Verðr tuttugu         tjón þúsunda
ljóna ferðar         Lundúnum í.
Þeir munu drengir         drepnir allir;
gerir karla tjón         Tems at blóði.

‘Tjón tuttugu þúsunda ferðar ljóna verðr í Lundúnum. Þeir drengir munu allir drepnir; tjón karla gerir Tems at blóði.

‘The loss of twenty thousand of the host of men will come to pass in London. Those men will all be slain; the loss of men will turn the Thames to blood.

Mss: Hb(52v) (Bret)

Editions: Skj AII, 35, Skj BII, 42, Skald II, 27, NN §3144; Bret 1848-9, II, 70-1 (Bret st. 159); Hb 1892-6, 282; Merl 2012, 199.

Notes: [All]: The stanza divisions for I 91, 92, and 93, as printed in this edn, following Bret 1848-9 and Skj B, are uncertain. Hb has a capital <V> with red colouring at I 91/1, a small <m> with no colouring at I 92/1, a capital <E> with red at I 91/5 and a small <h> without colouring at I 93/1. It might be that Gunnlaugr had only two stanzas here, each of 12 lines, but I 92/5-8 would be awkward to sever from the previous helmingr and similar stanza division errors have been detected elsewhere in the ms. (see Notes to I 34/9-10 and I 35/7-10). Cf. DGB 116 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 151.144-5; cf. Wright 1988, 107, prophecy 30): Lundonia necem uiginti miliorum lugebit, et Tamensis in sanguinem mutabitur ‘London will grieve for the demise of twenty thousand, and the Thames will turn to blood’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 150). — [7] tjón karla ‘the loss of men’: Kock (NN §3144; Skald) would reverse the order of these two nouns in the line so as to give the noun alliterating on <t> the position of greatest metrical prominence.

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. NN = Kock, Ernst Albin. 1923-44. Notationes Norrœnæ: Anteckningar till Edda och skaldediktning. Lunds Universitets årsskrift new ser. 1. 28 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
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 2 May 2024)