GunnLeif Merl I 38^VIII

‘Svá tœmir láð         lýða bǫrnum,
— drífr hryggr heðan         herr ór landi —
at skógar þar         skjótla vaxa,
es ársamir         akrar vôru
fyrr með fyrðum         á fold Breta.

‘Svá tœmir láð {bǫrnum lýða} — hryggr herr drífr heðan ór landi —, at skógar vaxa skjótla þar, es fyrr vôru ársamir akrar með fyrðum á fold Breta.

‘Thus the land will be emptied of {the children of men} [MANKIND] — the grieving people will stream from here out of the land — so that the forests will quickly grow there where previously among men there were fertile fields in the land of the Britons.

Mss: Hb(51v) (Bret)

Readings: [5] skógar: skjótla Hb

Editions: Skj AII, 27, Skj BII, 31-2, Skald II, 20; Bret 1848-9, II, 52 (Bret st. 106); Hb 1892-6, 279; Merl 2012, 156.

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 112 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147.61-2; cf. Wright 1988, 103, prophecy 5): Erit miseranda regni desolatio, et areae messium in fruticosos saltus redibunt ‘There will be grievous desolation in the kingdom and the threshing-floors for harvest will revert to fruitful glades’ (Reeve and Wright 2007, 146). This passage would make better sense if in infructuosos ‘in unfruitful’, the reading of ms. H of the First Variant Version were adopted (Wright 1988, 103), thus correcting an obvious haplography. This is done by e.g. the Anglo-Norman decasyllabic translation: lande senz fruit ‘fruitless scrub’ (Blacker 2005, 35) and Alain de Flandres (Wille 2015, 128). Implicitly, at least, Gunnlaugr’s skógar ‘forests’ are unfruitful: it is unclear whether he knew such a reading or has rationalised the text on his own initiative. Geoffrey explains in DGB XI that the famine and plague are so severe that the Saxons cannot survive in Britain any better than the Britons (Reeve and Wright 2007, 278-9). Gunnlaugr interweaves motifs from the source passage corresponding to I 36. — [1] tœmir ‘will be emptied’: The verb is used impersonally. This is one of only two attestations in poetry, both in C12th or later texts (LP: tœma). — [4] herr ‘people’: Merl 2012 reads acc. sg. her, treats drífr as transitive and construes hryggr as the subject (adj. for noun), yielding a translation traurig drängt er (man?) die Menge von hier aus dem Land ‘sorrowful he (one?) expels the multitude from here out of the land’. But this fits poorly with DGB and leaves the identity of the person described as hryggr ‘sorrowful’ unexplained; moreover, the required sense of drífa is attested in only a single dubious instance (ONP: drífa B út 2). Geminate <r> is frequently simplified in Hb (Hb 1892-6, xliii). — [5] skógar ‘forests’: Emended by Bret 1848-9, followed by all eds, for ms. skjótla ‘quickly’ (not refreshed), an anticipation of the next line. Also possible would be the reverse order skjótla … skógar.

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
3. 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.
4. ONP = Degnbol, Helle et al., eds. 1989-. A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose / Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog. 1-. Copenhagen: The Arnamagnæan Commission.
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. Blacker, Jean, ed. 2005. ‘The Anglo-Norman Verse Prophecies of Merlin’. Arthuriana 15, 1-125.
10. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
11. Wille, Clara, ed. and trans. 2015. Alain de Flandres, Prophetie und Politik: die Explanatio in Prophetia Merlini Ambrosii des Alanus Flandrensis. Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters 49. Bern: Lang.
12. Internal references
13. 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 26 April 2024)