GunnLeif Merl I 72^VIII

‘Mun villigǫltr         vígdjarfr koma
ór kynstórri         Kónánus ætt
sá vigra konr         Vallandi á.
Høggr yngva sonr         eikr ór skógi;
þó mun hilmir         hollr smáviði.

‘Villigǫltr, sá konr vigra, mun koma vígdjarfr ór kynstórri ætt Kónánus á Vallandi. Sonr yngva høggr eikr ór skógi; þó mun hilmir hollr smáviði.

‘A wild boar, that scion of pigs, will issue, daring in combat, from the mighty lineage of Conan in France. The prince’s son hews down oaks from the forest; yet the ruler will be kindly to small trees.

Mss: Hb(52r) (Bret)

Readings: [4] Kónánus: ‘Kominus’ Hb    [5] vigra: ‘viga‑’ Hb

Editions: Skj AII, 32, Skj BII, 38, Skald II, 24; Bret 1848-9, II, 64 (Bret st. 140); Hb 1892-6, 281; Merl 2012, 184-5.

Notes: [All]: Cf. DGB 115 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 149.114-17; cf. Wright 1988, 105-6, prophecy 21): Ex Conano procedet aper bellicosus, qui infra Gallicana nemora acumen dentium suorum exercebit. Truncabit namque quaeque maiora robora, minoribus uero tutelam praestabit ‘From Conanus will come forth a warlike boar, who will exercise the sharpness of his tusks on the forests of France. He will cut short all the tallest trees, but give protection to the smaller’ (cf. Reeve and Wright 2007, 148). Geoffrey envisages the resurgent British monarchy gaining power in France. Gunnlaugr amplifies on the glory of the boar king’s lineage, probably with Arthur, the greatest of the boar kings, in mind: cf. I 24/4. — [4] Kónánus ‘of Conan’: Emended by Bret 1848-9, followed by subsequent eds, for ms. ‘Kominus’ (refreshed). The reference is to Conan Meriadoc: see I 64 Note to [All]. — [5] konr vigra ‘scion of pigs’: The latter word is emended in this edn from ms. ‘viga-‘ (refreshed). The heiti vigrir ‘boar’ occurs in Þul Galtar 1/7^III; see Note there; cf. LP: vigr, where an etymology based on med tænder som spyd ‘with spear-like teeth’ is tentatively suggested. Scheving (reported in Bret 1848-9) emended the words viga konr more drastically to vígtǫnnum ‘with battle tusks’, guided by the wording of DGB. This solution was adopted in Bret 1848-9 and Skj B and may well be correct. Other possibilities, however, are that Gunnlaugr omitted the mention of tusks, as he evidently does in II 30/5-8, perhaps in order to rationalise the allegory, or that there is a lacuna after l. 6, in which the boar’s tusks could have been mentioned. In Skald ‘viga-’ is read as víga, without explanation: Merl 2012 adopts this reading, translating konr víga as Mann der Kämpfe [= dieser Krieger] ‘man of battles [= this warrior]’, but such a periphrasis would be unidiomatic; also, konr as a heiti for ‘man’ in general is very rarely attested as against the numerous attestations in the sense of ‘scion, descendant, heir’ (LP: konr). — [6] Vallandi ‘France’: This is the hitherto unrecognised ms. reading (refreshed). Above the first vowel, which as refreshed might be either <a> or <i>, is a stroke sloping downwards and rightwards that appears to have been part of an original <a>. A pen stroke runs across the <lld> of valldi, descending rightwards somewhat to merge with <d>. It is distinct from the ascender of <d>, as is shown by comparison with I 35/7 veldi and I 66/8 skildi, and might be interpreted as a mark of contraction, thus ‘landi’. A similar pen stroke, reaching leftwards from the ascender of <d> so as to cross the <l> or occasionally placed above both <l> and <d>, is seen in such refreshed readings as II 13/2 ‘landi’, II 15/4 ‘Bretlands’, II 19/4 ‘landreki’ and II 31/4 ‘landher’. This stroke can usually but not always be distinguished from the stroke seen elsewhere in association with preceding <l> or <ll> which is merely a run-in to the <d>, and where no contraction is involved (e.g. I 38/10). Sometimes, however, the abbreviated form of land lacks any mark of contraction, as in the refreshed readings II 1/6 and II 2/2, and this may have been the norm in the original hand (cf. I 12/6, I 23/4, I 28/4 and I 37/4). Regardless of how the pen stroke is interpreted, then, expansion to ‑landi seems secure and there are no indications that the refreshing is other than accurate on this occasion. Earlier eds, not recognising the reading, are led into tentative emendations. Scheving is reported in Bret 1848-9, without further explanation, as conjecturing valdastar ‘mightiest’ or vildastar ‘choicest’, in reference to the eikr (f. acc. pl.). Bret 1848-9 emends to valskar ‘French’, likewise qualifying eikr. Finnur Jónsson reads villdi a (Skj A) and emends to vildjá.. (sic: left untranslated), with ellipses to show that the line was metrically deficient (Skj B, followed by Skald and Merl 2012).

References

1. Bibliography
2. Skj A = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15a. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. A: Tekst efter håndskrifterne. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1967. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
3. Skj B = Finnur Jónsson, ed. 1912-15b. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning. B: Rettet tekst. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Villadsen & Christensen. Rpt. 1973. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger.
4. Skald = Kock, Ernst Albin, ed. 1946-50. Den norsk-isländska skaldediktningen. 2 vols. Lund: Gleerup.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Bret 1848-9 = Jón Sigurðsson. 1848-9. ‘Trójumanna saga ok Breta sögur, efter Hauksbók, med dansk Oversættelse’. ÅNOH 1848, 3-215; 1849, 3-145.
8. 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.
9. Wright, Neil, ed. 1988. The Historia Regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth. II. The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
10. Merl 2012 = Horst, Simone, ed. 2012. Merlínússpá. Merlins Prophezeiung. Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag.
11. Internal references
12. 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 19 April 2024)
13. Elena Gurevich (ed.) 2017, ‘Anonymous Þulur, Galtar heiti 1’ in Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold (eds), Poetry from Treatises on Poetics. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, p. 900.