GunnLeif Merl I 37VIII/10 — tolfta ‘the twelfth’
‘Láð munu láta þeirs lifa eptir;
ferr in þingdjarfa þjóð ór landi.
Býr blezaðr gramr — sás brezkr jǫfurr —
skip sín á brott, ok hann skjótla verðr
taliðr tírgǫfugr í tolfta hǫll
sæll með sælum settr guðs vinum.
‘Þeirs lifa eptir munu láta láð; in þingdjarfa þjóð ferr ór landi. Blezaðr gramr — sás brezkr jǫfurr — býr skip sín á brott, ok hann verðr skjótla taliðr tírgǫfugr settr í tolfta hǫll sæll með sælum vinum guðs.
‘Those who survive will abandon the land; the battle-daring people will go from the territory. A blessed king — he is the British leader — prepares his ships for departure and he will soon become reckoned glorious, seated in the twelfth hall, blessed among the blessed friends of God.
notes
[10] í tolfta ‘in the twelfth’: This apparently nonsensical expression must ultimately be due to an incorrect reading .xii. (expanded to duodecimi ‘of the twelfth’) in Geoffrey’s text, supplanting original *xri or *xti, i.e. Christi ‘of Christ’, in reference to the caelestis regni aula ‘palace of the heavenly kingdom’ mentioned in DGB XI (206.586: Reeve and Wright 2007, 281). The commentaries attempt to explain in ad hoc fashion, e.g. (Hammer 1940, 416): in aula duodecimi, id est in ecclesia beati Petri apostoli ‘in the hall of the twelfth, i.e. in the church of St Peter the apostle’ and ‘King Cadwaladre … was buried in the chirche of xij. Apostolles. and is a seint’ (Eckhardt 1982, 73). Emended to tólpti í and construed as ‘twelfth in [the hall]’ in Skj B, followed by Skald, on the basis of an incorrect interpretation of .xii. as duodecimus ‘twelfth’ in Bret 1848‑9. In a hybrid approach, Merl 2012 reads í tólpta hǫll but translates, in combination with hann skjótla verðr taliðr, as der Edle wird bald als zwölfter gerechnet in der Halle ‘the noble one will soon be reckoned as twelfth in the hall’, but this is ruled out by considerations of syntax and word order.