GunnLeif Merl I 44VIII/1 — grimmum ‘the savage’
‘Þá mun grimmum ganga at móti
landnyrðingr hvass lundar fjǫtri
ok blóma þá á brott reka,
es vestrœnir vindar grœddu.
‘Þá mun hvass landnyrðingr ganga at móti grimmum fjǫtri lundar ok reka þá blóma á brott, es vestrœnir vindar grœddu.
‘Then a sharp northeast wind will come against the savage fetter of the grove [SNAKE], and drive away the flowers that the westerly winds fostered.
readings
[1] grimmum: gumnum Hb
notes
[1] grimmum ‘savage’: Emended in this edn from ms. gumnum ‘to men’ (not refreshed), which is retained in all previous eds. Bret 1848-9 and Skj B leave gumnum untranslated (despite a statement to the contrary regarding Skj B in Merl 2012) but appear to have construed it as an appositional expansion to fjǫtri lundar ‘the fetter of the grove [SNAKE]’; this, although advocated by Kock (NN §102), leads to an awkward discrepancy between pl. and sg. The other cases discussed by Kock are not syntactically parallel. Merl 2012 instead posits a double object but is obliged to add und ‘and’ to the translation (see Note to l. 1 above). The emendation grimmum is palaeographically straightforward and removes these difficulties. Gunnlaugr uses the adj. grimmr ‘savage’ and adv. grimmliga ‘savagely’ elsewhere (I 16/3, I 32/9, I 48/2, I 64/5, II 28/6) and it fits well with Geoffrey’s ascription of saeuicia ‘savagery’ to the white serpent in 112.39 (Reeve and Wright 2007, 147). See Introduction for apparent errors in the Hb text.
kennings
- grimmum fjǫtri lundar — the savage fetter of the grove, [SNAKE]