GunnLeif Merl I 72VIII/5 — vigra ‘of pigs’
‘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.
readings
[5] vigra: ‘viga‑’ Hb
notes
[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 1/7III; 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).