GunnLeif Merl I 72VIII/6 — Vallandi ‘France’
‘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.
notes
[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).