‘Kømr árgalli enn inn mikli
ok meinliga manndauðr of her;
eyðask borgir við bragna tjón.
Es nauðr mikil nýtra manna;
flýr margr á brott maðr ór landi.
‘Enn kømr inn mikli árgalli ok manndauðr meinliga of her; borgir eyðask við tjón bragna. Es mikil nauðr nýtra manna; margr maðr flýr á brott ór landi.
‘Once more there will come a great failure of the harvest and mortality [with it], hurtfully over the people; cities will be devastated with the loss of men. There will be great adversity for valiant men; many a man will flee away from the land.
[7] nauðr: auðn Hb
[7] nauðr ‘adversity’: Emended, so as to supply alliteration, from ms. auðn (not refreshed) to nauð by Scheving (reported in and followed by Bret 1848-9, from which it is subsequently accepted by Skj B and Skald); nauð, however, is a later form for nauðr (LP: nauðr), which is adopted in this edn. Merl 2012 retains the reading of the ms., auðn ‘wilderness, desert, devastation’, which fits well for sense within a context of failures of harvest (cf. the cognate eyddar ‘devastated’ in I 80/9), but auðn is used elsewhere in relation to land, not people, and does not provide an alliterating line, as alliteration cannot fall on mikil in l. 7.