Saemund

“ The general plan of the Voluspo is fairly clear. Othin, chief of the gods, always conscious of impending disaster and eager for knowledge, calls on a certain “Volva,” or wise-woman, presumably bidding her rise from the grave. She first tells him of the past, of the creation of the world, the beginning of years, the origin of the dwarfs (at this point there is a clearly interpolated catalogue of dwarfs’ names, stanzas 10–16) , of the first man and woman, of the world-ash Yggdrasil, and of the first war, between the gods and the Vanir, or, in Anglicized form, the Wanes. ”

“ The greatest in volume is made up of the sagas: narratives mainly in prose, ranging all the way from authentic history of the Norwegian kings and the early Icelandic settlements to fairy-tales. Embodied in the sagas is found the material composing the second group: the skaldic poetry, a vast collection of songs of praise, triumph, love, lamentation, and so on, almost uniformly characterized by an appalling complexity of figurative language. There is no absolute line to be drawn between the poetry of the skalds and the poems of the Edda, which we may call the third group ”

“ Save Agnar alone, | and alone shall rule
Geirröth’s son o’er the Goths.
3. Hail to thee, Agnar! | for hailed thou art
By the voice of Veratyr; [88]
For a single drink | shalt thou never receive
A greater gift as reward.
4. The land is holy | that lies hard by
The gods and the elves together;
And Thor shall ever | in Thruthheim dwell,
Till the gods to destruction go.
5. Ydalir call they | the place where Ull
A hall for himself hath set;
And Alfheim the gods | to Freyr once gave
As a tooth-gift in ancient times. ”

“ The poet has added characters, apparently of his own creation, for the sake of episodes which would appeal to both the men and the women of the Greenland settlement. Sea voyages take the place of journeys by land; Atli is reproached, not for cowardice in battle, but for weakness at the Thing or great council. The additions made by the poet are responsible for the Atlamol’s being the longest of all the heroic poems in the Eddic collection, and they give it a kind of emotional vividness, but it has little of the compressed intensity of the older poems. ”

“ The Sigrdrifumol represents almost exclusively the contributions of the North to the Sigurth tradition (cf. introductory note to the Gripisspo) . Brynhild, here disguised by the annotator as “Sigrdrifa,” appears simply as a battle-maid and supernatural dispenser of wisdom; there is no trace of the daughter of Buthli and the rival of Guthrun. There is, however, so little of the “poem” which can definitely be assigned to the Sigurth cycle that it is impossible to trace back any of the underlying narrative substance. ”

“ The mythological poems include, in the Voluspo, one of the vastest conceptions of the creation and ultimate destruction of the world ever crystallized in literary form; in parts of the Hovamol, a collection of wise counsels that can bear comparison with most of the Biblical Book of Proverbs; in the Lokasenna, a comedy none the less full of vivid characterization because its humor is often broad; and in the Thrymskvitha, one of the finest ballads in the world. ”

“ Textual emendation has, however, been so extensive in every edition of the Edda, and has depended so much on the theories of the editor, that I have also made extensive use of many other editions, notably those by Finnur Jonsson, Neckel, Sijmons, and Detter and Heinzel, together with numerous commentaries. The condition of the text in both the principal codices is such that no great reliance can be placed on the accuracy of the copyists, and frequently two editions will differ fundamentally as to their readings of a given passage or even of an entire poem. ”

“ It was to explain some of the “kennings” which composed this special [139] vocabulary that Snorri wrote one of the sections of the Prose Edda. As an illustration, in a single stanza of one poem in the Egilssaga, a sword is called “the halo of the helm,” “the wound-hoe,” “the blood-snake” (possibly; no one is sure what the compound word means) and “the ice of the girdle,” while men appear in the same stanza as “Othin’s ash-trees,” and battle is spoken of as “the iron game.” ”

“ How much of the actual narrative material of the mythological lays is properly to be called Scandinavian is a matter for students of comparative mythology to guess at. The tales underlying the heroic lays are clearly of foreign origin: the Helgi story comes from Denmark, and that of Völund from Germany, as also the great mass of traditions centering around Sigurth (Siegfried) , Brynhild, the sons of Gjuki, Atli (Attila) , and Jormunrek (Ermanarich) . The introductory notes to the various poems deal with the more important of these questions of origin. ”

“ Sinfjotli’s history is told in detail in the early chapters of the Volsungasaga. The twin sister of Sigmund Volsungsson, Signy, had married Siggeir, who hated his brother-in-law by reason of his desire to possess a sword which had belonged to Othin and been won by Sigmund. Having treacherously invited Volsung and his ten sons to visit him, Siggeir slew Volsung and captured his sons, who were set in the stocks. Each night a wolf (“some men say that she was Siggeir’s mother”) came out of the woods and ate up one of the brothers, till on the tenth night Sigmund alone was left. ”

“ Why mankind should be referred to as Heimdall’s sons is uncertain, and the phrase has caused much perplexity. Heimdall seems to have had various attributes, and in the Rigsthula, wherein a certain Rig appears as the ancestor of the three great classes of men, a fourteenth century annotator identifies Rig with Heimdall, on what authority we do not know, for the Rig of the poem seems much more like Othin (cf. Rigsthula, introductory prose and note) . ”

“ On the other hand, the style as a whole is vigorously Norse, and thus the explanation that the poem was composed by an itinerant Norse poet who had lived for some time in the Celtic islands, and who was on a visit to the court of a Danish king, fits the ascertainable facts exceedingly well. As Christianity was introduced into Denmark around 960, the Rigsthula is not likely to have been composed much after that date, and probably belongs to the first half of the tenth century. ”

“ Prose. Freyr: concerning his father, Njorth, and the race of the Wanes in general, cf. Voluspo, 21 and note. Snorri thus describes Njorth’s family: “Njorth begat two children in Noatun; the son was named Freyr, and the daughter Freyja; they were fair of aspect and mighty. Freyr is the noblest of the gods; he rules over rain and sunshine, and therewith the fruitfulness of the earth; it is well to call upon him for plenty and welfare, for he rules over wealth for mankind. Freyja is the noblest of the goddesses. When she rides to the fight, she has one-half of the slain, and Othin has half. ”

“ The wise-woman tells of the Valkyries who bring the slain warriors to support Othin and the other gods in the battle, of the slaying of Baldr, best and fairest of the gods, through the wiles of Loki, of the enemies of the gods, of the summons to battle on both sides, and of the mighty struggle, till Othin is slain, and “fire leaps high [2] about heaven itself” (stanzas 31–58) . But this is not all. A new and beautiful world is to rise on the ruins of the old ”

“ The two concluding poems in the Codex Regius, the Guthrunarhvot (Guthrun’s Inciting) and the Hamthesmol (The Ballad of Hamther) , belong to a narrative cycle connected with those of Sigurth, the Burgundians, and Atli (cf. Gripisspo, introductory note) by only the slenderest of threads. Of the three early historical kings who gradually assumed a dominant place in Germanic legend, Ermanarich, king of the East Goths in the middle of the fourth century, was actually the least important, even though Jordanes, the sixth century author of De Rebus Getecis, compared him to Alexander the Great. ”

“ The longer one, the Poem of Hyndla proper, is chiefly a collection of names, not strictly mythological but belonging to the semi-historical hero-sagas of Norse tradition. The wise-woman, Hyndla, being asked by Freyja to trace the ancestry of her favorite, Ottar, for the purpose of deciding a wager, gives a complex genealogy including many of the heroes who appear in the popular sagas handed down from days long before the Icelandic settlements. The poet was learned, but without enthusiasm ”

“ In other words, the compiler told the story of Sigurth in mixed prose and verse, using whatever verse he could find without much questioning as to its origin, and filling in the gaps with his own prose. Fra [387] Dautha Sinfjotla, Reginsmol, Fafnismol, and Sigrdrifumol are essentially a coherent unit, but one of the compiler’s making only; they represent neither one poem nor three distinct poems, and the divisions and titles which have been almost universally adopted by editors are both arbitrary and misleading. ”

“ Above all, the earlier part of the story was linked with Northern mythology in a way which seems to have had no counterpart among the southern Germanic peoples. The Volsungs become direct descendants of Othin; the gods are closely concerned with Fafnir’s treasure, and so on. Above all, the Norse story-tellers and poets changed the figure of Brynhild. In making her a Valkyrie, sleeping on the flame-girt rock, they were never completely successful, as she persisted in remaining, to a considerable extent, the entirely human daughter of Buthli whom Sigurth woos for Gunnar. ”

“ Clearly the poems were the work of many different men, living in different periods; clearly, too, most of them existed in oral tradition for generations before they were first committed to writing. In general the mythological poems are strongly heathen in character, and as Christianity became generally accepted throughout Norway and Iceland early in the eleventh century, it is altogether likely that most of the poems dealing with the Norse gods antedate the year 1000. ”

“ Sleipnir: Othin’s eight-legged horse, one of Loki’s numerous progeny, borne by him to the stallion Svathilfari. This stallion belonged to the giant who built a fortress for the gods, and came so near to finishing it, with Svathilfari’s aid, as to make the gods fear he would win his promised reward—Freyja and the sun and moon. To delay the work, Loki turned himself into a mare, whereupon the stallion ran away, and the giant failed to complete his task within the stipulated time. Bilrost: probably another form of Bifrost (which Snorri has in his version of the stanza) , on which cf. stanza 29. ”

“ The swan-maiden story appears, of course, in many places quite distinct from the Weland tradition, and, in another form, became one of the most popular of German folk-tales. Like the story of Weland, however, it is of German rather than Scandinavian origin, and the identification of the swan-maidens as Valkyries, which may have taken place before the legend reached the North, may, on the other hand, have been simply an attempt to connect southern tradition with figures well known in northern mythology. ”

“ Many editors have followed this version of the whole stanza or have included these two lines, often marking them as doubtful, with the four from Regius. After the murder of Baldr, the gods took Loki and bound him to a rock with the bowels of his son Narfi, who had just been torn to pieces by Loki’s other son, Vali. A serpent was fastened above Loki’s head, and the venom fell upon his face. Loki’s wife, Sigyn, sat by him with a basin to catch the venom, but whenever the basin was full, and she went away to empty it, then the venom fell on Loki again, till the earth shook with his struggles. ”

“ He told Sigurth of his forefathers, and also of this: that once Othin and Hönir and Loki had come to Andvari’s waterfall, and in the fall were many fish. Andvari was a dwarf, who had dwelt long in the waterfall in the shape of a pike, and there he got his food. “Otr was the name of a brother of ours,” said Regin, “who often went into the fall in the shape of an otter; he had caught a salmon, and sat on the high bank eating it with his eyes shut. Loki threw a stone at him and killed him; the gods thought they had had great good luck, and [359] stripped the skin off the otter. ”

“ Such billingsgate lent itself readily to changes, interpolations and omissions, and it is little wonder that the poem is chaotic. It consists mainly of boasting and of references, often luckily obscure, to disreputable events in the life of one or the other of the disputants. Some editors have sought to read a complex symbolism into it, particularly by representing [122] it as a contest between the noble or warrior class (Othin) and the peasant (Thor) . But it seems a pity to take such a vigorous piece of broad farce too seriously. ”

“ Here, as in the Reginsmol, there is very little that bespeaks the German origin of the Sigurth story. Sigurth’s winning of the treasure is in itself undoubtedly a part of the earlier southern legend, but the manner in which he does it is thoroughly Norse. Moreover, the concluding section, which points toward the finding of the sleeping Brynhild, relates entirely to the northern Valkyrie, the warrior-maiden punished by Othin, and not at all to the southern Brynhild the daughter of Buthli. ”

“ Loki spake:
58. “Lo, in has come | the son of Earth:
Why threaten so loudly, Thor?
Less fierce thou shalt go | to fight with the wolf
When he swallows Sigfather up.”
Thor spake:
59. “Unmanly one, cease, | or the mighty hammer,
Mjollnir, shall close thy mouth;
I shall hurl thee up | and out in the East,
Where men shall see thee no more.”
Loki spake:
60. “That thou hast fared | on the East-road forth
To men shouldst thou say no more; [171]
In the thumb of a glove | didst thou hide, thou great one,
And there forgot thou wast Thor.” ”

“ Othin had no intention of bestowing any of the precious mead upon men, but as he was flying over the earth, hotly pursued by Suttung, he spilled some of it out of his mouth, and in this way mankind also won the gift of poetry.
109. Hor: Othin (“the High One”) . The frost-giants, Suttung’s kinsmen, appear not to have suspected Othin of being [52] identical with Bolverk, possibly because the oath referred to in stanza 110 was an oath made by Othin to Suttung that there was no such person as Bolverk among the gods. ”

“ On the other hand, the essence of the story, the hero’s winning of a bride ringed about by flames, is strongly suggestive of parts of the Sigurth-Brynhild traditions. Whether or not it is to be regarded as a nature or solar myth depends entirely on one’s view of the whole “solar myth” school of criticism, not so highly esteemed today as formerly; such an interpretation is certainly not necessary to explain what is, under any circumstances, a very charming romance told, in the main, with dramatic effectiveness. ”

“ Not only does the Rigsthula praise royalty, but it has many of the earmarks of a poem composed in praise of a particular king. The manuscript breaks off at a most exasperating point, just as the connection between the mythical “Young Kon” (Konr ungr, konungr, “king”; but cf. stanza 44, note) and the monarch in question is about to be established. Owing to the character of the Norse settlements in Iceland, Ireland, and the western islands generally, search for a specific king leads back to either Norway or Denmark ”

“ The next morning, when Thor was ready to proceed with his journey, he called the goats to life again, but one of them proved irretrievably lame. His wrath led the peasant to give him both his children as [150] servants (cf. stanza 39) . Snorri does not indicate that Loki was in any way to blame.
39. This deliberate introduction of the story-teller is exceedingly rare in the older poetry.
40. The translation of the last two lines is mostly guesswork, as the word rendered “gods” is uncertain, and the one rendered “at the autumn-time” is quite obscure. ”

“ For a time they lived in the woods, occasionally turning into wolves (whence perhaps Sinfjotli’s name) . When Sinfjotli was full grown, he and his father came to Siggeir’s house, but were seen and betrayed by the two young sons of Signy and Siggeir, whereupon Sinfjotli slew them. Siggeir promptly had Sigmund and Sinfjotli buried alive, but Signy managed to smuggle Sigmund’s famous sword into the grave, and with this the father and son dug themselves out. ”

“ The North was very much in the dark as to the differences between Germans, Burgundians, Franks, Goths, and Huns, and used the words without much discrimination. On the other hand, it may refer to Sigurth’s appearance when, adorned with gold, he came with Gunnar to besiege Atli, in the alternative version of the story just cited (cf. Sigurtharkvitha en skamma, 36) . Flame of the snake’s bed: gold, so called because serpents and dragons were the traditional guardians of treasure, on which they lay.
Prose. The manuscript has “Gunnar” in place of “Guthrun,” but this is an obvious mistake ”