Völuspá

“ There remains to us of this poetry the very precious fragments contained in the Edda and in Voluspa. The Edda, whose name signifies great-grandmother, is a collection, fairly ample, of Scandinavian traditions. Voluspa is a sort of Sibylline book, or cosmogonic oracle, as its name indicates. ”

“ In these sombre poetical fragments Christian gradually recognized verses, arranged or repeated at random, from the antique poem called the Voluspa. This, considering the rustic pronunciation of the singer, he thought very extraordinary. Could it be that the peasants in that country had preserved a tradition of the sacred chants of the Scandinavian mythology? This seemed hardly probable, and yet who could have taught them to this woman? Christian, who, as a traveller, was curious on all subjects, resolved to find and cross-examine the singer, as soon as he had finished his sketch ”

“ There is an account of it in an Icelandic poem, called the 'Voluspa,' or the 'Song of the Prophetess,' which describes the Northern ideas of the creation of the world; and tells how evil and death came upon man, predicts the destruction of the universe, and gives an account of the future abodes of bliss and misery. Thus did Beowulf deliver the Danes from their misfortunes, after which he returned home, and on the death of his uncle, Hygelac, became King of Gotland. ”

“ Völuspa answers this question, as we know, in the affirmative. The event threatening to the gods and to the existence of the world once happened that the goddess of fertility and love came into the power of the giants. Then all the high-holy powers assembled to consider "who had mixed the air with corruption and given Od's maid to the race of giants." But none of our Icelandic mythic records mentions how and by whom Freyja was liberated from the hands of the powers of frost. Under the name [Pg 773] Svipdag our hero is mentioned only in Grogalder and Fjölsvinnsmal ”

“ What the [Pg 443] interpreters of this much abused passage have failed to see, the seeress in Völuspa has not forgotten, that, namely, during the lapse of countless thousands of years, innumerable children and women, and men who never wielded the sword, have descended to the kingdom of death and received dwellings in Hel, and that Hel—in the limited local sense which the word hitherto has appeared to have in the songs of the gods—does not contain warlike inhabitants. Those who have fallen on the battle-field come, indeed, as shall be shown later, to Hel, but not to remain there ”

“ Velestinos for the time being becomes almost a Vlach town, and numerous Vlach families take up their abode in Trikkala, Larissa, Elassona and the other towns and villages near by. The villages in the hills however are always regarded by the Vlachs as being their real home ; they are essentially a mountain people and as soon as they begin to settle permanently in the plains, as many have done in the past, far away from their native hills and woods and streams they lose their national characteristics and rapidly become merged into the surrounding races. ”

“ WATER CARRIER IN A VÓLGA RIVER VILLAGE. merchandise produced, even in the strip of country directly tributary to the Vólga itself, is enormous. Many of the agricultural villages, such as Lískovo, which the steamer swiftly passes between Nízhni Nóvgorod and Kazán, and which seem, from a distance, to be insignificant clusters of unpainted wooden houses, load with grain 700 vessels a year.
The scenery of the upper Vólga is much more varied and picturesque than one would expect to find along a river running through a flat and monotonous country. ”

“ The sons of Hálfdán,
Hróar and Helgi,
Both unhurt;
They will rob
The life of Fródi unless they are killed soon, which will not take place;’ thereupon she leapt down from the seid-platform, and sang:—
‘Keen are the eyes
Of Ham and Hrani; [314]
The high-born are
Wonderfully bold.’ 396“Thereafter the boys ran out to the wood with great fear; their foster-father Regin recognized them and was very glad. The Volva had given them the good advice to run away when she ran out of the hall herself. The king asked men to rise and search for them. ”

“ When the king of Vatsa had gone to the mountain from which he meant to throw himself, GopálaKa, having lamented for him and his sister, and considering all things unstable, remained outside the city, and summoning his brother Pálaka from Ujjayiní, made over to him that kingdom of Kauśámbí also. And then, having seen his younger brother established in two kingdoms, he went to the hermitage of Kaśyapa in the ascetic-grove on the Black Mountain,* [9] bent on abandoning the world. And there your uncle Gopálaka now is, clothed with a dress of bark, in the midst of self- mortifying hermits. ”

“ Little can be said commendatory of Valparaiso; and truly I think the most rabid of limners would meet with difficulty in getting an outside view from any point; for, owing to formation of the land, furrowed into scores of ravines by the rush and wash of creation, with the town running oddly enough along the ridges, or down in the gullies, it becomes a matter of optical skill, for a single pair of eyes to compass more than a small portion at a glance.
The houses are mean; streets narrow and nasty ”

“ Matthias leaving no heirs, the throne was to be filled by election. Out of the numerous candidates, the Hungarians chose the Bohemian king, with the condition that he should take up his residence in their capital. Vladislav was not chosen because of any good qualities, but because of his well-known weakness. The Hungarian nobles were weary of such a king as Matthias, who ruled them with a strong hand, meting out signal punishment upon all who dared show any signs of disaffection. With such a ruler as Vladislav, they hoped to re-establish their old-time importance and independence. ”

“ It seems likely, then, that the Voluspo was the work of a poet living chiefly in Iceland, though possibly in the “Western Isles,” in the middle of the tenth century, a vigorous believer in the old gods, and yet with an imagination active enough to be touched by the vague tales of a different religion emanating from his neighbor Celts. ”

“ As far as the eye can reach extends the vast alluvial plain, rich with culture, and occasionally dotted with forests; whilst the Volga, flowing down from Tver, [294] looks like a broad blue ribbon stretched over the country from one extremity of the horizon to the other. Much of the plain below is inundated in spring by the overflowing of the river, leaving a fertile deposit which considerably enhances the value of the land. The stationary population of the town does not exceed 30,000 or 40,000, but during the fair the inhabitants swell up to considerably over 200,000 ”

“ The maidens: apparently Norns, like the “giant-maids” in Voluspo, 8. These Norns, however, are kindly to men.
50. Surt: cf. Voluspo, 52 and note.
51. Vithar: a son of Othin, who slays the wolf Fenrir; cf. Voluspo, 54 and note. Vali: the son whom Othin begot to avenge Baldr’s death; cf. Voluspo, 33 and note. Mothi (“Wrath”) and Magni (“Might”) : the sons of the god Thor, who after his death inherit his famous hammer, Mjollnir. Concerning this hammer cf. especially Thrymskvitha, passim. Vingnir (“the [83] Hurler”) : Thor. Concerning his death cf. Voluspo, 56. This stanza is quoted by Snorri. ”

“ Of course the Volga told her not to be so rude, and said that little rivers should know their place and not argue with the great.
But the Vazouza would not keep quiet, and at last she said to the Volga: "Look here, we will lie down and sleep, and we will agree that the one of us who wakes first and comes first to the sea is the wiser of the two." ”

“ The right bank is hilly, and there are many beautiful bits of scenery, but in this respect the Volga cannot compare with the Rhine, nor even with the Danube and Rhône. Its beauty does not lie in its banks, but in its unbounded width and in the extraordinary volume of its waters, which roll down to the sea without any motion. ”

“ Vladislav was elected king of Hungary in 1490 and many of the events of his later life belong to the history of Hungary. He married in 1502 Anna de Candale, who was connected with the royal family of France. He had two children by her, Anna, who afterwards married the archduke Ferdinand Louis.of Austria, and Louis. Vladislav died in Hungary in 1516. His successor was his son Louis, who had already been crowned as king of Bohemia at the age of three. According to the instructions of Vladislav, Sigismund, king of Poland, and the emperor Maximilian I. were to act as guardians of the young king. ”

“ She smiled and followed Volodya.
“Mamma, I’ve thought of a new figure,” said Volodya excitedly, as he placed the lamp in the desired position. “Look.... Do you see? This is the steppe, covered with snow, and the snow falls—a regular storm.”
Volodya raised his hands and arranged them.
“Now look, here is an old man, a wayfarer. He is up to his knees in snow. It is difficult to walk. He is alone. It is an open field. The village is far away. He is tired, he is cold; it is terrible. He is all bent—he’s such an old man.”
Volodya’s mother helped him with his fingers. ”

“ Two-thirds at least of the population of this town are Vlachs or of Vlach extraction. Some of the Samarina Vlachs since the cession of Thessaly to Greece in 1881, became permanent residents on Greek soil, and founded a New Samarina in the southern part of Pindus due west of Trikkala above Karvuno-Lepenitsa, to which they go in the summer. But the majority are still faithful to their old homes, and as we passed through the town several families joined us increasing the caravan to over a mile in length. ”

“ After Vladislav’ had come into possession of Hungary by the concession of the Emperor Maximilian, who, however, reserved to himself the right of succession, Vladislav’ being now an old man with only one daughter, Maximilian, with the view of strengthening the right of succession by a somewhat stronger bond, began to propose to Vladislav’ a marriage between one of his grandchildren by his son Philip, king of Spain, and Anna, Vladislav’s daughter. ”

“ It has been suggested that Baldrs Draumar and the Voluspo may have been by the same author. There is also enough similarity in style between Baldrs Draumar and the Thrymskvitha (note especially the opening stanza) to give color to Vigfusson’s guess that these two poems had a common authorship. In any case, Baldrs Draumar presumably assumed its present form not later than the first half of the tenth century.
Whether the Volva (wise-woman) of the poem is identical with the speaker in the Voluspo is purely a matter for conjecture. ”

“ Wolfgang was very much out of breath by this time. When they got out of the wood they had to proceed more slowly; they might have trodden some of the people to death in the more inhabited parts, for the fine villas were already commencing. What a crowd! People were pushing and squeezing each other at the place where the electric cars started. Wolfgang and Artur posted themselves there too: what a joke it was to see how the people who wanted to go by them elbowed each other. ”

“ The form Valahi occurs in the writings of Jinaprabhasuri a learned Jain of the thirteenth century who describes Śatruñjaya as in the Valáhaka province. A town in the chiefship of Vaḷeh now occupies the site of old Valabhi,1 whose ruins lie buried below thick layers of black earth and silt under the modern town and its neighbourhood. The only remains of old buildings are the large foundation bricks of which, except a few new houses, the whole of Vaḷeh is built. The absence of stone supports the theory that the buildings of old Valabhi were of brick and wood. ”

“ So Volga lay down to sleep; down lay Vazuza also. But during the night Vazuza rose silently, fled away from Volga, chose the nearest and the straightest line, and flowed away. When Volga awoke, she set off neither slowly nor hurriedly, but with just befitting speed. At Zubtsof she came up with Vazuza. So threatening was her mien, that Vazuza was frightened, declared herself to be Volga’s younger sister, and besought Volga to take her in her arms and bear her to the Caspian Sea. And so to this day Vazuza is the first to awake in the Spring, and then she arouses Volga from her wintry sleep. ”

“ Now we follow the musical little river Vologne as it tosses over its stony bed amid banks golden with yellow loosestrife, or gently ripples amid fair stretches of pasture starred with the grass of Parnassus. The perpetual music of rushing, tumbling, trickling water is delightful, and even in hot weather, if it is ever indeed hot here, the mossy banks and babbling streams must give a sense of coolness. ”

“ Vladislav, although a weak king, at times was very cruel. The year he staid in Prague, his Hungarian attendants caused so much trouble that the citizens could bear it no longer, and a bloody fight broke out between them and the Hungarians, in which sixteen of the foreigners lost their lives. The king had the citizens tried, and those that were found guilty were put to death with all manner of unheard-of torture. ”

“ And again, when he was at Kiev with his body-guard of good comrades, Volgá the Chief said:
“My good brave comrades, why should we not send to the country of the Tartars to find out what the Cham is thinking of? For the Cham may be thinking of something. And what if he were thinking of riding [5] into Holy Russia? Now, whom shall we send? If we send an old man he will go slowly, and we shall have long to wait. If we send a middle-aged man he will tarry and drink by the way; and if we send a boy he will stop and play. It seems as if Volgá will have to go himself!” ”

“ A descendant of the Voïvode’s grandson above alluded to, is now living in Wallachia, and possesses all the landed property left by his ancestor, which gives him an annual income of upwards of 200,000 piasters. He is looked upon by his countrymen as the first and richest Boyar of Wallachia, and is acknowledged by the court of Vienna as prince of the Roman Empire, a title which, however, he cannot assume in his own country so long as the Turks are the possessors of it. ”