The Poetic Edda
Henry Adams Bellows (translator)
3,671 passages indexed from The Poetic Edda (Henry Adams Bellows (translator)) — Page 9 of 74
License: Public Domain
The Poetic Edda, passage 2831
43. In the house came the word | how the heroes without
Fought in front of the hall; | they heard a thrall tell it;
Grim then was Guthrun, | the grief when she heard,
With necklaces fair, | and she flung them all from her,
(The silver she hurled | so the rings burst asunder.)
The Poetic Edda, passage 2312
16. Then Gollrond spake, | the daughter of Gjuki:
“Never a greater | love I knew
Than yours among | all men on earth;
Nowhere wast happy, | at home or abroad,
Sister mine, | with Sigurth away.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 340
146. Better no prayer | than too big an offering,
By thy getting measure thy gift;
Better is none | than too big a sacrifice,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
So Thund of old wrote | ere man’s race began,
Where he rose on high | when home he came.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1805
Granmar was the name of a mighty king, who dwelt at Svarin’s hill. He
had many sons; one was named Hothbrodd, another Gothmund, a third
Starkath. Hothbrodd was in a kings’ meeting, and he won the promise of
having Sigrun, Hogni’s daughter, for his wife. But when she heard this,
she rode with the Valkyries over air and sea to seek Helgi. Helgi was
then at Logafjoll, and had fought with Hunding’s sons; there he killed
Alf and Eyolf, Hjorvarth and Hervarth. He was all weary with battle,
and sat under the eagle-stone. There Sigrun found him, and ran to throw
her arms about his neck, and kissed him, and told him her tidings, as
is set forth in the old Volsung lay:
The Poetic Edda, passage 3451
Lyng′-heith, daughter of Hreithmar, 363, 364.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3022
13. Norns: the fates; cf. Voluspo, 8 and note.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2041
25. “Combed and washed | shall the wise man go,
And a meal at morn shall take;
For unknown it is | where at eve he may be;
It is ill thy luck to lose.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 139
20. The maidens: the three Norns; possibly this stanza should follow
stanza 8. Dwelling: Regius has “sæ” (sea) instead of “sal” (hall,
home), and many editors have followed this reading, although Snorri’s
prose paraphrase indicates “sal.” Urth, Verthandi and Skuld: “Past,”
“Present” and “Future.” Wood, etc.: the magic signs (runes) controlling
the destinies of men were cut on pieces of wood. Lines 3–4 are probably
interpolations from some other account of the Norns.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2987
The text of the poem in Regius is by no means in good shape, and
editorial emendations have been many and varied, particularly in
interchanging lines between the Guthrunarhvot and the Hamthesmol. The
Volsungasaga paraphrases the poem with such fidelity as to prove that
it lay before the compilers of the saga approximately in its present
form.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3051
20. In the hall was din, | the men drank deep,
And the horses’ hoofs | could no one hear,
Till the warrior hardy | sounded his horn.
The Poetic Edda, passage 505
35. Snorri quotes this stanza. Bergelmir: on him and his boat cf.
stanza 29 and note.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2818
30. Then did Vingi swear, | and full glib was his speech,
. . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . .
“May giants now take me | if lies I have told ye,
And the gallows if hostile | thought did I have.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 2362
15. “More than all | to me is Brynhild,
Buthli’s child, | the best of women;
My very life | would I sooner lose
Than yield the love | of yonder maid.
The Poetic Edda, passage 644
6. “From Gymir’s house | I beheld go forth
A maiden dear to me;
Her arms glittered, | and from their gleam
Shone all the sea and sky.
The Poetic Edda, passage 540
12. The seventh is Breithablik; | Baldr has there
For himself a dwelling set,
In the land I know | that lies so fair,
And from evil fate is free.
The Poetic Edda, passage 109
53. Now comes to Hlin | yet another hurt,
When Othin fares | to fight with the wolf,
And Beli’s fair slayer | seeks out Surt,
For there must fall | the joy of Frigg.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2736
44. With her sword she gave blood | for the bed to drink,
With her death-dealing hand, | and the hounds she loosed,
The thralls she awakened, | and a firebrand threw
In the door of the hall; | so vengeance she had.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2884
93. “First the king did we slay, | and the land we seized,
The princes did us service, | for such was their fear;
From the forest we called | them we fain would have guiltless,
And rich made we many | who of all were bereft.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2584
30. This stanza presents a strong argument for transposing the
description of the draught of forgetfulness (stanzas 22–24 and lines
1–2 of stanza 25) to follow stanza 33. Raven, etc.: the original is
somewhat obscure, and the line may refer simply to the “corpse-eating
raven.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 2616
10. The word “requited” in line 4 is omitted in the manuscript, but it
is clear that some such word was intended. The punishment of casting a
culprit into a bog to be drowned was particularly reserved for women,
and is not infrequently mentioned in the sagas.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2265
9. “Right were it not | that so he should rule
O’er Gjuki’s wealth | and the race of the Goths;
Five are the sons | for ruling the folk,
And greedy of fight, | that he hath fathered.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 2346
The material on which the poem was based seems to have existed in both
prose and verse form; the poet was almost certainly familiar with some
of the other poems in the Eddic collection, with poems which have since
been lost, and with the narrative prose traditions which never fully
assumed verse form. The fact that he seems to have known and used the
Oddrunargratr, which can hardly have been composed before 1050, and
that in any case he introduces the figure of Oddrun, a relatively late
addition to the story, dates the poem as late as the end of the
eleventh century, or even the first half of the twelfth. There has been
much discussion as to where it was composed, the debate centering
chiefly on the reference to glaciers (stanza 8). There is something to
be said in favor of Greenland as the original home of the poem (cf.
introductory note to Atlakvitha), but the arguments for Iceland are
even stronger; Norway in this case is practically out of the question.
The Poetic Edda, passage 461
31. “Down from Elivagar | did venom drop,
And waxed till a giant it was;
And thence arose | our giants’ race,
And thus so fierce are we found.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 2543
27. “Hunnish women, | skilled in weaving,
Who gold make fair | to give thee joy,
And the wealth of Buthli | thine shall be,
Gold-decked one, | as Atli’s wife.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1913
It is not desirable here to go in detail into the immensely complex
question of the origin, growth, and spread of the story of Sigurth
(Siegfried). The volume of critical literature on the subject is
enormous, and although some of the more patently absurd theories have
been eliminated, there are still wide divergencies of opinion regarding
many important points. At the same time, a brief review of the chief
facts is necessary in order to promote a clearer understanding of the
poems which follow, and which make up more than a third of the Eddic
collection.
The Poetic Edda, passage 225
31. Wise a guest holds it | to take to his heels,
When mock of another he makes;
But little he knows | who laughs at the feast,
Though he mocks in the midst of his foes.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3086
24. Editors have made various efforts to reconstruct a four-line stanza
out of these two lines, in some cases with the help of lines borrowed
from the puzzling stanza 11 (cf. note on stanza 23). Line 2 in the
original is doubtful.
The Poetic Edda, passage 451
21. “Out of Ymir’s flesh | was fashioned the earth,
And the mountains were made of his bones;
The sky from the frost-cold | giant’s skull,
And the ocean out of his blood.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 3301
Had′-ding, a Danish king, 311, 458.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1663
43. A few editions make the extraordinary blunder of ascribing this
speech to the dying Helgi. The point, of course, is that Hethin will
satisfy Svava’s vow by becoming famous as the slayer of Alf. Rogheim
(“Home of Battle”) and Rothulsfjoll (“Sun-Mountain”): nowhere else
mentioned; Hethin means simply that he will not come back to Svava till
he has won fame.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2107
27. “Longer wouldst thou | in the heather have let
Yon hoary giant hide,
Had the weapon availed not | that once I forged,
The keen-edged blade thou didst bear.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 946
46. “Be silent, Byggvir! | thou never couldst set
Their shares of the meat for men;
Hid in straw on the floor, | they found thee not
When heroes were fain to fight.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 2024
All these happenings did Regin tell to Sigurth.
The Poetic Edda, passage 215
21. The herds know well | when home they shall fare,
And then from the grass they go;
But the foolish man | his belly’s measure
Shall never know aright.
The Poetic Edda, passage 17
A brief review of the chief facts in the history of the Poetic Edda
will explain why this uncertainty has persisted. Preserved in various
manuscripts of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is a prose
work consisting of a very extensive collection of mythological stories,
an explanation of the important figures and tropes of Norse poetic
diction,—the poetry of the Icelandic and Norwegian skalds was
appallingly complex in this respect,—and a treatise on metrics. This
work, clearly a handbook for poets, was commonly known as the “Edda” of
Snorri Sturluson, for at the head of the copy of it in the Uppsalabok,
a manuscript written presumably some fifty or sixty years after
Snorri’s death, which was in 1241, we find: “This book is called Edda,
which Snorri Sturluson composed.” This work, well known as the Prose
Edda, Snorri’s Edda or the Younger Edda, has recently been made
available to readers of English in the admirable translation by Arthur
G. Brodeur, published by the American-Scandinavian Foundation in 1916.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1155
“No wise-woman art thou, | nor wisdom hast;
Of giants three | the mother art thou.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 2276
20. “The wound-staff then, | all wound with gold,
The hero let | between us lie;
With fire the edge | was forged full keen,
And with drops of venom | the blade was damp.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1103
22. “‘Calm’ men call it, | ‘The Quiet’ the gods,
The Wanes ‘The Hush of the Winds’;
‘The Sultry’ the giants, | elves ‘Day’s Stillness,’
The dwarfs ‘The Shelter of Day.’”
The Poetic Edda, passage 3194
Drāp Nifl′-ung-a, the Slaying of the Niflungs, 408, 438, 447–449, 461,
472, 477, 481, 482, 485, 489, 494, 501, 539, 543.
The Poetic Edda, passage 101
45. Brothers shall fight | and fell each other,
And sisters’ sons | shall kinship stain;
Hard is it on earth, | with mighty whoredom;
Axe-time, sword-time, | shields are sundered,
Wind-time, wolf-time, | ere the world falls;
Nor ever shall men | each other spare.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1576
2. “Now with Atli, | Ithmund’s son,
Wilt thou say more, | thou bird so wise?”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1746
23. Brandey (“Brand-Isle”): not mentioned elsewhere. Hethinsey
(“Hethin’s Isle”): possibly the island of Hiddensee, east of Rügen.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3268
Gnip′-a-lund, a forest, 300, 301, 303, 306.
The Poetic Edda, passage 547
19. Freki and Geri | does Heerfather feed,
The far-famed fighter of old:
But on wine alone | does the weapon-decked god,
Othin, forever live.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3314
Har′-ald (Blue-Tooth), King of Denmark, 201, 202.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1053
32. The giant’s sister | old he slew,
She who had begged | the bridal fee;
A stroke she got | in the shilling’s stead.
And for many rings | the might of the hammer.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1180
6. Thus was he there | for three nights long,
Then forward he went | on the midmost way,
And so nine months | were soon passed by.
The Poetic Edda, passage 40
The many problems connected with the verse-forms found in the Eddic
poems have been analyzed in great detail by Sievers, Neckel, and
others. The three verse-forms exemplified in the poems need only a
brief comment here, however, in order to make clear the method used in
this translation. All of these forms group the lines normally in
four-line stanzas. In the so-called Fornyrthislag (“Old Verse”), for
convenience sometimes referred to in the notes as four-four measure,
these lines have all the same structure, each line being sharply
divided by a cæsural pause into two half-lines, and each half-line
having two accented syllables and two (sometimes three) unaccented
ones. The two half-lines forming a complete line are bound together by
the alliteration, or more properly initial-rhyme, of three (or two) of
the accented syllables. The following is an example of the
Fornyrthislag stanza, the accented syllables being in italics:
The Poetic Edda, passage 957
55. “The mountains shake, | and surely I think
From his home comes Hlorrithi now;
He will silence the man | who is slandering here
Together both gods and men.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1698
30. Helgi bade higher | hoist the sails,
Nor did the ships’-folk | shun the waves,
Though dreadfully | did Ægir’s daughters
Seek the steeds | of the sea to sink.