The_Poetic_Edda.pdf

THE POETIC EDDA

TRANSLATED FROM THE ICELANDIC WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND

NOTES

HENRY ADAMS BELLOWS

TWO VOLUMES IN ONE

1936

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS: PRINCETON

AMERICAN SCANDINAVIAN FOUNDATION

NEW YORK

General Introduction

Lays of the Gods

Voluspo

Hovamol

Vafthruthnismol

Grimnismol

Skirnismol

107

Harbarthsljoth

121

Hymiskvitha

138

Lokasenna

151

Thrymskvitha

174

Alvissmol

183

Baldrs Draumar

195

Rigsthula

201

Hyndluljoth

217

Svipdagsmol

234

Lays of the Heroes

Völundarkvitha

252

Helgakvitha Hjorvarthssonar

269

Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I

290

Helgakvitha Hundingsbana II

309

Fra Dautha Sinfjotla

332

Gripisspo

337

Reginsmol

356

[* For the phonetic spellings of the proper names see the Pronouncing

Index.]

CONTENTS--Continued

Fafnismol

370

Sigrdrifumol

386

Brot af Sigurtharkvithu

402

Guthrunarkvitha I

411

Sigurtharkvitha en Skamma

420

Helreith Brynhildar

442

Drap Niflunga

447

Guthrunarkvitha II, en Forna

450

Guthrunarkvitha III

465

Oddrunargratr

469

Atlakvitha en Grönlenzka

480

Atlamol en Grönlenzku

499

Guthrunarhvot

536

Hamthesmol

545

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The General Introduction mentions many of the scholars to whose work this translation

owes a special debt. Particular reference, however, should here be made to the late

William Henry Schofield, Professor of Comparative Literature in Harvard University and

President of The American-Scandinavian Foundation, under whose guidance this

translation was begun; to Henry Goddard Leach, for many years Secretary of The

American-Scandinavian Foundation, and to William Witherle Lawrence, Professor of

English in Columbia University and Chairman of the Foundation's Committee on

Publications, for their assistance with the manuscript and the proofs; and to Hanna Astrup

Larsen, the Foundation's literary secretary, for her efficient management of the complex

details of publication.

{p. xi}

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

THERE is scarcely any literary work of great importance which has been less readily

available for the general reader, or even for the serious student of literature, than the

Poetic Edda. Translations have been far from numerous, and only in Germany has the

complete work of translation been done in the full light of recent scholarship. In English

the only versions were long the conspicuously inadequate one made by Thorpe, and

published about half a century ago, and the unsatisfactory prose translations in Vigfusson

and Powell's Corpus Poeticum Boreale , reprinted in the Norrœna collection. An excellent

translation of the poems dealing with the gods, in verse and with critical and explanatory

notes, made by Olive Bray, was, however, published by the Viking Club of London in

1908. In French there exist only partial translations, chief among them being those made

by Bergmann many years ago. Among the seven or eight German versions, those by the

Brothers Grimm and by Karl Simrock, which had considerable historical importance

because of their influence on nineteenth century German literature and art, and

particularly on the work of Richard Wagner, have been largely superseded by Hugo

Gering's admirable translation, published in 1892, and by the recent two volume

rendering by Genzmer, with excellent notes by Andreas Heusler, 194-1920. There are

competent translations in both Norwegian and Swedish. The lack of any complete and

adequately annotated English rendering in metrical form, based on a critical text, and

profiting by the cumulative labors of such scholars as Mogk, Vigfusson,

{p. xii}

Finnur Jonsson, Grundtvig, Bugge, Gislason, Hildebrand, Lüning, Sweet, Niedner,

Ettmüller, Müllenhoff, Edzardi, B. M. Olsen, Sievers, Sijmons, Detter, Heinzel, Falk,

Neckel, Heusler, and Gering, has kept this extraordinary work practically out of the reach

of those who have had neither time nor inclination to master the intricacies of the original

Old Norse.

On the importance of the material contained in the Poetic Edda it is here needless to

dwell at any length. We have inherited the Germanic traditions in our very speech, and

the Poetic Edda is the original storehouse of Germanic mythology. It is, indeed, in many

ways the greatest literary monument preserved to us out of the antiquity of the kindred

races which we call Germanic. Moreover, it has a literary value altogether apart from its

historical significance. 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. The hero poems give us, in its oldest

and most vivid extant form, the story of Sigurth, Brynhild, and Atli, the Norse parallel to

the German Nibelungenlied . The Poetic Edda is not only of great interest to the student of

antiquity; it is a collection including some of the most remark able poems which have

been preserved to us from the period before the pen and the printing-press. replaced the

poet-singer and oral tradition. It is above all else the desire

{p. xiii}

to make better known the dramatic force, the vivid and often tremendous imagery, and

the superb conceptions embodied in these poems which has called forth the present

translation.

WHAT IS THE POETIC EDDA?

Even if the poems of the so-called Edda were not so significant and intrinsically so

valuable, the long series of scholarly struggles which have been going on over them for

the better part of three centuries would in itself give them a peculiar interest. Their

history is strangely mysterious. We do not know who composed them, or when or where

they were composed; we are by no means sure who collected them or when he did so;

finally, we are not absolutely certain as to what an "Edda" is, and the best guess at the

meaning of the word renders its application to this collection of poems more or less

misleading.

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

{p. xiv}

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.

Icelandic tradition, however, persisted in ascribing either this Edda or one resembling it

to Snorri's much earlier compatriot, Sæmund the Wise (1056-1133). When, early in the

seventeenth century, the learned Arngrimur Jonsson proved to everyone's satisfaction that

Snorri and nobody else must have been responsible for the work in question, the next

thing to determine was what, if anything, Sæmund had done of the same kind. The nature

of Snorri's book gave a clue. In the mythological stories related a number of poems were

quoted, and as these and other poems were to all appearances Snorri's chief sources of

information, it was assumed that Sæmund must have written or compiled a verse Edda --

whatever an "Edda" might be--on which Snorri's work was largely based.

So matters stood when, in 1643, Brynjolfur Sveinsson, Bishop of Skalholt, discovered a

manuscript, clearly written as early as 1300, containing twenty-nine poems, complete or

fragmentary, and some of them with the very lines and stanzas used by Snorri. Great was

the joy of the scholars, for here, of course, must be at least a part of the long-sought Edda

of Sæmund the Wise. Thus the good bishop promptly labeled his find, and as Sæmund's

Edda , the Elder Edda or the Poetic Edda it has been known to this day.

This precious manuscript, now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, and known as the

Codex Regius (R2365), has been the basis for all published editions of the Eddic poems.

A few poems of similar character found elsewhere

{p. xv}

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