The Poetic Edda
Henry Adams Bellows (translator)
3,671 passages indexed from The Poetic Edda (Henry Adams Bellows (translator)) — Page 1 of 74
License: Public Domain
The Poetic Edda, passage 2409
62. “Sons to him | she soon shall bear,
Heirs therewith | of Jonak’s wealth;
But Svanhild far | away is sent,
The child she bore | to Sigurth brave.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2634
12. Then the sorrowing woman | sat her down
To tell the grief | of her troubles great.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1692
24. Soon off Stafnsnes | stood the ships,
Fair they glided | and gay with gold;
Then Helgi spake | to Hjorleif asking:
“Hast thou counted | the gallant host?”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1538
Prose. The annotator inserted this note rather clumsily in the midst of
the speech of Nithuth’s wife.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3626
Vaf″-thrūth-nis-mǭl′, the Ballad of Vafthruthnir, 4, 5, 21, 68–84, 99,
100, 115, 116, 131, 141, 149, 152, 174, 183, 192, 242, 247, 360, 368,
375, 376, 378.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2542
26. “Guthrun, gold | to thee I give,
The wealth that once | thy father’s was,
Rings to have, | and Hlothver’s halls,
And the hangings all | that the monarch had.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2872
“Such woes for thyself | shalt thou say in the morning,
From a finer death I | to another light fare.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 2748
9. In line 1 the manuscript has “His comrades did not urge Gunnar,” but
the name, involving a metrical error, seems to have been inserted
through a scribal blunder.
The Poetic Edda, passage 279
85. In a breaking bow | or a burning flame,
A ravening wolf | or a croaking raven,
In a grunting boar, | a tree with roots broken,
In billowy seas | or a bubbling kettle,
The Poetic Edda, passage 3421
Jar′-iz-leif, Atli’s emissary, 456, 457.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1590
11. “Yet Hrothmar still | the hoard doth hold,
The wealth that once | our kinsmen wielded;
Full seldom care | the king disturbs,
Heir to dead men | he deems himself.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1851
45. “Well shall we drink | a noble draught,
Though love and lands | are lost to me;
No man a song | of sorrow shall sing,
Though bleeding wounds | are on my breast;
Now in the hill | our brides we hold,
The heroes’ loves, | by their husbands dead.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 3582
Svafr′-thor-in, Mengloth’s grandfather, 241.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1446
22. Vindkald (“Wind-Cold”), Varkald (“Cold of Early Spring”) and
Fjolkald (“Much Cold”): Svipdag apparently seeks to persuade Fjolsvith
that he belongs to the frost giants.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2904
14. The manuscript does not indicate the speakers in this dialogue
between Kostbera and Hogni (stanzas 14–19). Two lines may possibly have
been lost after line 2, filling out stanza 14 and making stanza 15
(then consisting of lines 3–4 of stanza 14 and lines 1–2 of stanza 15)
the account of Kostbera’s first dream. The manuscript marks line 3 as
beginning a new stanza. In any case, the lost lines cannot materially
have altered the meaning.
The Poetic Edda, passage 62
6. Then sought the gods | their assembly-seats,
The holy ones, | and council held;
Names then gave they | to noon and twilight,
Morning they named, | and the waning moon,
Night and evening, | the years to number.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2070
Prose. Lyngvi: the son of Hunding who killed Sigmund in jealousy of his
marriage with Hjordis; cf. Fra Dautha Sinfjotla and note. The
Volsungasaga names one brother who was with Lyngvi in the battle,
Hjorvarth, and Sigurth kills him as readily as if he had not already
been killed long before by Helgi. But, as has been seen, it was nothing
for a man to be killed in two or three different ways.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1089
8. “The love of the maid | I may not keep thee
From winning, thou guest so wise,
If of every world | thou canst tell me all
That now I wish to know.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1497
21. They came to the chest, | and they craved the keys,
The evil was open | when in they looked;
To the boys it seemed | that gems they saw,
Gold in plenty | and precious stones.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1778
55. The manuscript indicates line 5 as the beginning of a new stanza,
but many editors have rejected lines 5–6 as spurious, while others
regard them as the first half of a stanza the last two lines of which
have been lost.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2905
15. Saw I: the manuscript here, as also in stanzas 16, 18, 21, 22, and
24, has “methought,” which involves a metrical error. Some editors
regard lines 3–4 as the remains of a four-line stanza. Regarding
Kostbera’s warning dreams, and Hogni’s matter-of-fact interpretations
of them, cf. Guthrunarkvitha II, 39–44.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1138
Baldrs Draumar is found only in the Arnamagnæan Codex, where it follows
the Harbarthsljoth fragment. It is preserved in various late paper
manuscripts, with the title Vegtamskvitha (The Lay of Vegtam), which
has been used by some editors.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1019
Artistically the Thrymskvitha is one of the best, as it is, next to the
Voluspo, the most famous, of the entire collection. It has, indeed,
been called “the finest ballad in the world,” and not without some
reason. Its swift, vigorous action, the sharpness of its
characterization and the humor of the central situation combine to make
it one of the most vivid short narrative poems ever composed. Of course
we know nothing specific of its author, but there can be no question
that he was a poet of extraordinary ability. The poem assumed its
present form, most critics agree, somewhere about 900, and thus it is
one of the oldest in the collection. It has been suggested, on the
basis of stylistic similarity, that its author may also have composed
the Skirnismol, and possibly Baldrs Draumar. There is also some
resemblance between the Thrymskvitha and the Lokasenna (note, in this
connection, Bugge’s suggestion that the Skirnismol and the Lokasenna
may have been by the same man), and it is not impossible that all four
poems have a single authorship.
The Poetic Edda, passage 944
44. “What little creature | goes crawling there,
Snuffling and snapping about?
At Freyr’s ears ever | wilt thou be found,
Or muttering hard at the mill.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 2785
Throughout the poem the epic quality of the story itself is
overshadowed by the romantically sentimental tendencies of the poet,
and by his desire to adapt the narrative to the understanding of his
fellow-Greenlanders. The substance of the poem is the same as that of
the Atlakvitha; it tells of Atli’s message to the sons of Gjuki, their
journey to Atli’s home, the slaying of Hogni and Gunnar, Guthrun’s
bitterness over the death of her brothers, and her bloody revenge on
Atli. Thus in its bare outline the Atlamol represents simply the
Frankish blending of the legends of the slaughter of the Burgundians
and the death of Attila (cf. Gripisspo, introductory note). But here
the resemblance ends. 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. Its greatest interest lies in its demonstration of
the manner in which a story brought to the North from the South
Germanic lands could be adapted to the understanding and tastes of its
eleventh century hearers without any material change of the basic
narrative.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2925
37. In the Volsungasaga paraphrase the second half of line 1 and the
first half of line 2 are included in Hogni’s speech.
The Poetic Edda, passage 924
24. “They say that with spells | in Samsey once
Like witches with charms didst thou work;
And in witch’s guise | among men didst thou go;
Unmanly thy soul must seem.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1052
31. The heart in the breast | of Hlorrithi laughed
When the hard-souled one | his hammer beheld;
First Thrym, the king | of the giants, he killed,
Then all the folk | of the giants he felled.
The Poetic Edda, passage 44
In the third and least commonly used form, the Malahattr (“Speech
Measure”), a younger verse-form than either of the other two, each line
of the four-line stanza is divided into two half-lines by a cæsural
pause, each half-line having two accented syllables and three
(sometimes four) unaccented ones; the initial rhyme is as in the
Fornyrthislag. The following is an example:
The Poetic Edda, passage 978
15. Adorner of benches: this epithet presumably implies that Bragi is
not only slothful, but also effeminate, for a very similar word, “pride
of the benches,” means a bride.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2701
9. Not eager were his comrades, | nor the men of his kin,
The wise nor the wary, | nor the warriors bold.
But Gunnar spake forth | as befitted a king,
Noble in the beer-hall, | and bitter his scorn:
The Poetic Edda, passage 1894
39. Here begins the final section (stanzas 39–50), wherein Sigrun
visits the dead Helgi in his burial hill. Doom of the gods: the phrase
“ragna rök” has been rather unfortunately Anglicized into the word
“ragnarok” (the Norse term is not a proper name), and rök, “doom,” has
been confused with rökkr, “darkness,” and so translated “dusk of the
Gods,” or “Götterdämmerung.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 3191
Del′-ling, father of Day, 66, 75, 247.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3252
Gast′-ropn-ir, Mengloth’s dwelling, 242.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2352
5. Ill she had known not | in all her life,
And nought of the sorrows | of men she knew;
Blame she had not, | nor dreamed she should bear it,
But cruel the fates | that among them came.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1989
35. In the Volsungasaga Grimhild merely advises Gunnar to seek Brynhild
for his wife, and to have Sigurth ride with him. Goths: the historical
Gunnar (Gundicarius, cf. Introductory Note) was not a Goth, but a
Burgundian, but the word “Goth” was applied in the North without much
discrimination to the southern Germanic peoples.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1785
Section I (stanzas 1–4) deals with an early adventure of Helgi’s, in
which he narrowly escapes capture when he ventures into Hunding’s home
in disguise. Section II (stanzas 5–12) is a dialogue between Helgi and
Sigrun at their first meeting. Section III (stanzas 13–16, the “old
Volsung lay” group) is another dialogue between Helgi and Sigrun when
she invokes his aid to save her from Hothbrodd. Section IV (stanzas
17–21), which may well be from the same poem as Section III, is made up
of speeches by Helgi and Sigrun after the battle in which Hothbrodd is
killed; stanza 21, however, is certainly an interpolation from another
poem, as it is in a different meter. Section V (stanzas 22–27) is the
dispute between Sinfjotli and Gothmund, evidently in an older form than
the one included in the first Helgi Hundingsbane lay. Section VI
(stanzas 28–37) gives Dag’s speech to his sister, Sigrun, telling of
Helgi’s death, her curse on her brother and her lament for her slain
husband. Section VII (stanza 38) is the remnant of a dispute between
Helgi and Hunding, here inserted absurdly out of place. Section VIII
(stanzas 39–50) deals with the return of the dead Helgi and Sigrun’s
visit to him in the burial hill.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1393
23. “Now answer me, Fjolsvith, | the question I ask,
For now the truth would I know:
Who is it that holds | and has for his own
The rule of the hall so rich?”
The Poetic Edda, passage 380
75. The word “gold” in line 2 is more or less conjectural, the
manuscript being obscure. The reading in line 4 is also doubtful.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3336
Hers′-ir, father of Erna, 213.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3165
Borg′-ar, brother of Borghild (?), 334.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2307
11. Then spake Gollrond, | Gjuki’s daughter:
“Thy wisdom finds not, | my foster-mother,
The way to comfort | the wife so young.”
She bade them uncover | the warrior’s corpse.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3178
Brot af Sig″-urth-ar-kvith′-u, Fragment of a Sigurth Lay, 155, 370,
402–412, 420, 421, 427–429, 448, 450–452, 486, 493, 515, 539, 542, 547.
The Poetic Edda, passage 855
35. The father of Mothi | the rim seized firm,
And before it stood | on the floor below;
Up on his head | Sif’s husband raised it,
And about his heels | the handles clattered.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3173
Bratt′-skegg, son of Karl, 209.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2316
20. “So shall your land | its people lose
As ye have kept | your oaths of yore;
Gunnar, no joy | the gold shall give thee,
(The rings shall soon | thy slayers be,)
Who swarest oaths | with Sigurth once.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1144
3. Bloody he was | on his breast before,
At the father of magic | he howled from afar;
Forward rode Othin, | the earth resounded
Till the house so high | of Hel he reached.
The Poetic Edda, passage 154
36. Stanzas 36–39 describe the homes of the enemies of the gods: the
giants (36), the dwarfs (37), and the dead in the land of the goddess
Hel (38–39). The Hauksbok version omits stanzas 36 and 37. Regius
unites 36 with 37, but most editors have assumed a lacuna. Slith (“the
Fearful”): a river in the giants’ home. The “swords and daggers” may
represent the icy cold.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2875
85. Then the warrior spake, | as from slumber he wakened,
Soon he knew for his wounds | would the bandage do nought:
“Now the truth shalt thou say: | who has slain Buthli’s son?
Full sore am I smitten, | nor hope can I see.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 3523
Roth′-uls-fjoll, a mountain, 289.
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