The Poetic Edda
Henry Adams Bellows (translator)
3,671 passages indexed from The Poetic Edda (Henry Adams Bellows (translator)) — Page 72 of 74
License: Public Domain
The Poetic Edda, passage 264
70. It is better to live | than to lie a corpse,
The live man catches the cow;
I saw flames rise | for the rich man’s pyre,
And before his door he lay dead.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1781
58. This entire stanza may be an interpolation; nearly every edition
has a different way of dealing with it. Hringstathir: as this place had
been given to Helgi by his father (cf. stanza 8 and note), the poet has
apparently made a mistake in naming it here as a conquest from
Granmar’s sons, unless, indeed, they had previously captured it from
Helgi, which seems unlikely.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1740
16. Some editions fill out the first line: “He saw there mighty maidens
riding.” The manuscript indicates line 4 as the beginning of a new
stanza.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3023
14. The manuscript omits the first half of line 4.
The Poetic Edda, passage 477
47. “A daughter bright | Alfrothul bears
Ere Fenrir snatches her forth;
Her mother’s paths | shall the maiden tread
When the gods to death have gone.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 3587
Svart″-alf-a-heim′, the world of the dark elves, 3, 187.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1161
7. Grundtvig, followed by Edzardi, thinks a line has been lost between
lines 3 and 4.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1516
39. “Never spakest thou word | that worse could hurt me,
Nor that made me, Völund, | more bitter for vengeance;
There is no man so high | from thy horse to take thee,
Or so doughty an archer | as down to shoot thee,
While high in the clouds | thy course thou takest.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 2628
6. Then no more | they spake, methinks;
She went at the knees | of the woman to sit;
With magic Oddrun | and mightily Oddrun
Chanted for Borgny | potent charms.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1645
17. The manuscript does not indicate the speaker.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2645
23. “Soon his men | did Atli send,
In the murky wood | on me to spy;
Thither they came | where they should not come,
Where beneath one cover | close we lay.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2375
28. “Above all men | the maiden loved me,
Yet false to Gunnar | I ne’er was found;
I kept the oaths | and the kinship I swore;
Of his queen the lover | none may call me.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1850
44. “Thou alone, Sigrun | of Sevafjoll,
Art cause that Helgi | with dew is heavy;
Gold-decked maid, | thy tears are grievous,
(Sun-bright south-maid, | ere thou sleepest;)
Each falls like blood | on the hero’s breast,
(Burned-out, cold, | and crushed with care.)
The Poetic Edda, passage 2718
26. Then Gunnar spake forth, | the spear of the Niflungs:
“Here have I the heart | of Hogni the valiant,
Unlike to the heart | of Hjalli the craven,
Little it trembles | as it lies on the platter,
Still less did it tremble | when it lay in his breast.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3235
Fljōth, daughter of Karl, 210.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2972
87. The manuscript marks line 2 as beginning a new stanza, and some
editions make a stanza out of lines 2–4 and line 1 of stanza 88.
The Poetic Edda, passage 778
58. “With toil and trouble perchance,
While the sun still shines, | or so I think.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1901
48. Wind-helm: the sky; the bridge is Bifrost, the rainbow (cf.
Grimnismol, 29). Salgofnir (“Hall-Crower”): the cock Gollinkambi who
awakes the gods and warriors for the last battle.
The Poetic Edda, passage 228
34. Crooked and far | is the road to a foe,
Though his house on the highway be;
But wide and straight | is the way to a friend,
Though far away he fare.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3259
Gjaf′-laug, Gjuki’s sister, 413.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3555
Skilf′-ings, descendants of Skelfir, 221, 223.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1853
46. “Here a bed | I have made for thee, Helgi,
To rest thee from care, | thou kin of the Ylfings;
I will make thee sink | to sleep in my arms,
As once I lay | with the living king.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 3647
Vil′-i, brother of Othin, 4, 26, 160.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3104
J is pronounced as y in “young.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 3121
Al′-svith, a horse, 99, 100, 394.
The Poetic Edda, passage 503
31. Snorri quotes this stanza, and the last two lines are taken from
his version, as both of the manuscripts omit them. Elivagar (“Stormy
Waves”): Mogk suggests that this river may have been the Milky Way. At
any rate, the venom carried in its waters froze into ice-banks over
Ginnunga-gap (the “yawning gap” referred to in Voluspo, 3), and then
dripped down to make the giant Ymir.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2635
13. “Happy I grew | in the hero’s hall
As the warriors wished, | and they loved me well;
Glad I was | of my father’s gifts,
For winters five, | while my father lived.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1244
21. Most editors assume a lacuna, after either line 2 or line 3.
Sijmons assumes, on the analogy of stanza 8, that a complete stanza
describing Karl (“Yeoman”) has been lost between stanzas 21 and 22.
The Poetic Edda, passage 868
8. The youth: Tyr, whose extraordinary grandmother is Hymir’s mother.
We know nothing further of her, or of the other, who is Hymir’s wife
and Tyr’s mother. It may be guessed, however, that she belonged rather
to the race of the gods than to that of the giants.
The Poetic Edda, passage 95
39. I saw there wading | through rivers wild
Treacherous men | and murderers too,
And workers of ill | with the wives of men;
There Nithhogg sucked | the blood of the slain,
And the wolf tore men; | would you know yet more?
The Poetic Edda, passage 2908
18. The manuscript indicates no gap, but most editors assume the loss
of a line after line 1 or 2; Grundtvig adds, after line 1: “Black were
his feathers, | with blood was he covered.” Atli’s spirit: the
poet’s folk-lore seems here a bit weak. Presumably he means such a
female following-spirit (“fylgja”) as appears in Helgakvitha
Hjorvarthssonar, prose following stanza 34 (cf. note thereon), but the
word he uses, “hamr” (masculine) means “skin,” “shape.” He may,
however, imply that Atli had assumed the shape of an eagle for this
occasion.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1700
32. At evening there | in Unavagar
Floated the fleet | bedecked full fair;
But they who saw | from Svarin’s hill,
Bitter at heart | the host beheld.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3488
Njorth, a Wane, 9, 10, 78, 79, 90, 91, 101, 107, 108, 119, 120, 128,
152, 161–163, 165, 167, 175, 179, 180, 228.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3187
Dag, a god (Day), 66, 75, 192.
The Poetic Edda, passage 507
38. With this stanza the question-formula changes, and Othin’s
questions from this point on concern more or less directly the great
final struggle. Line 4 is presumably spurious. Njorth: on Njorth and
the Wanes, who gave him as a hostage to the gods at the end of their
war, cf. Voluspo, 21 and note.
The Poetic Edda, passage 2805
17. “Now a storm is brewing, | and wild it grows swiftly,
A dream of an ice-bear | means a gale from the east.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 3373
Hodd′-rof-nir, Mimir (?), 393, 394.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3014
3. Gunnar and Hogni: cf. Drap Niflunga. Line 5 may be interpolated.
Hunnish: here used, as often, merely as a generic term for all South
Germanic peoples; the reference is to the Burgundian Gunnar and Hogni.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1466
Between the Thrymskvitha and the Alvissmol in the Codex Regius stands
the Völundarkvitha. It was also included in the Arnamagnæan Codex, but
unluckily it begins at the very end of the fragment which has been
preserved, and thus only a few lines of the opening prose remain. This
is doubly regrettable because the text in Regius is unquestionably in
very bad shape, and the other manuscript would doubtless have been of
great assistance in the reconstruction of the poem.
The Poetic Edda, passage 887
33. The manuscripts have no superscription. Line 4 in the manuscripts
is somewhat obscure, and Bugge, followed by some editors, suggests a
reading which may be rendered (beginning with the second half of line
3): “No more can I speak / Ever again | as I spoke of old.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 588
5. Ydalir (“Yew-Dales”): the home of Ull, the archer among the gods, a
son of Thor’s wife, Sif, by another marriage. The wood of the yew-tree
was used for bows in the North just as it was long afterwards in
England. Alfheim: the home of the elves. Freyr: cf. Skirnismol,
introductory prose and note. Tooth-gift: the custom of making a present
to a child when it cuts its first tooth is, according to Vigfusson,
still in vogue in Iceland.
The Poetic Edda, passage 586
3. Veratyr (“Lord of Men”): Othin. The “gift” which Agnar receives is
Othin’s mythological lore.
The Poetic Edda, passage 1642
Prose. The manuscript does not indicate any break, but the episode
which forms the basis of the Hrimgertharmol (stanzas 12–30) clearly
begins with the slaying of the giant Hati (“The Hateful”). Hatafjord:
“Hati’s Fjord.” Hrimgerth: “Frost-Shrouded” (?).
The Poetic Edda, passage 1844
40. “No dream is this | that thou thinkest to see,
Nor the end of the world, | though us thou beholdest,
And hither spurring | we urge our steeds,
Nor is home-coming now | to the heroes granted.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 799
26. The reference here is to one of the most familiar episodes in
Thor’s eastward journey. He and his companions came to a house in the
forest, and went in to spend the night. Being disturbed by an
earthquake and a terrific noise, they all crawled into a smaller room
opening from the main one. In the morning, however, they discovered
that the earthquake had been occasioned by the giant Skrymir’s lying
down near them, and the noise by his snoring. The house in which they
had taken refuge was his glove, the smaller room being the thumb.
Skrymir was in fact Utgartha-Loki himself. That he is in this stanza
called Fjalar (the name occurs also in Hovamol, 14) is probably due to
a confusion of the names by which Utgartha-Loki went. Loki taunts Thor
with this adventure in Lokasenna, 60 and 62, line 3 of this stanza
being perhaps interpolated from Lokasenna, 60, 4.
The Poetic Edda, passage 3217
Ey′-mund, king of Holmgarth, 222.
The Poetic Edda, passage 948
48. “Be silent, Heimdall! | in days long since
Was an evil fate for thee fixed;
With back held stiff | must thou ever stand,
As warder of heaven to watch.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 1258
40. Hersir: “Lord”; the hersir was, in the early days before the
establishment of a kingdom in Norway, the local chief, and hence the
highest recognized authority. During and after the time of Harald the
Fair-Haired the name lost something of its distinction, the hersir
coming to take rank below the jarl. Erna: “The Capable.”
The Poetic Edda, passage 649
Skirnir rode into Jotunheim to Gymir’s house. There were fierce dogs
bound before the gate of the fence which was around Gerth’s hall. He
rode to where a herdsman sat on a hill, and said:
The Poetic Edda, passage 1603
22. “Go ashore then, Atli, | if sure of thy might,
Let us come to Varin’s cove;
Straight shall thy rounded | ribs be made
If thou comest within my claws.”