United States or Ireland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There is an allusion in Völuspa to the war which caused the giving of hostages: "Odin shot into the host: this was the first war in the world. Broken was the wall of the citadel of the Aesir, so that the Wanes could tread the fields of war." Loki taunts Njörd with his position, in Lokasenna: "Thou wast sent from the east as a hostage to the Gods...." Njörd.
Christian colouring appears in the last lines of Völuspa and in Snorri, where men are divided into the "good and moral," who go after death to a hall of red gold, and the "perjurers and murderers," who are sent to a hall of snakes. For Ragnarök also a heathen origin is at least as probable as a Christian one.
The outline gathered from the poems is as follows: Baldr, Odin's son, is killed by his brother Höd through a mistletoe spray; Loki is in some way concerned in his death, which is an overwhelming misfortune to the Gods; but it is on Höd that his death is avenged. He will be absent from the great fight at Ragnarök, but Völuspa adds that he will return afterwards.
Hyndluljod is much later than the others, probably not before 1200. The style is late, and the form imitated from Völuspa. It describes a visit paid by Freyja to the Sibyl to learn the genealogy of her favourite Ottar.
As I gazed on the mighty tree I thought of the Ash Yggdrasill mentioned in the Voluspa, or prophecy of Vola, that venerable poem which contains so much relating to the mythology of the ancient Norse. We returned to the inn and dined. The duck was capital, and I asked John Jones if he had ever tasted a better. "Never, sir," said he, "for to tell you the truth, I never tasted a duck before."
In their respect for woman and for marriage, in their political commonwealths, in their worship of one God, and their belief in a moral Kosmos, Bunsen beholds the expression of the Divine idea within them, preparing for the more full development which is to come through the ideas and spirit of Christianity. The book closes fitly with the grand prophecy of the Völuspa in the Scandinavian Edda.
Völuspa: "A hag sits eastward in Ironwood and rears Fenri's children; one of them all, in troll's shape, shall be the sun's destroyer. He shall feed on the lives of death-doomed men; with red blood he shall redden the seat of the Gods.
The word is commonly used of the Aesir in Völuspa; in Alvissmal the Regin seem to be distinguished from both Aesir and Vanir. The whole story of the Aesir is overshadowed by knowledge of this coming doom, the time when they shall meet foes more terrible than the giants, and fall before them; their constant effort is to learn what will happen then, and to gather their forces together to meet it.
Several of these poems are found in another thirteenth-century vellum fragment, with an additional one, variously styled Vegtamskvida or Baldr's Dreams; the great fourteenth-century codex Flateybook contains Hyndluljod, partly genealogical, partly an imitation of Völuspa; and one of the MSS. of Snorri's Edda gives us Rigsthula.
In Vafthrudnismal the only reference is Odin's question, "What said Odin in his son's ear when he mounted the pyre?" In Völuspa the Sibyl prophesies, "I saw doom threatening Baldr, the bleeding victim, the son of Odin. Grown high above the meadows stood the mistletoe, slender and fair. From this stem, which looked so slender, grew a fatal and dangerous shaft.
Word Of The Day