Old Norse skaldic poetry, with its convoluted syntax and formulaic use of ‘kennings’, is likely to seem too contrived to appeal much nowadays, but the far more straightforward eddic poetry is another matter, and with due concession to the sensibilities of a more heroic age the modern reader can feel quite at home in it. Here is a section from the Guðrúnarkviða, the lament of Gudrun for her dead husband, the dragon-slaying Sigurd, after his death at the hands of Gjuki’s sons. I love the way the rhetoric shifts suddenly at the end into the simple pathos of a woman missing her ‘málvinr’, literally her ‘talk-friend’. I append my own translation, but even if you may not know the language try to hear the alliterative beat of the original.
By the way, Tolkien enthusiasts will rejoice to meet here the original of the Arkenstone, that lies on the breast of Thorin under Lonely Mountain.
Svá var minn Sigurðr hjá sonum Gjúka
sem væri geirlaukr ór grasi vaxinn,
eða hjörtr hábeinn um hvössum dyrum,
eða gull glód-rautt af grá silfri,
eða væri bjartr steinn á band dreginn,
jarknasteinn yfir öðlingum.
Ek þótta ok þjóðans rekkum
hverri hæri Herjans dísi;
nú em ek svá lítil sem lauf séi
oft í jölstrum at jöfur dauðan.
Sakna ek i sessa ok i saeingu
Mins málvinar…
My Sigurd stood above the sons of Gjuki
As the tall spear-leek stands above the grass
Or the long-legged hart above the lesser beasts
Or the red gold above grey silver
Or as if he were the bright stone on a bracelet,
The arkenstone, precious among princes.
And I myself seemed to the leader of men
A maid of Odin’s hosts, higher than any.
Now I am nothing, like a leafless tree
Laid low by my king’s death, at board and bed
Missing my good gossip…
David Sutton 
Hi David, Gjuki’s sons, the murderers of her husband, are her own brothers? Is that correct? I like to know who’s who!
Basically yes, Gjuki was the father of Gunnar and Hogni, Gudrun’s brothers. But it’s a bit complicated because there are several versions of the legendarium, both in Old Norse and Old High German: you’ve got various lays in the Elder Edda, you’ve got a version in the Prose Edda, and of course you’ve got the Nibelungenlied. In the Old High German version, it is indeed Hogni (Hagen) who kills Sigurd (Siegfried), but in an Old Norse one, which is more relevant here, it is a step-brother Gotthorm who does the actual deed, though Gunnar and Hogni are still party to it, the whole thing having been precipitated by a quarrel between Gudrun and Brynhild, who had been tricked into marrying Gunnar when Sigurd took on Gunnar’s form to win her. If you want to know more, you could do worse than start with William Morris’s long epic poem ‘The Tale of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs’. It’s a fine poem in its way, so long as you accept a great deal of archaic diction – I can take a lot of it myself, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
Hi David, thanks for your reply. I had a very quick look at the Morris poem. Here’s the start of his version of Gudrun’s speech: “O ye, e’en such was my Sigurd among these Giuki’s sons, / As the hart with the horns day-brightened mid the forest-creeping ones; / As the spear-leek fraught with wisdom mid the lowly garden grass; / As the gem on the gold band’s midmost when the council cometh to pass, …”.
Yes, the Morris version is really too padded and wordy; eddic poetry is quite terse. But Morris went with these rather long verse lines and I guess needed to fill them.