It’s quite a while since we had a bit of Old Norse (see week 54). I would have liked to present extracts from the ‘Völuspá’, that wonderful poem from the Elder Edda that tells of the Doom of the Gods, but the text is rather difficult and I suppose that these days it would need to carry a trigger warning: ‘This poem contains information about the end of the world that some may find upsetting, especially those with a phobia about being devoured by a giant wolf’.

The stanzas that precede these closing ones contain many ‘kennings’, often quite elaborate circumlocutory terms for poetic objects or personages, simpler examples being ‘raven-feeder’ for ‘warrior’ or ‘wave-steed’ for ‘ship’. These can seem rather affected to the modern reader, who on the whole may prefer a spade to be called a spade rather than, say, ‘cleaver of the earth-mother’s flesh’ (I made that one up: in practice kennings were reserved for a fairly limited set of referenda and were unlikely to be bestowed on a humble spade). But these three closing stanzas are simpler, with no mythological baggage except the Fenrir reference. It is probably unnecessary to explain this, but just in case… Fenrir was a monstrous wolf, sired by the trickster god Loki on the giantess Angrboða. The other gods grew fearful of him as he grew and tricked him into letting himself be bound with an enchanted dwarf-wrought chain, at the cost of the war-god Tyr’s right hand which Fenrir bit off when he could not get free. But at the end of days the wolf will finally get loose and take his revenge by killing the leader of the gods Óðinn, only to be killed in turn by Óðin’s son Viðarr.

The translation that follows is my own; I’ve tried to capture the spirit of the piece rather than give a literal crib, which would be difficult anyway because the word order in skaldic poetry is so flexible.

From ‘Hákonarmál’

Góðu dœgri
verðr sá gramr of borinn,
es sér getr slíkan sefa.
Hans aldar
mun æ vesa
at góðu getit.

Mun óbundinn
á ýta sjöt
Fenrisulfr of fara,
áðr jafngóðr
á auða tröð
konungmaðr komi.

Deyr fé,
deyja frændr,
eyðisk land ok láð.
Síz Hákon fór
með heiðin goð,
mörg es þjóð of þéuð.

From ‘The Song of Hákon’

It will be a good day
If ever there comes
Such a great-souled lord
With a heart like his.
Forever his times
Shall be told on earth
While men speak of his might.

Fenrir the Wolf
Shall fall unbound
On the fields of men
Before there comes
To stand in his stead
So kingly a man
As good again.

Cattle die,
Kinsmen die,
Waste is laid to land.
Since Hákon fared
To the heathen gods
Sad is the fate
Of a folk forlorn.