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... In Iron Age Britain two brothers struggle for supremacy. The Archdruid prophesies kingship for one, banishment for the other. But it is the exiled brother who will lead the Celts across the Alps into deadly collision with Rome...
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Prose Edda - Brodeur Trans.


Gylfaginning


81

Surtr fares from southward with switch-eating flame;
On his sword shimmers the sun of the war-gods;
The rocks are falling, and fiends are reeling,
Heroes tread Hel-way, heaven is cloven.

Then to the Goddess a second grief cometh,
When Odin fares to fight with the Wolf,
And Beli's slayer, the bright god, with Surtr;
There must fall Frigg's beloved.

Odin's son goeth to strife with the Wolf,
Vídarr, speeding to meet the slaughter-beast;
The sword in his hand to the heart he thrusteth
Of the fiend's offspring; avenged is his Father.

Now goeth Hlödyn's glorious son
Not in flight from the Serpent, of fear unheeding;
All the earth's offspring must empty the homesteads,
When furiously smiteth Midgard's defender.

The sun shall be darkened, earth sinks in the sea,-
Glide from the heaven the glittering stars;
Smoke-reek rages and reddening fire:
The high heat licks against heaven itself.

And here it says yet so:

Vígrídr hight the field where in fight shall meet
      Surtr and the cherished gods;
An hundred leagues it has on each side:
      Unto them that field is fated."

LII. Then said Gangleri: "What shall come to pass


82

afterward, when all the world is burned, and dead are all the gods and all the champions and all mankind? Have ye not said before, that every man shall live in some world throughout all ages?" Then Thridi answered: "In that time the good abodes shall be many, and many the ill; then it shall be best to be in Gimlé in Heaven. Moreover, there is plenteous abundance of good drink, for them that esteem that a pleasure, in the hall which is called Brimir: it stands in Ókólnir. That too is a good hail which stands in Nida Fells, made of red gold; its name is Sindri. In these halls shall dwell good men and pure in heart.
       "On Nástrand (1) is a great hall and evil, and its doors face to the north: it is all woven of serpent-backs like a wattle-house; and all the snake-heads turn into the house and blow venom, so that along the hall run rivers of venom; and they who have broken oaths, and murderers, wade those rivers, even as it says here:

I know a hall standing far from the sun,
In Nástrand: the doors to northward are turned;
Venom-drops fall down from the roof-holes;
That hall is bordered with backs of serpents.

There are doomed to wade the weltering streams
Men that are mansworn, and they that murderers are.

But it is worst in Hvergelmir:

There the cursed snake tears dead men's corpses."

LIII. Then spake Gangleri: "Shall any of the gods live


1. Strand of the Dead.


83

then, or shall there be then any earth or heaven?" Hárr answered: "In that time the earth shall emerge out of the sea, and shall then be green and fair; then shall the fruits of it be brought forth unsown. Vídarr and Váli shall be living, inasmuch as neither sea nor the fire of Surtr shall have harmed them; and they shall dwell at Ida-Plain, where Ásgard was before. And then the sons of Thor, Módi and Magni, shall come there, and they shall have Mjöllnir there. After that Baldr shall come thither, and Hödr, from Hel; then all shall sit down together and hold speech with one another, and call to mind their secret wisdom, and speak of those happenings which have been before: of the Midgard Serpent and of Fenris-Wolf. Then they shall find in the grass those golden chess-pieces which the Æsir had had; thus is it said:

In the deities' shrines shall dwell Vídarr and Váli,
      When the Fire of Surtr is slackened;
Módi and Magni shall have Mjöllnir
      At the ceasing of Thor's strife.

In the place called Hoddmímir's Holt there shall lie hidden during the Fire of Surtr two of mankind, who are called thus: Líf and Lífthrasir, and for food they shall have the morning-dews. From these folk shall come so numerous an offspring that all the world shall be peopled, even as is said here:

Líf and Lífthrasir, these shall lurk hidden
      In the Holt of Hoddmímir;
The morning dews their meat shall be;
      Thence are gendered the generations.

84

And it may seem wonderful to thee, that the sun shall have borne a daughter not less fair than herself; and the daughter shall then tread in the steps of her mother, as is said here:

The Elfin-beam shall bear a daughter,
      Ere Fenris drags her forth;
That maid shall go, when the great gods die,
      To ride her mother's road.

But now, if thou art able to ask yet further, then indeed I know not whence answer shall come to thee, for I never heard any man tell forth at greater length the course of the world; and now avail thyself of that which thou hast heard."

LIV. Thereupon Gangleri heard great noises on every side of him; and then, when he had looked about him more, lo, he stood out of doors on a level plain, and saw no hal there and no castle. Then he went his way forth and came home into his kingdom, and told those tidings which he had seen and heard; and after him each man told these tales to the other.


85

[Here Wilken closes his edition; Jónsson admits the following:

But the Æsir sat them down to speak together, and took counsel and recalled all these tales which had been told to him. And they gave these same names that were named before to those men and places that were there, to the end that when long ages should have passed away, men should not doubt thereof, that those Æsir that were but now spoken of, and these to whom the same names were then given, were all one. There Thor was so named, and he is the old Ása-Thor.

All reject what follows:

He is Öku-Thor, and to him are ascribed those mighty works which Hector wrought in Troy. But this is the belief of men: that the Turks told of Ulysses, and called him Loki, for the Turks were his greatest foes.]

 



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