10                 
Galdur gólu,            The galdr they screamed,        
göndum riðu,          Rode magical staffs ,        
Rögnir og Reginn   Rögnir and Reginn        
að ranni heimis;     Towards the earth' large house;        
hlustar Óðinn         Óðinn listens        
Hliðskjálfu í;            in Hliðskjálf;        
leit braut vera        The search-party away happen        
langa vegu.              The long roads.        

The galdr is a magical song-scream based on the runes. To ride a magical staff is equivalent to take a witch-ride. It seems that the magical wand of late became a broomstick in our modern imagination.

gola is a feminine name meaning 'wind, large intestine', and can also be a verb meaning 'to scream'.

Gandr (dative plural form : göndum) means a magical staff, magic, or a wolf. It is used to designate two monsters: Jörmungandr, 'the huge magical wand' (the exact meaning of this word is discussed below at stanza 25) who circles the world of the humans, and Vánargandr, a name for the wolf Fenrir. Besides, to ride wolves is an 'ordinary behavior' of the troll-women, great magic practitioners.
Hliðskjálf is a tower inside Ásgarðr.

rögnir can be one of Óðinn's names but essentially means 'the prince, the master. regin means 'the giver of advice', leading to the meaning 'the Gods'.

ranni heimis can be translated as 'the large house of the earth' or as 'Heimir's large house', where Heimir is the name of a giant. Both allude to a lower world as the one where Nauma is now living.

Titchenell and Thorpe translate in such a way that tells us that Heimdall, Bragi and Loki practiced magic during their travel, while Björnsson and Reaves oppose this interpretation arguing that practicing magic in Ásgarðr is strictly forbidden. We must also think of the famous eddic poem, Lokasenna ('Loki's teasing') draws a kind of equivalence between Loki who begot a colt while under the form of a mare, and Óðinn who “sounded the drum like a sorcerer”. To accuse a man of practicing sorcery is a classical insult, including sometimes hints at the pleasure received by the man undergoing sodomy. Since the text is so ambiguous, it is quite possible to understand equally that Heimdall, Bragi and Loki practiced magic, or that some giants came to fetch them, and the giants did it magically. This last interpretation is further confirmed by the fact that stanza 17 is somewhat confusing the carrying giants and the carried Gods.

I feel is totally impossible that the poet might have been unconscious of this ambiguity, thus she meant to insult the Gods, and mainly Heimdal, already called vörð Bifrastar, 'the woman of Bifröst', in stanza 9, who does not behave like a proud warrior, as we shall see in the following.
        
11                 
Frá enn vitri            Of the wise woman, again,
                                  [Alternately: Asked the wise man (Heimdall)]         
veiga selju                power she-giver
                                  [Alternately: to the strong drink she-giver],        
banda burður          the offspring of the Gods,        
og brauta sinnar;    and of the harsh ways down companions (asked),        
hlýrnis, heljar,         of the patterns of Heaven, of Hel-dwellers,        
heims ef vissi           of the earth if (she) knew         
ártíð, æfi,                  of the origin of time, of eternity,        
aldurtila.                   of until the time (death).        

This stanza is totally ambiguous. Either a wise man (Heimdal) asks a servant about the structure of our universe (the classical interpretation), or a wise woman (Íðunn-Nauma) is asked about the structure of our universe, as I translated it.

My understanding comes from a choice in the translation as follows: frá = of, from; enn = again; vitri = dat. of adjective vitr = wise. Besides, I choose the meaning of 'power' out of the several meanings of veiga = f. gen. plur. of veig: 'power, strong drink, woman, gold'. The noun selja means 'willow', a classical way to speak of a woman, and the verb selja means 'to provide ownership'. These meanings fit quite well with a “power she-giver,” an awarding strong woman.

The alternate interpretation, the more classical one, follows from seeing frá as the preterit of fregna, 'asking, receiving information'. Once this choice is done, enn becomes an archaic form of inn, 'the', et vitri a nominalization to a masc. weak nom. of vitr, 'wise', giving thus 'the he-wise' who is asking a question. This wise man is then obviously Heimdal who is in charge of asking a question. Hence the classical translation: “The wise man (Heimdal) asked the mead giver …”

In passing, notice that band means also a 'the act of binding'; burðr means also 'something carried' so that banda burður, 'offspring of the Gods', is loaded with double meanings such as calling Nauma 'a binding of the Gods', or the 'offspring of the burden'.

The noun brauta is the genitive plural of braut, a path down a cliff, hence 'a harsh way down'. Bragi and Loki are companions to Heimdall to this harsh way down.
My feeling is that, concerning the Old Norse language strictly speaking, the classical interpretation is better than mine, but you must confess that it makes no sense to ask a set of such difficult questions to a serving maid, except to make fun of her. For me, it is clear that the poetess is winking at the readers who find no scandal in Íðunn's withdrawal.
                
12                
Né mun mælti,      Nor will speak         
né mál knátti         Nor speech could         
Gefjun greiða,        Gefjun perform,        
né glaum hjaldi;     nor noisy joyous noises;        
tár af tíndust          Tears off appeared,        
törgum hjarnar,     from the round shields of the frozen brain,        
eljunfaldin               the (she-)powerful was        
endurrjóða.             deprived of redness.        

The “round shields of the brain” is a classical kenning for the orbits.
In this stanza, Íðunn-Nauma becomes Íðunn-Nauma-Gefjun. Gefjun may mean 'the charitable one' since it probably comes from a Germanic root meaning 'charity', and for a plant 'to thrive'.

This stanza will be better understood by referring to the Völuspa. It says that three Gods bestowed humanity on Asc and Embla:

önd gaf Óðinn, óð gaf Hœnir, lá gaf Lóðurr oc lito góða.        breath gave Óðinn, passion gave Hœnir, life-redness gave Lóðurr and good color.        óð means 'passion' that can be understood as 'lust for life' or even 'poetical passion'. lá is usually translated as 'blood' but Kuhn explicitly gives Lebensröte, life-redness.        

This stanza thus tells us that Íðunn-Nauma, while becoming Gefjun, became also charitable and powerful but she lost much of her humanity: she has no more breath since she cannot speak, she lost her lust for life since she is only able to cry, and she even lost her lá, her red color. None of the existing translations acknowledge the obvious meaning of rjóða (to redden, to cover with blood), this is why I had to call upon the Völuspa to justify my translation.

Gefjun incarnates an Íðunn who became a völva, a seeress. What she sees is so horrible that that she is unable to express it. The poem clearly states that she does feel something, but she is now overwhelmed by her shamanic powers, and no longer fully human.

Another discussion is relative to the word hjarnar. It can come from two different words. Hjarni is the 'brain' and hjarn is 'hard frozen snow'. For both, the genitive plural should be hjarna, thus the form hjarnar remains puzzling, as noticed by Björnsson and Reaves. The 'round shields of the brain' is a classical kenning for the orbits, it is thus normal to understand hjarnar as the genitive plural of hjarni. However, hjarn is perhaps also possible, at least as an allusion. It is clear that the two words sound very much the same and can be used and reused in puns of the kind 'your brain is nothing but frozen snow,' or the like. In this case, I suggest that the poem suggests that Íðunn-Nauma-Gefjun's brain is not functioning properly. She seems to be made dull by the enormity of her knowledge.

As a side remark, I'd like to recall that the 2^nd stanza of the Norwegian runic poem states:

er af illu jarne;
opt loypr ræinn á hjarne. (Often walks-glides (its legs sinking in the snow) the elk on frozen snow.)

Here also there are some problems with the cases since the dative of hjarn is hjarni. At any rate, hjarn and hjarni are obviously similar. This verse is looked upon as surprising because it describes a simple fact of life. An extension of the above arguments leads to an other understanding of the verse. It has another hidden meaning I suggest : Often walks-glides (its legs sinking in the brain matter) insanity in the frozen brain.


13                
Eins kemur austan             'Of' one comes from the East        
úr Élivágum                         out of Stormywaves         
þorn af akri                          A thorn of the meadow         
þurs hrímkalda,                   A Thurs rimecold,        
hveim drepur dróttir          with which strikes people        
Dáinn allar                            Dáinn all        
mæran of Miðgarð               famous 'of' Midgard        
með nátt hverri.                  along night each.        

Explanations:

The Thurs are supposed to live “in the East,” on the other side of the arctic ocean, called here Stormywaves. The word 'thorn' designates a Thurs: it is clear here, and we have other examples of this use in the Thorsdrapa. In passing, note that the Old English rune poem calls the 3^rd rune “thorn” and many scholars claim it is a change from the Scandanvian rune poems since a giant is not a thorn. We see here that 'thorn' a a simple image to designate a Thurs. It follows that the OE and Scandinavian rune poems agree in fact on the meaning of the rune.

Dáinn is the name of a dwarf. This one is becoming dangerous instead of becoming numb as the ones we met in stanza 3. The poem says that Dáinn uses the Thurs in order to kill each night “all people of famous Midgard”, i.e. all the humans.

        
14                
Dofna þá dáðir,    Without strength are the actions,        
detta hendur,      grovel to the ground the grippers,
                              [i.e., the hands hang down to the ground]        
svífur of svimi     erects and wobbles with uncertainty        
sverð áss hvíta;  the sword of the white God;        
rennir örvit         Makes flow the arrow of the understanding,
                              [alternately: mind-numbing ]        
rýgjar glyggvi,     by the storms of the giantess' winds,        
sefa sveiflum       of the spirit with the turning-around(s)        
sókn gjörvallri.    whole humankind.        

The verb svífa (the svífur of the 3rd verse) is translated by Cleasby as 'to rove', but de Vries gives: schwingen which means, for a weapon: to brandish in a shaky way (French: brandiller). I underlined the sexual tones in the present translation. Sexually or not, Heimdall is made ridiculous here: a real warrior should not 'svífa-schwingen-brandiller' his sword under any circumstances. Since we do not see which warriors Heimdall has to fight, but he has a woman to convince, the sexual meaning seems to me the strongest. This is a classical modern-womanish way of making fun of a man, especially of a macho one, thus this interpretation reinforces my feeling that the poem was written by a strong woman, one sharing the current feminist views ahead of her time.

The second half of the stanza needs some word re-ordering to be understood: The arrow of understanding makes move the whole humankind with the toppling-over of the spirit (i. e. it causes the spirit to topple over), this being performed by the storms of the giantess' winds.

Two words deserve a detailed discussion: örvit and sveiflum.

The ö of örvit can be either a _(written ö _{here) or a ø.}

ør is a prefix meaning 'out of' and ørvit is 'out of spirit, witlessness', i.e., mind-numbed. In the context of the poem, this meaning can be expected since becoming numb seems to be already shared by the dwarves and Heimdall. However, as a subject of 'to make move, to make flow', this meaning is very surprising.

r _{means an arrow, and} rvit can be understood as the arrow of the wits, unexpected, but certainly able to make something move. If we put ourselves in the position to consider that Íðunn-Nauma-Gefjun is not a secondary figure but the central one, and that her eagerness for knowledge is the cause of all that is happening, she is then the giantess provoking all this toppling over of things, and the primary motivation is sharpness of mind, i. e., the arrow of understanding. Since the other translators do not assume the centrality of Íðunn-Nauma-Gefjun, they rejected this hypothesis as being absurd.

The word sveiflum should mean 'we topple over'. It comes from an ON word, sveif meaning 'seal fin', something that indeed topples over a lot. It gave birth to an Old Swedish word, sveifla meaning to topple over. Since the introduction of a 1^stplural person of a verb is almost impossible here, we have to hypothesize that the poetess used it as a noun in the dative plural. Cleasby's Icelandic-English dictionary gives the meaning of "a swinging round with one's antagonist" obviously used here in the plural dative form.. This use is not attested in ON, and I think that we spot here an undisputable modern use of a word, showing that the poem cannot be that ancient. We will come back to that at the end of the poem.