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Viking Tales of the North

Notes

Page 2

Canto VI.
Stanza 2 — “Get a pawn.” The Swedish word for “pawn” is “bonde,” and in this stanza has a double meaning, referring to the pawn on the chess-board and to the expression of the taunting Helge in canto IV: “Our sister is not for peasant’s son.” “Bonde” means both pawn and peasant. The old sagas are full of puns and enigmas.

Canto XIII.
Stanza 2 — “Balder’s pyre.” this expression is used here in three different meanings and refers: (1) To Balder’s funeral pile in the mythology; (2) to the emblematic fire upon the hearth: (3) to the burning temple and grove, in which the image of Balder was consumed as on a funeral pile.

Canto XX.
Stanza 14. Compare with this stanza the last stanza of Ragnar Lodbrok’s “Death-Song”:
                        Cease my strain! I hear a voice
                        From realms where martial souls rejoice;
                        I hear the maids of slaughter call,
                        Who bid me hence to Odin’s hall.
                        High-seated in their blest abodes
                        I soon shall quaff the drink of gods.
                        The hours of life have glided by,
                        I fall, but smiling shall I die.

Canto XXIV.
Stanza 5 — “The Serpent twisted.” It should be observed that the knots wont to be engraven on runic monuments to denote an indissoluble bond of fidelity and affection were commonly serpent-formed; and when such knots occur, the first care of the runic decipherer is to find the head of the serpent, for here beings the reading of the inscription.

Stanza 11 — “Belt.” Thor’s belt was Megingjarder (belt of strength); and whenever he girded himself with it, his strength was redoubled.

Stanza 12 — “Oblivion’s heron.” this expression refers to the following passage in “Hávamál” :
                        Oblivion’s heron ‘tis called
                        That over potations hovers;
                        He steals the minds of men.
                        With this bird’s pinions
                        I was fettered
                        In Gulad’s (3) dwelling.

Stanza 14 — “Gold-combed cock,” etc. Such are the signs which, according to the vala in “Voluspá” of the Elder Edda, shall usher in the Twilight of the Gods (Ragnarok) the day terrible alike to gods and to men. thus the Elder Edda:
                        Among the gods crowed
                        The gold-combed cock,
                        He who wakes in Valhal
                        The hosts of heroes;
                        Beneath the earth
                        Crows another
                        The root-red cock
                        In the halls of Hel. (4)

Stanza 21 — “Grasp ye the sense, or no?” This is an imitation of the vala’s repeated question in the latter part of “Voluspá.” She ends many stanzas by saying. “Knowing ye now more or not?”

ENDNOTES:

3. Gunlad was the keeper of the poetic mead. — See NORSE MYTHOLOGY pp. 249-250. Back

4. NORSE MYTHOLOGY, p. 420. Back

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