Translating Early Medieval Poetry

by Tom Birkett

  44 See Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. A. Faulkes (London, 1992).

  45 See note 27 above.

  46 Eddukvæði, ed. Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, 2 vols (Reykjavík, 2014).

  Translating the Poetic Edda

  177

  online transcriptions of the Codex Regius and Hauksbók texts from the MENOTA

  project.47 These had of course to be checked against the manuscripts (and were not

  always correct). I could now call up, closely scrutinise and enlarge digitised images

  from the two manuscripts, all freely available online. This was of course impossible

  in the early 1990s, when the only option was recourse to facsimile editions; now

  looking closely at the manuscripts could be comfortably undertaken at my desk,

  making full use of enhanced magnification. Better access to manuscript witnesses

  made me change my mind about some translations (see the discussion of Hávamál

  st. 164 below).

  Another question I had to address, touched upon above in relation to decisions

  made by previous translators, was the expansion of the canon. Four poems are

  general y added to those found in the principal manuscript: Rígsþula, Grottasöngr, Baldrs Draumar and Hyndluljóð; might others also be included? Since we increasingly recognise the arbitrary nature of the particular canon designated by the term

  ‘Poetic Edda’, it seemed a good idea to consider for inclusion some of the poems

  normal y thought of as extra-canonical. I thus added The Waking of Angantýr and Svipdagsmál ( The Lay of Svipdagr) to the collection. With The Waking of Angantýr, I was able to include a relatively coherent poem, one that did not need a great deal of

  intercalated prose to explain what was going on. This poem chimes well with some

  of the themes in the Codex Regius heroic poems: the courage and determination of

  women who are well capable of wielding swords and leading men.48 The walking

  dead, in the person of Angantýr and his silent brothers, might, I thought, appeal

  to zombie fans, and I highlighted this poem in particular in my blog posting for

  World’s Classics when the second edition was published.49 Another poem from the

  same saga, Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, the so-called Battle of the Goths and Huns, was also considered, but it consists of a sequence of verses interspersed with quite

  long prose passages. The verses themselves are likely very old, but they demand so

  much context and explanation that the poem’s inclusion was hard to justify when

  space was under pressure.50

  Why Svipdagsmál? It is a poem – or rather a couple of poems, Gróugaldr ( Gróa’s Chant) and Fjölsvinnsmál ( The Sayings of Fjölsvinn) – which has generated some controversy. One scholar (Eldar Heide in Bergen) is sure that the poems are early

  rather than late and contain genuine mythological lore.51 Svipdagsmál’s editor, Peter Robinson, with whom I concur, argues that it is probably a later medieval

  production (though not as late as Gunnars slagur and the other seventeenth- or 47 http://www.menota.org/tekstarkiv.xml

  48 For an extended discussion of this poem’s translation history, see Hannah Burrows’s chapter in this collection.

  49 http://blog.oup.com/2014/09/retranslating-poetic-edda/ Accessed August 2016.

  50 On the age of The Battle of the Goths and Huns, see T. A. Shippey, ‘Foreword’ in Revisiting the Poetic Edda, ed. Acker and Larrington, pp. xiv–xvi.

  51 Eldar Heide, ‘ Fjølsvinnsmål: Ei oversett nøkkel kjelde til nordisk mytologi’.

  Unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Oslo, 1997. https://www.academia.edu/2401204/

  Fj%C3%B8lsvinnsm%C3%A5l._Ei_oversett_n%C3%B8kkelkjelde_til_nordisk_mytologi

  Accessed August 2016.

  178

  Carolyne Larrington

  eighteenth-century poems mentioned above).52 The poems verge on pastiche

  with their incorporation of imported probably-Celtic plots and motifs, and their

  haphazard application of eddic names and concepts. But they are certainly lively

  and interesting, and they offer good points for comparison with Skirnismál as a wooing poem; with the poems of Sigurðr’s youth as containing various kinds of

  obscure lore; and with Grímnismál ( The Sayings of Grímnir) in terms of their peculiar grasp of geography.

  The existence of the Frankfurt Edda-Kommentar, exploring the wealth of possible interpretations for thousands of words, encouraged me to make wholesale changes

  to my text to clarify the meaning of some individual words, phrases and idioms, and

  to translate more literal y than previously. I also decided to pay more attention to

  rhythm and to alliteration in this second version. In the final part of this chapter, I will consider some places where I made changes in my retranslation and explain the

  rationale behind them.

  At the 2013 Eddic Workshop, Stefan Brink noted that there are no tribal names

  anywhere else in Vǫluspá, and that they scarcely occur elsewhere in the mytho-

  logical poetry.53 So here in Vǫluspá st. 30, for example, a stanza preserved only in the Codex Regius:

  Sá hon valkyrior, vítt um komnar,

  gørvar at ríða til goðþioðar; [my italics]

  Skuld helt skildi, enn Skǫgul ǫnnor,

  Gunnr, Hildr, Gǫndul oc Geirskǫgul;

  nú ero talðar nǫnnor Herians,

  gorvar at ríða grund, valkyrior.

  (She saw valkyries coming from far and wide,

  ready to ride to the Gothic nation; [ goðþioðar]

  Skuld held one shield, Skogul another,

  Gunn, Hild, Gondul and Spear-Skogul;

  now the ladies of the General, the valkyries are counted up, ready to ride

  the earth.)

  ( Vǫluspá, st. 30, 1996)

  (She saw valkyries coming from far and wide,

  ready to ride to the gods’ realm; [ goðþioðar]

  Skuld shouldered one shield, Skogul was another,

  Gunn, Hild, Gondul and Geir-Skogul;

  now the General’s ladies are counted up,

  valkyries ready to ride over the earth.)

  ( Vǫluspá, st. 31, 2014)

  52 See Robinson, ‘An Edition of Svipdagsmál’. Robinson takes thorough account of the extensive manuscript tradition. The poem has now been edited in Eddukvæði, ed. Jónas Kristjánsson and Vésteinn Ólason, II, pp. 437–50.

  53 See now S. Brink and J. Lindow, ‘Place-Names in Eddic Poetry’, in A Handbook to Eddic Poetry, ed. Larrington, Quinn and Schorn, pp. 173–89.

  Translating the Poetic Edda

  179

  In line with Brink’s observation, the Goths have gone and the gods are back. The

  valkyries ride back to Valhǫl , to the gods’ realm, from the battle to which they

  rode across the earth, shields at the ready. I have also intensified the alliteration, leaving Geir (‘Spear’) untranslated for the alliteration with Gunn and Gondul, and the General, and have maintained a word-order that is nearer to the Norse in the

  final line. Clarification of sense accounts for the addition of ‘was’ and ‘over’. Skogul was another valkyrie rather than also carrying a shield; the word ‘over’ implies the

  ride through the skies of the human realm.

  Grípisspá ( Gripir’s Prophecy) st. 22 has been retranslated as both more literal and more alliterative:

  ‘Mann veit ek engi fyr mold ofan,

  þann er fleira sé fram enn þú, Grípir;

  skalattu leyna, þótt liótt sé,

  eða mein goriz á mínom hag.’

  (I know no man on earth

  who could be more prophetic than you, Gripir;

  you must not hide it, though it be unpleasant,

  or if harm is afoot in my circumstances.) (
1996)

  (I know no man on earth

  who sees further than you, Gripir;

  you must not hide it, though it be horrible,

  or if harm is afoot in my future.) (2014)

  ‘Horrible’ is a better translation of ljótt (‘ugly’) and gives alliteration; ‘future’ alliterates and half-rhymes with ‘further’, even if ‘hag’ is closer to ‘circumstance’ than

  ‘future’ in meaning. How should we deal with the few instances in the Poetic Edda

  where the lexis is completely obscure? At the beginning of Baldrs Draumar ( Baldr’s Dreams), Óðinn is described as alda gautr:

  Upp reis Óðinn, alda gautr,

  oc hann á Sleipni sǫðul um lagði

  ( Baldrs Draumar, st. 2)

  (Up rose Odin, Gaut of men,

  and on Sleipnir he laid a saddle) (2014)

  In 1996, I translated alda gautr as ‘sacrifice of men’, perhaps related to one sense of the verb gjóta (‘to cast, pour, drop (of baby animals)’, or ‘to gaze at’), as the one whose blood is poured out. Andy Orchard also translates gautr as ‘sacrifice’ – though he emends alda to aldinn (‘ancient’) – but neither ‘sacrifice of men’ nor ‘ancient sacrifice’ makes much sense in the context. Óðinn does indeed sacrifice ‘himself to

  himself’ in another poem, Hávamál, but he is not making a sacrifice here and the connection with men (sacrificed by men? for men?) who play no part in the poem

  is not at all clear. Could Óðinn then be a ‘Got’ or Gaut (OE Geat), like Beowulf, a member of the tribe who inhabited southern Sweden? That does not seem particularly likely. Or is this a reference to Gautr, an Odinic name found in Grímnismál

  180

  Carolyne Larrington

  st. 54/5? But ‘Odin, the Odin-name of men’ is neither useful nor il uminating as a

  translation. With this one, I admitted defeat, kept the Norse word in my text and

  wrote a note about it.

  In the light of Judy Quinn’s discussion of editorial practice at the First Eddic

  Workshop with regard to Hávamál st. 164/1–4, I decided to restore the manuscript text:

  Nú ero Háva mál qveðin, Háva hollo í,

  allþǫrf ýta sonom,

  óþǫrf ýta sonom [iǫtna sonom]

  (Now the High One’s song is recited, in the High One’s hal

  very useful to the sons of men,

  quite

  useless to the sons of men) (2014).

  In the Codex Regius, a younger hand has emended the second ýta sonom (‘sons

  of men’) to iǫtna sonom (‘sons of giants’), but it seems altogether possible that the playful Odinic voice intends in this paradoxical closing verse to suggest that

  whether the wisdom is useful or useless depends entirely on the individual’s wits, on

  what kind of son of men he is.

  The difficulty offered in Atlakviða ( The Poem of Atli) st. 2 is one of nuance.

  Drucco þar dróttmegir – en dyliendr þǫgðo –

  vín í valhǫllo

  ( Atlakviða, st. 2/1–3)

  (The fighting-troop all drank there – still they concealed their thoughts in

  silence –

  wine in the handsome hal )

  (2014)

  Here valhǫll offers a number of interpretative possibilities. Is Gunnarr’s dwelling proleptical y the ‘hall of the slain’, implying that the heroes who drink there are

  already as good as dead, already destined to join the einherjar in Óðinn’s great hall Valhǫll? Or does val- imply, as elsewhere, ‘foreign’, cognate with OE wealh, the word that gives Modern English Wales and Welsh? And if so, again as elsewhere in

  eddic verse, are the connotations thus of splendour, deriving from the hal ’s foreign

  (southern? exotic?) aspect? The Norse allows all these meanings to remain in play,

  but I have opted for the last set of associations.

  Final y, among the most difficult retranslation decisions for me, comes what is,

  to my mind, the most problematic verse in the Poetic Edda: Grímnismál st. 21, an obscure verse in a rather obscure poem.

  Þýtr Þund, unir Þióðvitnis

  fiscr flóð í;

  árstraumr þiccir ofmikil

  valglaumi at vaða.

  (Thund roars, the Great Wolf’s fish

  swims happily in the stream;

  Translating the Poetic Edda

  181

  the river’s current seems too strong for

  the slaughter-horse to wade)

  (2014)

  Another version of Grímnismál is preserved in the manuscript AM 748 I 4to, where the asterisked word reads valglaumni, conceivably derived from an otherwise unattested noun, * valglaumnir.

  Here there are a number of issues to grapple with. Thund is apparently the

  name of an other-world river in which the Great Wolf’s fish, conceivably the

  Miðgarðs-serpent, is cheerful y swimming. The Great Wolf must be Fenrir, brother

  of the Miðgarðs-serpent, although the snaky monster is typical y to be found (at

  least according to Hymiskviða and Snorri’s accounts in Gylfaginning) in the ocean rather than in fresh water. Who or what is wading with difficulty through the

  river-currents? Valglaumi (the Codex Regius reading) could be read as the dative singular of * valglaumr or as the accusative singular of * valglaumir (possibly another river-name).54 Glaumr might be interpreted here (as elsewhere) as a horse name; it could mean ‘cheerful noise, merriment’; or it might be a giant name, so meaning

  something like fjord (mountain-dweller’s stream). But who / whatever is struggling to wade cannot logical y be a noise, although in my 1996 translation I expanded

  this idea to encompass ‘noisy ones’, the warrior dead on their way to Valhǫl . Nor

  can a fjord wade itself, so in my new version I concurred with the Edda-Kommen-

  tar’s suggestion that glaumr designates a horse. Val- in the context of the journey to Valhǫll must refer to the battle-dead, and I have interpreted it thus. The horse

  (otherwise unattested) that might bear the dead across the river is facing a difficult crossing over the other-world river that separates the living from the dead. Whether

  this horse is Sleipnir, Óðinn’s mount, transporting the dead to their new home, or

  another horse entirely, is not clear.55

  The reading in MS AM 748 I 4to offers no help; valglaumni could be an accusative or dative of another otherwise unknown noun, which might mean something like

  ‘slaughter-noise-maker’. The horse of the dead seemed to me to be the best of a series of somewhat unsatisfactory options; whether he is Sleipnir or a forerunner of the

  mysterious horse referred to in Sólarljóð st. 51:

  Á norna stóli sat ek níu daga;

  þaðan var ek á hest hafinn;

  gýgjar sólir

  skínu grimmliga

  ór skýdrúpnis skýjum.

  (I sat for nine days on the norns’ seat; from there I was lifted onto a horse; the ogress’s suns shone fiercely out of the cloud-lowerer’s clouds.)

  54 Here I draw on the commentary to this verse in the hitherto unpublished Edda-

  Kommentar, vol. 1, with grateful thanks to Beatrice La Farge for advance sight of her complex argumentation.

  55 The only journeys undertaken to the world of the dead preserved in Norse sources are both undertaken on Sleipnir (by Óðinn in Baldrs Draumar and Hermóðr in Gylfaginning, ch.

  49; Edda, ed. Faulkes, pp. 46–7).

  182

  Carolyne Larrington

  But I am conscious that I – and the Kommentar – may be introducing a mythic

  horse into the other-world landscape which real y has no right to be there.

  Updating the translation also called for expansion of the Introduction and, in a

  more limited way, to the commentary. Again, issues of space in t
he paratext were

  significant; publishers, as noted above, are reluctant to preface the translation with a lengthy preamble. The introduction to the first edition contained a number of

  high cultural references: to Borges, William Morris and Wagner (along of course

  with Tolkien). In the intervening almost twenty years, Norse myth and legend has

  become more cultural y legible, infiltrating both high and popular culture alike.

  Thus there was very much more to say about its role in such differing cultural

  phenomena as Viking death metal, the neo-pagan faith of Ásatrú, Hol ywood Thor

  films and even the smash TV series, Game of Thrones.56 These references will doubtless become outdated in time, but the impact of eddic themes on popular culture

  (not just via Tolkien) needs to be acknowledged. Nor does it harm sales to reach

  out to such reading communities as the Ásatrú constituency or the death-metal

  fans. The translator has to acknowledge and communicate not only with the general

  reading public, but with a whole series of sub-groups who are attracted to Norse

  myth for highly varying reasons.

  Translations are not for all time, but simply for their own particular age, ‘a stop-

  gap until made to give place to a worthier work’, as Thorpe modestly observes in the

  introduction to his edition of the Edda.57 The new cover with its lovely detail from

  the Urnes stave church in Norway, and with a more upbeat quote than that embla-

  zoned on the back of the first edition, was published in September 2014, bringing, I

  hope, the wonder of the Poetic Edda – and some of the questions that I have raised

  here – to a whole new set of readers.58

  56 On Norse myth and Game of Thrones, see Carolyne Larrington, Winter Is Coming. The Medieval World of Game of Thrones (London, 2015), pp. 59–106.

  57 Edda Sæmundar, trans. Thorpe, I, p. viii.

  58 Since this chapter was original y written, another translation of the Poetic Edda, that of Jackson Crawford, has appeared ( The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes (Indianapolis, IN, 2015)). I have not yet had a chance to see it but note that the translator has taken the decision to omit Atlamál, as covering the same ground as Atlakviða, and repositions Atlakviða. Crawford’s translation, including an appendix, ‘The Cowboy Hávamál’, is aimed squarely at the general reader, his remarks about it suggest.