SVIPDAGSMAL

[Index to Svipdagsmál]
Gróugaldur and Fjölsvinnsmál
Introduction, Translation and Notes
by Lee M. Hollander

PUBLISHED IN 1962, THIS IS THE LAST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE POEMS
TO APPEAR IN A SCHOLARLY TRANSLATION OF THE POETIC EDDA.

The Lay of Svipdag
Svipdagsmál¹
© 1962 Lee M. Hollander, used here for educational purposes only.
This is an excerpt of The Poetic Edda. The entire work is available for purchase.

The two poems here printed under a common heading are handed down only in a number of late paper manuscripts none of which is older than the second half of the seventeenth century. Notwithstanding many discrepancies and obscurities, necessitating numerous emendations, all of these manuscripts are seen to go back to a common lost original.

That these poems do belong together is evident from the connection, and from the similarity in their style, language, and metre (ljóðaháttr). Moreover, we have the witness of a number of closely related Swedish and Danish ballads² which treat the material as a unit. But it is difficult to decide whether both poems were originally an undivided whole, united by a stanza or stanzas now lost-which would account for the abrupt beginning of the "Fjölsvinnsmál" proper, or independent treatments, by the same poet, of the two phases of the myth— the fairy-story motif of Sleeping Beauty.

I. "The Spell of Gróa" ("Grógaldr"): Young Svipdag is given, by an evil stepmother, the task of winning the hand of Mengloth in Giant-Land (we gather from the ballads that he has never seen Mengloth, but loves her nevertheless). He seeks the grave of his mother Gróa, a wise woman, and wakes her from her death sleep to ask for the help she had promised to give him in his hour of need. She chants for him nine spells which are to aid him in his dangerous undertaking.

II. "The Lay of Fjolsvith" ("Fjölsvinnsmal"): Svipdag (after overcoming all terrors of the journey, as we must assume) at last stands before a castle perched on a mountain top, surrounded by a wall of flickering flames. A giant watchman, Fjolsvith, rudely bids him be gone and asks his name, which Svipdag conceals. However, the hero learns, in set question and answer, that Mengloth dwells in the castle, and that it is inaccessible save to one chosen hero--Svipdag. He reveals his true name, the gates open, and the maiden hails him as her deliverer.

These poems are peculiar in that they, to a far greater extent than any other, are a conglomerate of mythical elements and verse fragments borrowed from a score or so of unquestionably older poems in the collection. This fact stamps them as unauthentic. And yet the poet-no doubt a scholar of the Icelandic Renaissance, living, say, at the end of the twelfth century-has shown remarkable skill in putting these borrowed feathers together to form a well-organized and (but for the interminable didactic portions) engaging whole which simulates the Old Norse color surprisingly well, so well, in fact, that several scholars of weight have been led to assign it to the tenth century. The lyrical portions, in particular Mengloth's expression of longing and exultation, are most pleasing.

1 The name of "Svipdagsmal" as a name for both poems was suggested by Bugge.
2 Grundtvig, Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser II. 245.

The Translation Follows