The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore
Translated and edited by Andy Orchard. Penguin Classics.
London, 2011. xliv + 384 pp. ISBN 978-0-140-43585-6.
There will never be one English translation of the Poetic Edda
which satisfies every reader and every purpose. Some readers
will want a poetic translation with an aesthetically pleasing
and evocative choice of words. Such readers may enjoy the
translation by W. H. Auden and Paul B. Taylor (1981), and not be
overly concerned with the liberties it takes. Others will be
interested in a poetic translation that attempts to copy the
metrical form of the originals to the extent possible in
English. Such readers may appreciate Lee M. Hollander’s
translation (1962) and forgive—or even delight in—its clunky and
archaic style. Readers who prefer a lighter touch but still want
an alliterative translation can derive benefit from Henry A.
Bellows’s work (1936).In my experience the most common
preference expressed by people interested in a translation of
the Poetic Edda is that it be accurate. Another common
preference is that it be in readable English. The new
translation by Andy Orchard is aimed squarely at fulfilling
these preferences. It is logical that a translation aiming
principally at accuracy will not attempt to reproduce the poetic
metre. While Orchard takes advantage of such opportunities for
alliteration as present themselves to him, his translation is
effectively a prose translation and should be judged as such. It
is most closely comparable to the non-alliterative translations
of Carolyne Larrington (1996) and Benjamin Thorpe (1866). In my
view, Orchard is mostly successful in his effort to produce a
readable and accessible book. While remaining a one-volume work,
it gives the beginning student a good amount of useful
background information to help in understanding and appreciating
the poems. The style adopted in the translation is generally
clear and flows well. Estimating the accuracy of the translation
is a more difficult issue and will be the subject of the
remainder of this review. It first needs to be stated that the
Poetic Edda has many verses that are obscure, senseless,
defective, displaced, metrically suspicious or otherwise
questionable. There are many hapax legomena (a term of which
only one instance of use is recorded) and other difficult words.
No translator could be expected to handle every problematic
verse in a satisfying way and it would be out of place for a
reviewer to pick fights over the interpretation of obscure
verses. But the Poetic Edda also has a vast number of clear and
straightforward passages over whose meaning no informed
disagreement can exist. In such cases, a translation aiming at
accuracy can justly be criticised when it fails to deliver. I
would like to discuss some examples where it seems to me that
Orchard’s translation runs into problems of this kind. In
Guðrúnarkviða III 6.3–4 we read hann kann Helga /
hver vellanda which Orchard renders as ‘he knows about the
sacred boiling pot!’. The existence of such a special pot may
well pique a reader’s interest and perhaps invite comparison
with the quest for the great cauldron in Hymiskviða. But
Orchard’s translation here is inaccurate: the word helga
cannot be the adjective meaning ‘holy’ and must be the
verb meaning ‘to sanctify’. It is worth looking at previous
translators: Larrington: He knows about the sacred, boiling
cauldron. Bellows: For he the boiling / kettle can hallow.
Hollander: for he can bless / the boiling kettle. Thorpe: he can
hallow / the boiling cauldron. Orchard and Larrington make the
same mistake here while the older translations have correct
renderings.
In Guðrúnarkviða II 39.8 we have the words þótt mér leiðr
sér as something Guðrún says to Atli. Orchard renders this,
along with its context, as ‘I’ll come and cauterise your wounds,
/ soothe and heal, though it’s loathsome to me’. This is
somewhat ambiguous and we could wonder if Guðrún is squeamish
about cauterising wounds—is that, perhaps, inappropriate work
for a noble woman? But the original is quite clear; it means, as
in Thorpe’s rendering, ‘although to me thou art hateful’.
Orchard translates the verb sér as if it were a
third-person form, but it is unambiguously second-person. In the
rest of the exchange Guðrún is speaking in riddles, but here she
tells Atli to his face that she hates him—an important point
which should not be muddled in a translation. Larrington makes
the same mistake (‘though it pains me to do it’). In Helgakviða
Hjörvarðssonar 42.3–4 we have Sigrún saying þá er mér Helgi/
hringa valði, which Orchard renders as ‘when Helgi
picked me with rings’. The use of rings to pick a bride sounds
like intriguing anthropological data but all we really have here
is a mistranslation. The line means ‘when for me Helgi / rings
selected’, as Thorpe translates it. Orchard renders it as if
mér were accusative and hringa dative rather than
the reverse. Larrington has ‘when Helgi chose me, gave me
rings’, which is equally confused. In Grípisspá 33.3–4 we have
mundo Grímhildar / gjalda ráða which
Orchard and Larrington both render as ‘Grímhild’s counsels will
prevail’. This would be correct if ráða were nominative rather
than genitive, if mundu were third-person plural rather than
second-person singular and if gjalda meant ‘prevail’, which it
does not. Thorpe’s ‘thou wilt pay the penalty / of Grimhild’s
craft’ shows the correct way to parse this. Orchard’s
translation frequently renders singular as plural and plural as
singular. This is sometimes defensible and often more or less
harmless. For example, Orchard translates stóðo geislar í
skipin (Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, prose passage) as
‘beams of light hit the ship’. The original has skipin
‘the ships’ but nothing really rides on the plural and the
reader is not seriously misled. A more disappointing example is
when svárt verða sólskin / of sumor eptir
(Völuspá 41.5– 6) is rendered ‘the sun beams turn black the
following summer’. All manuscripts of the original have a plural
sumor ‘summers’. This is a mythological detail which
there is no reason not to relay correctly. Even simple prose
passages have a regrettable number of errors. The following
example is from Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar: Þat kvað Helgi,
því at hann grunaðium feigð sína ok þat, at fylgjor hans höfðo
vitjat Heðins, þá er hann sá konona ríðavarginom. Orchard
offers: ‘Helgi said, that he suspected that he was doomed, and
that it was his fetch that had visited Hedin, when he saw the
woman riding the wolf.’ But the text isn’t telling us what Helgi
is saying but explaining what he has already said. And the
plural fylgjor shouldn’t be rendered with a singular
‘fetch’. It is a significant cultural detail that a person can
have more than one fylgja— the implication seems
to be that the rider is a fylgja and the wolf is
another fylgja. There is no reason not to relay this
accurately. Bellows is much closer to the mark: ‘Helgi spoke
thus because he foresaw his death, for his following-spirits had
met Hethin when he saw the woman riding on the wolf.’
The preceding examples will suffice to show why I cannot without
reservation call Orchard’s Edda an accurate translation. But a
relative estimation is also in order. Orchard’s version is
certainly more accurate than the poetic translations of
Hollander, Bellows and Auden. And while the translation further
propagates many of Larrington’s errors, Orchard’s version is, on
the whole, somewhat more accurate. In particular, I find that
Orchard’s version of Völuspá compares favourably with that of
Larrington. Thorpe’s translation is woefully obsolete but tends
to have different errors from the modern translations and is a
valuable comparative tool. Ursula Dronke’s partial translation
(1969–2011) is quite accurate but priced out of the reach of
most students. Readers of German have some good options. In
summary, I know of no complete English translation of the Poetic
Edda which is more accurate than Orchard’s. I would, therefore,
recommend it—but I wish I could do so more wholeheartedly.
Haukur Þorgeirsson
Háskóli Íslands